 Well, hello and welcome to today's video. It's a little bit different. This video is not what I normally talk about on this channel, but don't panic. It's absolutely related. So if you're a regular here, you'll know that I talk all things are business related. So whether that's building your business plan, your marketing, your social media, how to make sales, all of those good things, those videos are all here, right here on this channel. Now, it's been a little bit of a while since I made a video. Why? My daughter got married in Europe for a couple of months. My daughter got married not once, but twice. That's a whole other story. Want to know that? Hit me up on Instagram and I'll tell you. Super exciting, amazing time and also very, very inspiring. And I made a commitment before I went away that I wanted to start a sketchbook practice. Now for those of you who regularly do this, you will totally understand the benefits of a regular sketchbook practice. But for those of you who don't yet do that, then hang on because I'm going to show you exactly what can happen in a very short period of time to your own artwork. So I don't particularly like much of this sketchbook because another reason why I'm doing the walkthrough and I'm going to share it with you, because I want to share with you not just the nice lovely things that have been made at the end, but the raw and real process, the everyday process of being a working artist. Now, in my previous part of my art career and I've painted really large semi-abstract canvases I've not really used a sketchbook. I've maybe sketched out some ideas, some composition, tried some colours, but I've not actually built a daily sketchbook practice. I took a lot of reference photos and then I compiled a composition from there and then worked on the canvas and took it where it needed to go. But I've decided to completely change what I'm doing and I actually want to start working small. I want to start working, I'm working with mixed media, whether that's paints, pencils, pastels, a mixture of things together and I'm super excited and I haven't felt in this amount of flow, artistic creative flow for a really long time and it all stemmed from the commitment to start this sketchbook practice. So in this video, I'm going to walk you through the sketchbook, why I hate a lot of the pages, what I learned from some of them and what happened at the end. Now if you really love the idea of the sketchbook walkthroughs, you want a little bit more behind the scenes, what materials I'm using, my process, perhaps you'd even like to watch me actually draw something live, then let me know if you'd like to see more of those videos in the comments below this one. All right, let's take a look at that sketchbook now. Okay, so here we are in the sketchbook. It's a lovely sea white sketchbook actually, sea white to brighten. I don't know, even though I live the other side of the world, they are still my favourite sketchbooks. And here we are, this is the first one that I've completed, the first of many I just know. There's around me a few materials that I took with me to Europe. So pencil case with some pens, rubber, pencil sharpener, a few brushes and the odd pencil, including one of these art line drawing systems. I've got quite a few of those, but inevitably you just use the one, don't you? And then some paint brushes again, just to use with the gouache set that I had with me, a little tiny, actually some of them exploded on the plane. So note to self, make sure they are actually not in your hand luggage next time you fly, Sophie. So there's my favourite at the moment, a Holbein Artist gouache. I really love them, but as you can see, there's not much of them left already. And then the thing, actually probably my favourite bit of the trip that I picked up actually in Rome was this lovely kind of leather look holder for all my tombo pens. And I've got mostly tombo markers, but I've got the odd other one masquerading in there as the real thing. So I've got a bit of a rainbow thing. Obviously when I left, they didn't have quite as many since I came back. I've definitely added in and I'm pretty tempted to get the entire box set. I'm absolutely in love with them and you'll probably see why in the sketchbook. So bearing in mind I hadn't sketched probably for, I don't know, many, many years. I decided just to go in very, very loose, very, very casual, not really kind of thinking too much about it or getting caught up in it. This is back in Brighton in the UK where I landed first. So just a really quick backstreet kind of, just a few marks and then tables, chairs in a Mexican restaurant, just very typical Brighton colours. Then a sort of the lanes famous for little shops, boutiques and these flags. So again, you know, there's a mess here. There's no real distinction for light and dark. I just wanted to get going. I just wanted to get something on paper. And then the famous Brighton seafront. Again, very, very quick sketches. So this was all with the Tombow markers, which were quite heavy. And then a little bit of pencil over the top, I think, just to kind of give it a little bit of something. Then this was done on the train over to see my friend in Wales. So obviously a little bit tricky out of the window, trying to get a tree, trying to get the shape of the buildings that we passed. And I decided that I was probably not quite ready for that task. But I definitely put some colour in, I think, after the fact just to give them something. And then my very first plain air drawing. I actually hate it now. It's funny, isn't it, when we look at it after the fact. But I sat in the park with my marker pens and the book very conscious that people were looking that I was drawing. And so this was just an element of the park. Not my favourite thing. I definitely would attack it in a different way now. But that's part of the learning. And I want you to realise that if this is you relating to a sketchbook like that, it's about the doing. It's about the practice. You'll see by the end, just from one sketchbook, the difference between these pretty awful sketches and what I'm doing at the end. Probably this one was one of my favourites that was in a wood in Wales, now where my friend lived, because it had a bit more light and dark in it. This one again just looks like a mess, but I tried a few different things. And then this is my least favourite in the entire book. Probably if I could have glued the pages together, I would have done. It's just a hot mess, right? All this just same tone stuff going