Among all an artist’s tools, one stands as both door and mirror: the sketchbook. It is not merely an object. It is a landscape where ideas breathe, where mistakes become teachers, and where the hand learns to listen to the soul.
For years I believed a sketchbook had to be a gallery of small perfect pieces, and so I abandoned it again and again, intimidated by its whiteness. Until one day I understood: the sketchbook was not waiting for my perfection, but for my presence.
Since then, I treat it as a sacred altar — a space where I can stain, cross out, try, fail, and insist. A space where the line seeks not approval, but authenticity.
Choose a notebook that doesn’t intimidate you. One that is simple, with generous paper and a kind texture. Carry it with you like a small dream journal. And above all, allow yourself to make mistakes. Do not tear out the pages — within them lives your evolution. Every error hides a lesson, every clumsy line announces an awakening.
Make drawing a daily ritual: a moment to return to yourself. It doesn’t matter if you have ten minutes or an hour; what matters is the bond. Draw what you see, what you feel, what calls you. Draw what you don’t yet know how to name.
Experiment. Combine materials, shift scales, play with impossible colors. Always ask: What if…? That question is the seed of all creation.
Over time, your sketchbook becomes a map — the silent record of your transformation. There you’ll learn to see yourself, to recognize yourself, to trust the line that guides you.
Because when inhabited by the soul, the sketchbook ceases to be a notebook and becomes your diary of artistic evolution — a mirror that returns, day by day, the shape of your own voice.
