sketchingnowsketchbookdesign – Jamie's Sketchbook

SBD Before

I went through and looked up all the times I’ve taken, or partially taken, Sketchbook Design. Every class with Liz Steel begins with posting one’s current sketch. A sample of where their style and skills are before beginning the course. I was curious what had I posted before each run, and it always is so interesting to look back and review.

Sketchbook spreads with watercolor of yard on one page and pen and ink sketch of cluttered staircase on the other. Dated 31 Dec 2020

Sketchbook spread with handwritten notes and painted greyscale ocean waves.

These are from the years 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

This year, it seems I’ve mostly just made pages with weather cards on them, so that is most definitely my “current” style of page!

This is also one of those unfinished pages from my previous entry. Obviously another week passed, so I added yet more date and weather cards. Then I decided it was a good page to finish off by documenting this year’s planner season, and Hobonichi purchasing. Just like that, it’s a page about current life!

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!