on. Again, little cafe by a stream. It was all just grass and trees. And I just overworked it. So great learning. You know, I definitely wouldn't be doing that again. A few flowers that were in her gardens and fox gloves. It didn't really complete on this page, but that's okay, right? Because it's a sketchbook. Then here we are in North Wales. This was actually done at the campsite that we stayed in that we took a little mini weekend trip in her camper van. And so this was Black Rock, Black Rock sand somewhere in Northern Wales. And I really liked this because it was much more immediate, different marks. I used a bit of Posca pen over the top there, some markers, and maybe even some paint in there, some of the gouache paint. And I loved that. For me, that was much freer and much more in the direction that perhaps I wanted to take. This was super quick castle. Just got down the basics. I think we were in a car park. And again, just moved on. So here was a little village in Wales with a funny bridge. Definitely didn't get that right. I was probably going to redo it on that side, but it was really, it was a place I could have stayed probably for a long time and done a lot of sketches. There were lots of different elements, which I liked. But again, Posca markers and a few pencils over the top. I did take some pencils with me. I haven't got those around me at the moment to show you. And then I moved over to Suffolk, the other side of the UK, and started drawing this with pencil. And it started to rain when I was in, this was a garden centre. It started to rain as I fiddled around with this, got into way too much detail. And then after the fact, I started working back in with the markers, and then a bit of bigger marker over the top. Not again, not my favourite piece at all, much too much detail in there for my liking. And then Mount Snowden, again, National Park in Wales. Again, much looser, much quicker. Got those markers and a few pencils. And I think that's got more atmosphere and I like the mark making in that. Then I moved on to my favourite place where I spent most of my childhood, and that's Albra Beach on the East Coast. And it's been a place where I've been inspired for all my previous artwork, in fact. And I was in a gallery just up the road from here. So this feels like home. I love the colours of the buildings. And it's something that I've previously sketched and painted a lot. And I realise it's totally not what I want to do anymore. I'm completely moving away from that. So I just really indulged in kind of just doing this maybe for the last time. Some colours, some pen. There's another one, I think, in the same vein. Just again, super loose. I used a little one of these pens. And just one colour marker. And I like this because it's just much simpler, right? There's white space. There's just a couple of colours going on. I don't like the fact that's in the middle. But there we go. And then again, a few more of the buildings and the sea front in Albra, as you can see, it looked like it was going to rain. Really enjoyed doing this. All the old wooden fishing boats, the fishing huts along the shore and their fabulous buildings. It was poppy season, so had to definitely get the grip on the poppies. This was just a quick sketch of the poppy field and one of the poppies. Just done in marker. Really enjoyed that. So then there's a bit of a leap and I'm going to backtrack in the book. At this point, it became too chaotic to try and actually get things done on the day. So I just photographed and I painted back once I got home. So this was part of the wedding venue where my daughter got married just outside of Bordeaux. Very quick kind of painting of the main house. There were quite a few buildings there, some of which. And again, that was the main house from a different angle. Just super quick marker pen, a bit of line going in there. And then here we have it from another angle again. And then now we're backtracking because before Bordeaux was Paris. And for me, Paris was all about the cafes and the people. I never draw people. So this was totally out of comfort zone. But again, drawing back after the fact. So I just wanted to get some simple lines of the people sitting in the cafes. And then again, here definitely didn't get around to finishing that. That definitely doesn't work from a colour perspective. But I've just enjoyed going in and getting some figures in there. I think this was one of my favourite pages. And I remember taking the photo of this from, I think we were on a bus and just taking the photo down with the yellow umbrellas and then the red cafe next to us. I'm definitely going to be painting that at some point. And again, scribbly, scribbly people in there. Another, another corner cafe in Paris. Again, just marker pen, super quick, super easy, probably like five, six minutes. And then there was the main gardens in Paris. Again, just some pencil through there and marker pen. Just wanted to get a sense of the lines of the trees that were in there. Tried to imagine that Monet was sat there, actually, just doing it. And maybe the Impressionists were just dotted around having a great time in Paris. And this was another street. Didn't like this. This was the colour. I didn't like the colour way this was working out. I think I abandoned it. I just didn't like the colours. Now I think I would go back in and just keep on working on it. It was very quick. And it's not really complete, which is probably why I don't like it so much. Really like this one. And again, I think it's the white space, the fact that I've just kept the colours very simple. We walked through here quite a few times to our hotel and the little cafes and places to eat and drink along there. It was super pretty. This is back in Bordeaux now. So after Paris came Bordeaux just before the wedding. This was just a street. Again, thought it was more kind of vibrant colours. And then this was the main very, very quick sketch just with the marker pens of the main square in Bordeaux with the cathedral here. As you can see, it wasn't going to even attempt that. And then here we are at Chalac. This is the village where the the chateau was that the wedding took place. And this was kind of what we called the castle on the hill that we saw from a distance. And if you drove past it, this is what you saw. So I really enjoyed doing that. And I've actually done that in A3. I really enjoyed just the little cows and the buildings and the grass and so forth. This was it from actually I think pretty much the view from the wedding