Author Archives: Jamie

Clutter Sketches: The Beginning

I first fell in love with clutter sketches due to Stephen Reddy’s work. He has a number of clutter sketches published in his books. It was love at first sight. Not only did I want to be able to draw like that, but I also felt such sketching would be a great way to handle my growing clutter problem in my own house.

Why might sketching the clutter help? Sketching is often like meditation, especially when the subject has so many lines. You create a new way of looking at and thusly thinking about what is in front of you. They say clutter blindness is a thing. I wouldn’t say I had blindness, as much as paralyzing overwhelm. My clutter erupted in a short period of time, born of grief, and depression. I call it pandemic clutter, because the profound losses that first year of pandemic, gave birth to it. I have yet to overcome the damages. I still believe sketching is an excellent way to cope, to change thinking, and grapple with the impossible. There are so many negative feelings trapped in each square inch of clutter.

My very first clutter sketch, which I drew right after seeing Stephen Reddy’s book and getting so inspired by his clutter sketches, was of my treacherous staircase. This sketch I did from a photo, in pen and ink, and ink wash, copying his technique for shading. Or at least trying to. Ha!

Drawn Christmas Day 2020.

I hated this sketch at the time, due my lack of skill with both lines and shading. Skills I STILL work on. At least I’ve learned now that they are skills that never finish developing.

Drawn 1 April 2021.

The next clutter sketch I attempted I also used inspiration from Paul Heston, who does these amazing room sketches, always including his own hands drawing. I used my iPad. I felt like I was cheating, but I really wanted to make clutter sketches, and felt my drawing skills were simply not up to the number of lines required, the proportions, any of it. So I put the photo into Procreate and drew the lines, basically tracing the photograph. This is what I ended up with. I loved it. Just the lines, simplifying the scene into basic black and white. I still use this approach today.

I just realized that’s a covid mask hanging on the doorknob. Woah. That stirs up some feelings!

After this I decided that before and after sketches would be a great way to document my efforts to declutter.

Drawn September 2021.

I had to scroll through nine months of photos to find when I took this photo, and did this sketch! I apparently need to add dates to the iPad sketches! I read the book Decluttering at the Speed of Life, and took her advice to start at the front door.

I have a few random clutter sketches, which have no dates. I believe they were all in that Autumn of 2021.

January 2024.

I found this third one, which I did in January of 2024.

The next big push for such clutter sketches was a year later, January 2025, when I participated in the All Day Declutter with Take Your House Back, which I wanted to document. I’ll share those in a future post, as I get them uploaded.

Illustrated Food Diary Week 28

The ink and watercolor drawing style definitely takes more time that looser and sketchier styles. However, I am enjoying focusing on the principles of design for these. Applying page design, and the various elements, to the same daily subject definitely helps see what these elements can do for design purposes.

I am continuing my way through the various options on the design page sampler I posted last week. The variety is very interesting, and I really like these pages. Each of these took between 30 to 60 minutes each.

Two Weeks of Everyday Sketching

Not much sketching in week 27, but then I began Sketchbook Design, making pages for the Intro Week exercises.

I really love this sketch! I used the Schminke Retro Cochineal Red to paint the peonies I’d purchased at the grocery store. I used a petal brush for the first time, and through some mystery of brush design, it really did make those amazing flowers so easy to paint! I painted this for the exercises for the Sketchbook Design course. Had left-over paint, so painted a color block a few pages later in the book, knowing that color blocks are an element we will do next week.

The record breaking heat (118F/48C!) brought some household drama, which I decided to document indirectly with a clutter sketch.

I rather like the wireframe look of these clutter sketches, so I generally leave them this way rather than adding wash or shading.

I turned to this pre-painted color block and the day happened to be the Full Moon. I’ve been including these collage items for the lunar phases this month, and it seemed the perfect fit! I added the date and weather and loved the open look of the page, the white space, and the color block so much I left this page as is. My usual style is fairly crowded, packing a lot onto each page, so this is definitely the kind of design style taking this class teaches me to embrace. I love this page!

Thursday was a big day between Prime Day and Age of Umbra. Lots of little sketches that are chaotic and/or not very good. I enjoy doing the portraits for Age of Umbra, but I do them on the fly while the livestream is playing so accuracy is not what happens! The goal is to document daily life.

Here is the gallery of the full pages for the last couple weeks.

Sketchbook Design 2025

My very favorite of all of the Sketching Now classes! I’m so excited to be starting this group run, and return to these lessons. Every time I go through this class, my sketchbook and sketching level up significantly. Every time!

This is the spread I used as my “Current Sketch” starting point for Intro Week.

Sketchbook Goals is exercise one, and since I seem to have a floral theme for this page most of the years I’ve taken this course, I painted the peonies I bought this week.

Handwriting Tips is the next lesson, and I’m not feeling like doing too much differently with my text these days, so I just kept my page simple, but focused on the overall design to match the other half of the page.

I had left over paint in my palette so I painted a simple color block later in the sketchbook, thinking that having this beautiful color show up again would create a flow within the sketchbook. It sure does!

Food Sketches Week 27

I finished volume 21 and decided I’d continue to sketch the food. To go along with the Sketching Now group run of Sketchbook Design I plan to focus on improving my page designs to make the pages more interesting.

When I took the Sketchbook Design course in January of 2022, I had collected a number of “recipes” for this size sketchbook, specifically with the intent of using for food sketches. These were drawn from Liz’s food diary pages, which was my original inspiration for how I wanted to keep an illustrated food diary.

Everyday Sketching Week 26

These hot summer days are slowing me down significantly! I’m continuing with the food sketches, but not much else. Likely because I’m not really leaving the house for anything but grocery shopping, and I keep forgetting to bring my sketchbook for that. But watching shows gives a good opportunity to try some quick portraits.

This week’s food sketches:

Everyday Sketching 2025 Week 25

The temperatures heat up, and we are under Extreme Heat Advisories, and Air Quality Alerts, so I’m staying inside. Consequently not sketching nearly as much as I’d like. Happy Summer Solstice! Here is a little map I drew from a game I’m playing.

Food sketches for the week. Since the subject matter is so repetitive, I’m working on varying the methods.

Everyday Sketching 2025 Week 24

Doom scrolling this week, so not much sketching. Trying ways to capture events. I used abstracts and attempted some portraits. I like the abstracts I made with stencils and watercolor.

I color tested some new paints. I had to find out what the Warm Yellow Light and Naples Yellow Reddish looked like when I saw them online. Then I had to find out how they compare to Jaune Brilliant, which they resembled strongly. My obsession with sepia continues so I color tested these three tubes.

Food Sketches Weeks 22 to 24

The first two weeks of this challenge has proven interesting. It is a big effort to sketch every meal, every day, and I’m definitely learning a lot about not only sketching in faster ways, but in managing time so it fits.

After the first ink and wash sketch took 3 hours for the day, I realized I need a much faster approach to sketching these if I’m going to be able to sustain the project daily. However, I noted in past food sketchbooks, I get a bit bored of it, so this time I thought I’d vary my techniques and tools from day to day, and that might keep things from getting too boring. A couple weeks in I’m already thinking this is a bit too much of a time commitment, but I need to finish the sketchbook at the very least!

The fastest method by far is paint only, shapes only. I do love this style of sketching, and that’s what I’d default to when busy in the past, so I have whole food sketchbooks full of that style. I look forward to continuing, and focusing a bit more on page design to see if I can do interesting things that way, too.