How do I keep a sketchbook and actually use it?

Most unused sketchbooks are unused for the same two reasons: they are too nice to spoil, and the owner believes each page should be a finished piece.

Step by step

1. Buy cheap and small.A pocket-sized book with ordinary paper. An expensive one with beautiful paper creates pressure to make each page worth it, which is exactly what stops people drawing.
2. Ruin the first page immediately.Scribble on it, write the date, spill tea on it. The blank perfect book is the obstacle, and destroying that on purpose removes it.
3. Decide what it is for.A sketchbook is thinking on paper — observations, notes, bad ideas, half-drawings. It is not a portfolio. Keeping a separate book for finished work removes the conflict.
4. Carry it.In a bag or a coat pocket, with a pencil clipped to it. A sketchbook at home is a sketchbook that gets used once a fortnight.
5. Draw for five minutes at a time.Waiting for a train, in a cafe, in a meeting. Short observed drawings of ordinary things build the habit far better than planned sessions.
6. Draw the boring things.A tap, a shoe, a plug socket, a hand. Unglamorous subjects are always available and they teach as much as anything picturesque.
7. Do not tear pages out.The bad pages are the evidence of practice. Removing them gives you a book of successes and destroys the record of how you got there.
8. Date every page.It turns the book into a record. Looking back at a page from six months ago is the most reliable motivation there is.
9. Write in it too.Notes about the light, why something did not work, colour to remember. It makes the book more useful and lowers the stakes on any single page.
10. Fill it and start another.A finished sketchbook is a genuine milestone. Setting a target of filling one, rather than of drawing well, is a far better goal.

Tips

• Cheap book, ruined first page. Both remove the fear of spoiling it.
• Draw for five minutes while waiting for things. That is where the pages come from.
• Never tear out the bad pages — they are the point.

Common mistakes

• Buying an expensive sketchbook to begin with — Beautiful paper creates an expectation that each page justifies itself, so it stays empty. Cheap paper you do not mind wasting is what gets drawn on.
• Treating each page as a finished piece — A sketchbook is for thinking and practising. Expecting finished work from every page means you only start a drawing when you have an hour and the right mood, which is rarely.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask