For the first…10 years of my art career, I was terrified of sketchbooks.

My illustrations and paintings are preceded by iterations and messes and for the longest time I felt ashamed about not being able to sit down and crank out perfect, effortless art.

A sketchbook felt like a catalog of failures.

For those first 10 years of building and growing my art business, through creating art prints and stationery for my now-retired Etsy shop, through creating illustrations for art licensing partners, even through my first two children’s books, I worked on loose sheets of paper.

You know what’s easy about working on loose sheets of paper? How easy it is to toss the “bad art” in the recycling bin.

Now it’s been almost 16 years since I started my art business and I sometimes feel sad over the loss of those loose sheets of messy iterations. Those sheets told the story of my growth as an artist and they were probably recycled into a cardboard box.

A few years ago, I finally started a regular sketchbook practice and slowly got used to having a record of my messes and iterations. These days I’m not ashamed that my art creation process takes time, that I rarely sit down and crank out perfect, effortless art.

This stack of sketchbooks is a record of my creative explorations and artistic growth.

I embrace my art mistakes and creative messes. How can I grow as an artist if I’m not open to mistakes and messes?

If you’re a perfectionist and sketchbook avoider like I was, are you also fearful of making mistakes? Do you avoid trying for fear of “getting it wrong?”

Today I invite you to not just get friendly with mistakes but to invite them!

And maybe stop calling them mistakes because if you learned something during the process is it even a mistake at all? Nope!

Naturally, getting over perfectionism isn’t an easy peasy done-in-a-day task. It’s something that you’ll probably work on for a long period of time. It’s also something that you might need extra help with, help from a therapist. We’re all wired differently and have had different life experiences that led to perfectionism, so how we learn to exist with perfectionism is likely different for each of us.

That said, here are a few ideas you can use to get friendly with making messes in your art practice:

Timed Art Sessions

Try quick, timed art sessions. Start with one, two, and five minute sessions because shorter sessions give you less time to waffle and stall.

My method for these sessions is to choose a reference photo, choose one or two materials in one or two colors, then set a timer and draw draw draw.

Sometimes these quick drawing sessions spark an idea that becomes something beautiful.

Here’s a video about my 5-minute sketchbook sessions:

Purposeful Messes

When I feel uptight in my art practice, when the perfectionist fear of making mistakes creeps back in, I make a mess on purpose.

Sometimes I’ll splash paint in my sketchbook and then smoosh the pages together.

Sometimes I’ll scribble and layer different colors and materials just to see what happens.

Sometimes I’ll paint right over a page that’s been troublesome and start something new when the paint dries.

Sometimes I’ll just paint a few pages of textures.

It doesn’t matter how you make the mess, just that you’ve giving yourself permission to make the mess.

Blind Contour Drawings

Here’s an example of a blind contour drawing from the Sketchbook Seeds class:

To make your own blind contour drawings, keep your eyes on your subject matter or reference photo and your drawing utensil in constant contact with your paper. No peeking at what your hand is doing on the page, ok?

The result will likely be wonky and weird. You might even giggle.

Focus on Learning

Here at Messy Sketchbook Club, we don’t believe in mistakes or bad art. There’s something to be learned from every art session, even (or especially!) when the work doesn’t go as intended.

One thing I like to do is make note of something I like about every piece of art I make, from the quickest sketch to the fanciest book illustration. It can be something small or something big, something about the finished sketch/art or something about the process.

Then I make note of something I’d like to do different next time. This is especially powerful when an art session didn’t go as expected. I try to uncover what didn’t work and then I ponder what other processes or materials I could try.

I don’t always follow through with trying those “well what else might work” ideas, but the simple act of coming up with those ideas helps me learn what I do and don’t like in my art and in my process.

There’s no shame in messes, iterations, and mistakes. Giving yourself permission to make mistakes in your art is how you will learn and grow as an artist.

Do you find that perfectionism stops you from making art? What’s one small step that can help you cozy up to messes and mistakes in your art practice? Comment and share if you feel comfortable doing so 🌷🌼🌻