 Hello there, it's Sandy Olnock and today I'm going to talk about the difference between doodling, sketching and journaling because they in my mind are different and I'm going to talk about my perspective. Other people may agree or disagree but I'm going to tell you what I think and show you three different projects while I do. So let's get started. You might have noticed that all three projects have blue ink and I'm using an Hiroshizuku Konpeki ink and a fluid writer. So the fluid writer I thought I'd talk about first, I bought one of these a while ago and I used it for my Ukrainian eggs and it doesn't work for Pen and Ink anymore really very well. So I bought a new pair because when you buy a pair of them you get a small and a large and actually it's a fine and an extra fine nib so they're two different sizes and I wanted to see what the difference was and share that with you. They always come with this little thing, it's a little poker. You can put the poker in if you get it stuck. You can also put those red caps on the top of the well and that will help to kind of clear out any things that are stuck on the inside when you're trying to wash out your pen. So let's begin with doodling because I'm going to test these two nibs and do some doodling while I do. I've got a very tiny sketchbook and the way that I put the ink in you can get a dropper or something but I just use a brush and drop a little bit of ink into the well and then start to draw with it. Now you might need to write on some scrap, tap it a little bit in order to get it started but once you get it going it works quite nicely. Now a pen like this you do have to keep refilling as you use it because there's a very small well for it. You don't have a whole lot of ink at your disposal but here you can see the difference between the lines and there's the extra fine which is very very very fine and the fine which is the larger one. So I don't know if they have other sizes than that if you're looking for something even bigger but these have lots of different uses. There's lots of different industries that use them. They use this for touching up car paint apparently. Cake bakers can use these. Lots of different things can be done with them but I like making art with them and I love doodling and I want to talk a little bit about what doodling does for me. I mean the most obvious one is probably how relaxed I get when I start doodling because there's no pressure. I'm not trying to draw a thing so there's not proportions to worry about. There's not a correct way to draw such and such thing in order to make it look like a thing. If I'm trying to draw an elephant it needs to look like an elephant but when I'm doodling I can just do little shapes. I can make lines. I can develop my own style without having to think too much about what am I going to draw? I don't know what I'm going to draw. What do you want to draw? No. What do you want to draw? I have these conversations with myself and when I'm just doodling it doesn't matter. I'm just drawing shapes and what this has done for me is given me a lot of practice making lines because then when I start making lines when I'm doing and drawing my hand is much more accustomed to making those lines. So I practice with every different kind of pen that I have because I never know which kind of pen I'm going to be working with on a bigger project and the more I get used to them using doodling techniques the more practiced I am when it comes time to doing another kind of project. So that's just one of many benefits I find in doodling. The biggest one though really is just relaxing and I love chilling out. I've developed a style with more flowing lines than I ever thought I could get with doodling and I wasn't like this when I first started but over time I've developed my own style and you might as well if you spend time doodling. You don't have to have fancy supplies like this. Just grab a big pen and a piece of paper and doodle. So next is sketching and sketching in my mind is I'm going to draw a thing. I'm going to choose a subject and draw it and sometimes that subject is a specific thing like here I'm drawing an owl and sometimes it's a sketch of a painting that I want to do. There's a scene I want to create. There's something that I want to put together different elements and a sketch is a way to practice that and work out some of the ideas in a smaller format or in a quicker format than what I'm going to do when I create the final piece. And sometimes those things get made into final art and sometimes they don't and it's okay because it's just a sketch. The more you sketch in whatever medium whether it's pencil or pen and ink or sketching in watercolor the better you'll be at the medium when you go to do something bigger with it. It's one of the reasons that I have 30 days to more confident sketching and watercolor sketching because I find it so important. It's such a valuable thing to get yourself used to just drawing a lot and creating a lot just doing it often. Now not everybody does my 30 days classes in 30 days. There's a few heroic people who dive in and do it that way. Other people do it at their own pace that's fine but anything you do when you're trying to develop a skill if you only do it once every I don't know five days ten days every two weeks once a month you're not going to improve at it. Think about when you go to the gym you don't walk in the door and say well I was here three months ago and I'm going to pick up right where I was when I left left off the last time I was here. No you're starting all over again because you haven't done anything in three months. So regular practice of any kind to develop your art skills is really valuable. What I did with this sketch is I'm working on rough watercolor paper and this is in an Avara Custonette sketchbook and I'm putting down some color with a brush. I started at the very beginning blocking in some of the large dark areas and then I worked in my my pen and ink with the fluid writer and now I'm going back in with a damp brush to soften a few more areas because I didn't really know what I was going to do with them at the time but as the sketch developed I just had different ideas on how to approach things. This back section on the owl the photograph that I was working from had these big chunky sections of feathers and I was debating whether or not I wanted to go in and draw all those feathers or not and I started by grabbing the brush again and putting those big solid blocks of color out there and I loved how this looked. I did a quick spray with some water so let that color move a bit dried it all and then I could go back in with the pen again and add just a few more details I wanted to keep that section on the right very loose in contrast to the face because it will draw attention to the face but the contrast between that loose washy look and the fine detail was just kind of stellar so I really enjoyed this sketch but again a sketch is trying to draw a thing for a reason it's not like a doodle where you're just kind of playing around. The third one I want to talk about is art journaling and there's all different perspectives on what art journaling is I'm just going to tell you what mine is because I find that there's a lot of people who just think it's all about using up your extras supplies and putting them in a journal so that you can say you used it because you bought it and you better just use it on something and okay that's great if that's what you do with your art journal go for it if you're just practicing techniques that's great too because an art journal can be a great place to do that I call that a sketchbook whereas something like this book that I made for my gratitude junk journal class in November is one that has a very different flavor to it because the art in here doesn't matter and what I mean by that is the thing that matters when I am art journaling is what's going on with my thoughts and my feelings when I'm doodling I'm trying to turn my brain off entirely I'm not trying to think I'm specifically trying not to engage my brain at all when I'm drawing when I'm sketching that requires a little bit of thinking about how am I going to render this texture how am I going to create that color where are my darks and my lights and thinking about those artistic things when I'm working in an art journal I don't care about any of that I mean I am worrying a little bit about some of the puddles that we're collecting in my ink this is mineral paper and mineral paper takes longer to dry and I thought if I dabbed up some of those puddles that collected in some of the joints of the lines maybe it will dry a little faster it did dry quite nicely by the way just took a little bit longer than the alcohol inks that are underneath of it but when I'm doing my art journaling I'm thinking about what I'm going through in my life I'm thinking about my my problems the solutions the things I'm grateful for are really top of mine right now as we're working toward the holiday season toward Thanksgiving and this class is all about gratitude it it radically changed my thinking last November and if you want to participate in that class this year I do have a coupon code in the description down below you're welcome to use that until October 31st the class goes to full price after that because it starts on November 1st and runs all through the month and I'd love to see you in class because I I just want other people to experience a full month of creating while thinking about what you're grateful for and you'll get the perspectives of 12 different instructors on different things you can be thankful for so there's my thoughts on doodling versus sketching versus art journaling and I would love to know what your thoughts are do you participate in any of the three and if you do what does it do for you how does it make you feel and how do you feel when you're done do you feel better when you do any of the three leave a comment in the doobly-doo I'd love to chat about that and I'll see you in the next video