Note: this is the first sketchbook out of a series of 4, you can see the other sketchbooks here

My first sketchbook was filled with black paper so I decide to do a space theme with it. Here are all the pages:

Page 1: The sunset inspired collage. I don’t actually like this one much, but that’s okay. The upside of starting with a bad art is that the pressure is off for the rest of the book, there’s already at least one bad art. If they were all great then with every page I’d be like “is this the one where I fuck it all up?”

Page 2: I divided the page up with wiggly lines then I tried to fill each section with a different space-themed pattern using white and silver pens. It was really hard to come up with new ideas towards the end, but I like that I rose to the challenge and came up with more ideas.

Page 3: A spirally pattern made with paint pens. It’s simple, but I really like how it turned out.

Page 4: I made a swirly pattern using metallic acrylic inks. The inking really got away from me and what was meant to be a simple spiral because a massive puddle (and I accidentally spilled some on the table, whoops D: ). I didn’t like how that layer looked, but then I used a black paint pen to draw a planet and some stars and that bold contrast really works.

Page 5: A simple shooting star.

Page 6: I used watercolours to make a foggy spacey background, then did a collage of Saturn on top. I made the collage by using a massive hole punch to cut circles in various patterned papers my friend had made, then I used a craft knife to cut them into squiggly slices. I didn’t have any idea if that would turn out well at the time, but I am really happy with this one.

Page 7: Another flop page, I drew stars and dots and swirls with neon coloured paint pens. bleh

Page 8: A kinda constellation inspired drawing. Space deer. I like Space deer. Drawn with a white paint pen.

Page 9: Another white paint pen drawing of a multi-ringed planet.

Page 10: I really like this one. Graphite on black paper, creating this barely-there ghost of an image of a ringed planet. Very satisfying

Page 11: The start of a series of paintings of a character I made up years ago. He’s a guy who rows a boat through space. That’s about all there is to him. I love him.

Pages 12 & 13 (double page spread): more cool space paintings, with a tiny lil guy in his boat.

Page 14: One more of my guy, this time rowing around a red planet

Page 15: A shooting star, but much more dynamic than the last one. I love this one! It’s a coloured pencil drawing

Page 16: Another coloured pencil drawing, another shooting star based on an actual photo of a shooting star.

Page 17: Yet another coloured pencil drawing, but this time it’s Jupiter. I like how this turned out and I find the bold white lines and text to be fun and whimsical.

Page 18: Final coloured pencil drawing, a galaxy this time.

Page 19: Another flop. Used paint sticks and paint pens to do a starry sky. Meh.

Page 20 & 21: Cosmic butterfly! made by making the shape of the wings with acrylic ink on one side, then closing the book to print it onto the other side. Love this.

Page 22: A galaxy made with the paint sticks. a ?space dove? over the top drawn with paint pen.

Page 23: A big star made with paint pens and paint sticks. Glowy.

Page 24: A sunrise, made with paint stick and collage.

I like how I made a incidental narrative with this book. The cover is all sunsety, the fist page shows a sunset, then the next pages are all night sky and space themed. So the final page is a sunrise, then you close the book and see all those sky colours again as the sunrise too. At times I found this book very challenging as it forced me to come up with new ideas again and again. The paper was also a challenge. I wanted to explore lots of different mediums but each one has to be suited to the paper it is on. The card could handle quite a bit of mixed media, and the watercolour paper was very strong and thick and could take anything. The pages that were just regular black paper, they were difficult. I ended up mostly doing coloured pencil on them as that is the main thing they could handle.

Overall, I am very pleased with this sketchbook.