venue where they were making the hay bales. And there were sunflowers everywhere. Oh, there we go. There were sunflowers everywhere because we were there in sunflower season. And then here's one of the other buildings where some of the people stayed. There are about 30 of us there. Just immediate friends and family. It was just a beautiful, totally romantic wedding. What a gorgeous venue to have the wedding at. This was another one of the buildings at the wedding venue. I don't think we ever went in that one actually. I think the pool was on the other side of that. And then here was another that were, I don't know, one, two, three, about four different buildings on amazing venue. And this was the attempt at my daughter's bouquet of flowers. I didn't have the pinks. I didn't have the right colors to finish it off. But at some point I will no doubt paint it and do it up properly for her. And this is back in Bordeaux again. So another sort of street scene, cafes, trees. Really enjoyed that sort of sense of perspective a little bit there. It's getting a little bit more confident at this point, as you can see. And then on to Rome, one of my favorite cities in the world for sure. And again, just very simple markers and a few fine liners just to give it a bit of detail. And round the back of the Coliseum. This is just done with gouache. And I really like the way that came out. So I just kind of left it as it was. I've subsequently kind of played with the perspective and I've done a larger piece with this scene. Just the Coliseum. There it is with markers. I find that's quite harsh, not in love with that particularly. But it was certainly good fun. I'd taken a wide angle kind of picture and it was quite fun drawing that up. And then this one is definitely not finished. But again, I thought it's quite sort of impressionistic just with the paints. I'd started with the fine liner and then I thought, no, I'm going to start. It's going to become more of a finished piece than a sketch. So I just left it B. And then there's a gorgeous square with this statue in the middle. I should have actually written down who it is on top of there. I feel really embarrassed that I don't know that. But I really love the way the buildings just peeked underneath the trees there. And then this is in the funky area of Rome where we'd go and great place to have dinner. If you've not been to Rome, then Trastevere is definitely the area to go in the evenings. But again, busy cafes down these narrow streets, very funky. And this was one of the last shots that we took before I was actually on the return to Rome before we flew back. And I just love all the trees. I actually just want to do a tree study from Rome. They're just very, very iconic trees. And so I just thought of a big sweeping scene across there. But again, didn't have the right color marker pen for that particularly. And then I thought I would just pay homage to the trees. And I really love this. And I don't quite know what it is, the simplicity, the fact that it's just been gouache wash underneath and some pencils on top. Probably going to paint this up into a bigger piece. I really, really love that. All right, and that's that's the back of the book. And I think you'll probably agree that these ones compared to what I was doing at the beginning is a huge look at those. And now you look back here, just from one sketchbook, that's the sort of improvement that you can see. So I highly recommend the drawing every day painting every day. These can be 15 minutes maximum 15 minutes of your day, just to work on your sketchbook. And I've subsequently started a second one that I'll give you a sneak peek at actually, over here, same book, see, see white again. And this is part two where we go into Sicily. So look at the difference. I've decided I like the way of laying out the page a bit more differently. I like to reference the colors I've used. And this was great. Actually, we had fond memories of this place because we all got parking tickets. It was huge fun. And this was the Valley of the Temples. This was literally day one in Sicily. And that's one of our, a member of the family walking casually walking through there with her water bottle. And then that was Ragusa. That was our first night after hours and hours and hours of driving down dodgy roads. And that was the view out. And again, I've just decided to keep it super simple. Nothing fussy going on, just a few lines of color. And again, I'll probably work that up into something bigger with a bit more detail in it. Big difference there to here. And that's just from one sketchbook. So if you don't, if you're not doing a sketchbook practice currently, I highly, highly recommend that you do. Alright, so welcome back. I really hope you enjoyed the flick through of this one and the little sneak peek into this one too. I have one more that I'm doing as well. Let me, I wasn't prepared for this. Let me just show you it's right here. Actually, just while I was waiting for it to get a little bit quieter outside, I just put down some color on another one. I went away on a weekend away just a few weeks ago. A bit greedy really all this traveling, but I kind of love it. And I started again with Marcus being very, very loose and did a few sketches of Calabari up north. And I started to do some shell references. And you can see the inspiration for book number two as I started to lay things out a little bit differently. So that's my least favorite so far. Let's kind of have some of those. That's probably my favorite page and spread so far just because of the way I've laid it out. I've really enjoyed and I took a lot longer to do those as well. And then there was the driveway in to the park. I did that on a double page. And then some of the wild flowers. Now I don't normally paint flowers or anything like that, but I find that I'm getting more and more inspired by greenery and marks for flowers, not necessarily in detail, but there's something there that's going to come into the future work. And then just while I was waiting for the traffic to quiet down, I just started working on the window that we went and took lots of photographs of ourselves inside, of course, that has to be done in Calabari National Park. Well, that's it for this video. And if you've loved this idea, and you really would like to see more videos of my process and my journey and my new part of my art career, then don't forget to leave me a comment below and say I want more videos like this. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you on the next one.