It's taken me 18 months, but I finally did it!

Now, most people won't see this as a big deal, because others probably do this quicker than I've done, but for me personally this was a pretty big, and a very proud moment. I've talked before, and especially recently about how I can never finish anything, so when I got this sketchbook last year my main goal for it was to fill it. I started off with other ideas about when I wanted to have it filled by and what content I wanted to be in it, but in the end I knew that I just wanted to fill it, it didn't matter when I just wanted to finish what I started. I also intended for this to be my 'personal' sketchbook, a sketchbook that I could draw in with no worries about anyone else seeing it because I wasn't planning on sharing it with even those closest to me. Admittedly, I did share some of the illustrations online but I'd say only about 30% of it.

Initially I did just start out sketching parts of images that I liked to build up some references which I could use in the future and also look back on to inspire new illustrations.

What made this really hard for me initially is that, although it sounds stupid to some and extremely relatable to others, I hate doing bad drawings. As I said I was given this last year, it was given to me as a present and it's a Hobbit Moleskine, so it's a super nice sketchbook and one that I really treasure so the thought of creating a bad drawing it it horrified me. So I now had two big, and specific goals - to fill the sketchbook, and to not rub out any bad drawings even if I hated them and I felt like they 'spoiled' the sketchbook. These were big, difficult goals for me because they're things I battle with everyday, but the big and painful goals are the ones that give you the greatest reward. These are some of the ones I was not so happy with, but I pushed on and finished them anyway because I think that finishing them is really important or else you'll just keep restarting new ones.

So seeing as I've now finished up this sketchbook, I thought I would share some illustrations on here from inside. Some of these are some of my favourites and the ones I'm really proud of, and the others and the ones that I'm not so happy with that make me confused as to whether to laugh or cry at them. I thought I'd share them anyway just to show that behind every good drawing there are a ton of horrible ones, and that applies to most artists, not just me!

I think what I'm going to do now is order myself a new moleskine and definitely keep this next one to myself, it's a really good exercise because the more you draw in it, the less pressured you feel to draw something that will impress anyone. Here's some of my favourites from this sketchbook too..

I hope you enjoyed this post and see that we all have bad drawings, but they're not failures because you'll always learn something from them for the next sketch.