a few years ago, there was a art challenge going around on youtube called sketchbook
slam. it was started by holly brown, and the rules were to purchase a 600 page sketchbook,
and you fill that sketchbook within a month. the result was that artists were dividing
the book by 20 pages per day, depending on which month you were doing this, i guess,
and so artists all over youtube were drawing 20 pages worth of sketches every single day, and it
looked like torture but it also looked really fun. at the time, i was working 40 hours a week, doing
two videos per week, and my regular art, and it just was not a thing that i could reasonably do,
so i didn't do it and it stuck in my mind for a long time. part of me was itching to try it,
but i knew that i couldn't really do it. holly brown did come back to condemn the challenge,
that it wasn't healthy, and i have to agree with that. i think everyone who actually did the
challenge agreed with that. and so when i decided to do this, i changed the challenge. first of all,
i'm using a sketchbook that i made myself, because i wanted to actually like the sketchbook that i
was working in and i wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to fall apart on me. but because of
the sheets of the paper that i was working with, my book is technically slightly smaller than the
official sketchbook used in this challenge. mine, i think it's 9x12", and the downside to using the
manila paper is that it is very rough, and drawing for hours and hours is kind of uncomfortable.
if you want to see how i made that book, there is a video link in the description. another way that
i changed this challenge is that i decided to not do it every day. i decided to commit one day per
week where i would sit down and do it. that is completely and utterly unfair to the people who
did this challenge a few years ago. however, i did make sure to keep the original 20 plus pages per
day guideline, so i did get to experience the misery of sitting there for eight hours or so
drawing stuff long after the feeling of drawing has gone. so while i did have the advantage
of planning an entire day to spend on this instead of trying to cram it in my schedule,
suffering has been had, i assure you. the things i really like about this art challenge is that one,
it allows you to loosen up. when you're creating 20 pages a day of whatever,
if you're a perfectionist, this really forces you to create stuff that does not satisfy you
and it opens you up to using ideas that you would normally discard right away. it also expands your
horizon because you become so desperate for ideas for what to draw that you're open to pretty much
anything. it also provides you an opportunity to actually master a thing. if you have a theme
for 20 whole pages in your sketchbook, you're going to get really good at drawing that thing,
where most of us, we try drawing something once or twice and then we put it away and don't really
learn anything from it. like most art challenges, this one also encourages you to form a habit of
drawing. in the beginning of this challenge, it did make me more excited to continue. the
desperation for filling 20 pages also gives me an excuse and a place to work out those
storytelling projects: making thumbnails for comics, or working out scenes, or writing stories.
it is a sketchbook, but i also use my sketchbooks to write down and collect ideas for future
projects. it's something that i always put off for the someday, the one day. i otherwise would
have just never gotten to it. one thing that is a pro and a con for this project is portability.
in my case, it was a pro because the way that i bind my books, i can just cut one of the threads
and pull out a stack of signatures, which i was then able to clip to a clipboard and take with
me anywhere. i wouldn't be able to do that if i was using the original hardbound sketchbook.
other things that i did not like about this: first of all, like most other people have said,
there is just not enough time to do a good job or finish anything really. if i like the way a
sketch was going, i couldn't expand on it to make it look nice. these are not fully formed sketches,
these are really messy sketches. on one hand, it's kind of good, because sketchbooks are for that,
but i did find it really frustrating. and so it's harder to learn from mistakes because i couldn't
fix them. at the end of the challenge, it did feel like something that i needed to dread. i would
super not recommend doing it for 30 consecutive days. and there wasn't really much room for
creativity because creativity requires time time to think, time to come up with something. it was
more efficient to just copy and paste. drawing directly from a reference, whether it
was a picture or in real life, was a must during this project. and that's the worst part about this
project, is that in order to have enough things to draw accurately, i was using a lot of references,
which meant that i had to go out and use photos that were not mine. and when you use photos
that don't belong to you, you're running into copyright infringement. so my whole sketchbook
is pretty much a lot of pictures of people on pinterest that don't belong to me, and i cannot
go back and refer to these drawings in future artwork, really. who is this project for?
so a lot of the benefits to this which was loosening up, forming a habit of drawing,
expanding your horizon. to be able to fill 20 pages in a sketchbook and benefit from that,
you'd already have to be at a pretty high rate of efficiency, have a habit of productivity, i
think personally. so who this project would not be for as a result is going to be beginners. i don't
think someone who is starting out drawing should do this. i think it would just cause a lot of
burnout and a lot of disappointment in what you're producing. i just honestly cannot imagine going
from back when i was making one painting a month to drawing 20 pages a day. it was okay
for me because i have been making art and doing art stuff for many hours a day for a while, so
it wasn't that big of a stretch for me. and it definitely isn't for busy people
who have an actual life, who have an actual job. i would not ever consider doing this project on
days where i was already out of the house for most of the day doing work. trying to squeeze this in
would do horrible harm to your sleeping patterns, i think, and you would abandon your home life
and your friends, especially if you're doing it every day. even if i was doing it one day a week
while i was doing 40 hours a week, i would be miserable. this project is definitely something
that would be fun for a student who has the summer off and just really wanted to have something to
do while they're passing the time and all their friends are unavailable. i wish i had this project
when i was in high school, is what i'm saying. and i guess that's technically it. if you are
watching this video, it means that i have actually completed this entire sketchbook! and so next
week, i will be posting a very long probably flip through of this sketchbook, and if i have anything
else to add about my experience with this, and also my general approach to completing this,
i will put in that video. so let me know in the comments if you have tried this
challenge, how it went for you! thanks for subscribing, and i will see you next time.