The Beauty and Glory of a Sketchbook

Creativity works best in containers. Guardrails. A safe space to just be.

Contrary to what we’ve been taught, creativity doesn’t thrive in chaos. It flourishes when it’s cared for like a little kid – with consistency, healthy habits, disciplined action, and sustained momentum.

Each medium asks for its own vessel. A canvas for the painter. A block of stone for the sculptor. A thousand words for the writer.

For me, it’s always been the sketchbook.

Like so many things I’ve shared with you here, I’ve been filling sketchbooks for as long as I can remember. Journals, scrapbooks, tiny made-up worlds. I’ve dreamed and grieved and played inside the safety of their pages.

It wasn’t until around 2015 that I began to feel the pull toward illustration, just for the joy of it. Since then, I’ve treated my sketchbooks with a different kind of reverence. And now that I’m returning to my center (a slow shift from design to art – more on that in my coming clean essay, they’ve become little time capsules. Hints from past-me. Echoes of what she was trying to reach.

So here it is. At the risk of vulnerability, I’m sharing the insides of one of my sketchbooks. It took me around five years to fill.

I sketch with no purpose other than to express whatever wants to come through in that moment.

Some people call them downloads. I say the muse visits, we sit together, and I listen. Then I reach for pencil and paper, and we begin.

I say we because I never feel alone when I’m making art.

It’s me, the muse, and the unfolding of a small world as pencil meets paper.

Looking back now, I see how this sketchbook held me through some of the hardest chapters of my life. Through the tears I couldn’t stop. Through the moments that made no sense, except on the page.

It gives me chills, how art helps us process what life cannot explain. How we humans have the gift of marking time with lines and color and feeling.

And now, it’s showing me this too: That maybe part of my work, my calling, is to express myself freely and out loud, so that you might feel the permission to do the same.

Even if these pages feel like light years ago to me, maybe they’re right on time for you. That would be my greatest hope. To shake something loose. To spark a little fire.

Freeform. Freestyle. No pressure. No audience. Just the joy of making something. Anything.

And yes, maybe I make pretty doodles. But maybe it’s also an invitation to give yourself the same freedom. To express, to process, to explore.. inside the safety of your own sketchbook.

So tell me, do you keep one too? :)

With heart,

Irlanda

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