Hello friends!

As a freelance artist and Etsy seller, my personal sketchbook usually takes a backseat. Most of my best pieces are the ones I sell or paint as custom commissions. The rough sketches and pieces I’m least proud of are in a notepad dedicated to art planning.

My personal sketchbook falls somewhere in between. It’s full of failed experiments as well as successful new ideas, unexpected masterpieces plus some… interesting random doodles. It’s a place for play. But you know what? Whether art is your job or your hobby, “playing” is an important part of improving your skills while keeping it fresh and fun.

So today I want to show you all the sketchbook spreads I’ve completed this year – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Check out my art Instagram account @thecolorboxstudio and my Etsy shop for pieces I’m proud of, but I thought it might be interesting to share a “behind the scenes” view here. 🙂 Enjoy!

We’ll start with cute mushrooms! I turned this into a cottagecore case for my phone. The second piece is from a fun watercolor doodle idea where you outline the different colors in pen.

More outlined watercolor doodles and a bit of play with my long-forgotten watercolor crayons.

Slightly terrifying but fun-to-make continuous line portraits, and a happy li’l watercolor crayon kitty.

I wanted to try outlining watercolor with gold Sharpie, but it didn’t turn out as special as I hoped. When I’m not sure what to paint, I love making floral patterns! This one is on top of green paint leftover from another project. I plopped it on the page before it dried out and added to it later.

I tested my imagination and drew a dog without a reference. It turned out okay but not spectacular. I’m best with a reference for anything complicated, haha. On the right we have two cheerful gouache paintings with (surprise!) a floral theme.

This page depresses me for three reasons. 1) I finally figured out how to paint roses and they looked so good, until I messed them up. 2) So it doesn’t look great now. 3) Plus the pages stick together so there’s little ripped parts all over. Ah well. You win some, you lose some.

The left is another leftover paint spread. It looked boring, and then awful, and then eh, okay. I kept adding to it with different mediums like oil pastels and colored pencils, which improved it slightly. I love the second piece though! A simple but lovely gouache coastal landscape. The colors are so airy and classy.

A very busy, very time-consuming spread of odd doodles. 😛 The pen one took several days to complete. The second page is I believe colored pencil and watercolor. I took some of my favorite doodles from the left page and redrew + colored them on the right. Can you find them all?

*sigh* I was attempting to paint water but nope, I’m just not good at that subject. I have a pretty, blue spread now though!

This is one of my favorite spreads I’ve ever made. 🙂 I LOVE how both of these paintings turned out. Not surprisingly, I spent quite a bit more time on these than most other pages in this sketchbook. They’re both gouache landscapes and ahh the color palettes and lighting feel so peaceful and aesthetic.

Two more in the same series of gouache landscapes I’m really proud of. These were both painted from my own reference pictures, which is always fun. Doesn’t the second one have a Ghibli feel to it?

I was having so much fun with sheep at this point that I made a whole sketchbook-doodle-page of them. The strawberry was a piece I made on vacation. Not my best drawing of a strawberry, but it’s not too bad for only a waterbrush and white gel pen.

More vacation doodles. 🙂

And even more. Can you tell we were at a Disney resort by the beach? 😛 (You can read about the vacation here.) The ocean painting wasn’t my favorite – you would hope, since I ruined it with the next page’s art!

More strawberries, this time with Sharpies and a white gel pen. These were a lot of fun to make. I tried another gouache landscape but only gave it a halfhearted attempt at realism which… well, this is what happened. I don’t hate it, it’s just not on par with the other landscapes earlier in the book.

I taped in a ten-minute study of from a book of portraits by the Master’s. Kinda eh, but it WAS only ten minutes. The second page was me practicing elements for a logo design.

I ended up using the more refined florals on this page for the final design. The second page contains two black-and-white gouache pieces I submitted to my sister’s amazing magazine, Cut + Paste. If you’re an artist or photographer, definitely check it out!

A little sketch for a graphic design commission that I later added watercolor to just for fun. Plus some adorable animals!

Yet another floral pattern, haha. This was made with leftover acrylic paint and Posca pens, as was the citrus pattern on the opposite side.

This is currently the last painted spread in my sketchbook and it’s only half finished. I was sent a beautiful watercolor palette from Peerless Watercolors and had so much fun swatching the vibrant colors.

There you go! That’s it… so far! I’m sure I’ll make another post in the future when I fill this sketchbook completely. 🙂

Which piece(s) did you like best? What is your favorite thing to paint?

Thanks so much for reading, my friends, and have a lovely day!

***Allison***

P. S. This sketchbook is Arteza’s mixed media pad which works really well for watercolor, gouache, and acrylic. (Click here for an affiliate link.)