“My Sketchbook Has to Be Perfect”: Expectation vs. Reality (and Why Page 37 Still Matters)

When you picture a “real” artist’s sketchbook, what comes to mind?

If your brain flashes to those gorgeous viral videos with immaculate botanical drawings, watercolor spreads worthy of framing, and elegant calligraphy notes labeling every specimen, you’re not alone. The pressure to maintain a pristine, gallery-ready sketchbook has taken root in the minds of many aspiring and self-taught artists, especially women who’ve been conditioned to aim for perfection in all they do.

But here’s the truth:

Most working artists have pages full of smudges, false starts, doodles drawn during meetings, and yes, doodles with eyes next to coffee stains.

And those pages count just as much as the perfect ones.

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Let’s dismantle this myth together. Here’s why embracing the imperfect sketchbook is one of the most powerful things you can do for your creative growth, and how legendary women artists and contemporary female creators have led the way by doing exactly that.

🎨 The Problem With “Perfect” Sketchbooks

A sketchbook should be a private playground: a place for raw, messy experimentation, not a curated portfolio. But thanks to social media, we’ve begun to see them as public documents of mastery. This shift turns a tool for growth into a performance space. It silences exploration in favor of appearance.

For self-taught artists, especially, the inner critic can be loud:

• “Real artists don’t mess up.”
  “This page looks like a child drew it; who do I think I am?”
  “If this isn’t Instagram-worthy, why bother?”

Let’s be clear: the value of a sketchbook lies in the process, not the presentation.

🧵 Art History’s Imperfect Pages: Women Who Dared to Explore

Women throughout history have defied these perfectionist expectations: often in the margins, often undocumented, but they persisted in making art on their terms.

Take Emily Carr, for example. A Canadian painter inspired by Indigenous culture and the wild forests of British Columbia, Carr’s sketchbooks were filled with expressive, sometimes unfinished marks. Her early drawings brimmed with experimentatio, far from polished but deeply alive.

Frida Kahlo’s journals were equally raw. Interwoven with paintings, poetry, and text, they included anatomical studies, emotional outpourings, and surreal ideas that never made it into her public work. Her sketchbook wasn’t neat, it was truthful.

Beatrix Potter, known for her sweet children’s books, also kept scientific sketchbooks documenting fungi and animals in the countryside. They were full of scientific notations, practice runs, and evidence of iterative work, not clean spreads for display.

In every case, these artists didn’t let the expectation of perfection keep them from putting pen (or brush) to paper. They let curiosity lead.

👩🏾‍🎨 Today’s Women Artists Continue the Legacy

Contemporary female artists are also reclaiming sketchbooks as spaces of radical vulnerability and freedom.

Laetitia Ky is an Ivorian artist who creates sculptural art from her hair. From interviews, we know:

• She begins by quickly sketching ideas for her hair sculptures.
  These sketches guide sculptural experimentation, often in front of mirrors.
• She uses her phone to take photos once the shape feels ready.

Although no official sketchbook images are published, the workflow she describes is rooted in quick, conceptual sketching, capturing evolving ideas rather than polished art.

Jenny Saville, the British painter known for her large-scale female nudes, fills notebooks with frenzied anatomical sketches, often overlapping and messy. 

Although she doesn’t frequently publish sketchbook photos, there are mentions of:

• Graphite and pastel sketches on paper as part of her exhibitions (e.g., Pentimenti I)
• Overlaid charcoal drawings visible in her studio photos and MoMA documentation

These attest directly to her layered, messy, and process-driven sketching approach.

The message is clear: your sketchbook isn’t for anyone else. It’s for you.

💪 Why You Should Be Proud of Page 37

Let’s talk about that infamous “doodle with eyes” on page 37. Maybe you drew it while experimenting with a new pen. Maybe your toddler smudged it with peanut butter. Maybe it’s just… weird.

But here’s why it still matters:

• It means you showed up. Art gets made by making it. Showing up regularly matters more than showing up perfectly.
  It’s evidence of process. Every brilliant piece begins somewhere. Page 37 might contain the seed of your next series.
• It proves courage. You risked being bad at something new, and that’s how artists grow.
• It normalizes failure. When your sketchbook contains all your attempts, not just your wins, it trains you to see failure as a friend, not a verdict.

🧭 Action Steps: Embrace the Messy Sketchbook

Here are a few practical ways to free yourself from sketchbook perfectionism:

1. Use Cheap or Repurposed Materials

Buy a sketchbook you don’t mind “messing up.” You can even bind your own using scrap paper or draw over old planner pages. Removing the cost or preciousness helps you play.

2. Set “Ugly Page” Goals

Aim to make five ugly pages a week. Intentionally draw something you know you’re not “good” at. Free yourself from outcome.

3. Add Annotations

Like Da Vinci’s notebooks, fill your pages with thoughts, questions, and arrows. Write what you were thinking when you made it. The value lies in the learning.

4. Date Everything

By dating your pages, you create a record of growth. When you look back at page 37 later, you’ll see how far you’ve come, and feel real pride.

5. Make It Ritual

Turn your sketchbook practice into a five-minute daily ritual. Morning scribbles, bedtime doodles, lunch break washes: build a rhythm without pressure.

6. Create a Sketchbook Tour for Yourself

Flip through and mark pages you like with sticky notes. Celebrate weird progress. Don’t post them online, just recognize the value in private growth.

7. Find Sketchbook Role Models

Seek out artists who share raw, unfinished work. Normalize what real practice looks like. When I tried looking up people on Instagram, too many only share their beautiful pages. Do you know someone sharing their messy, not-so-Instagram-perfect pages? Comment below so we can take a look and celebrate their work.

Looking at the published sketchbooks of da Vinci and Frida Kahlo will definitely be a good start, but it would be great to find living people also doing the work.

8. Create your own “Ugly Page” Meet Up

Choose a different coffee shop each week and meet up with a small group of others dedicated to the same.

🔁 Expectation vs. Reality: A Necessary Contrast

Let’s return to our picture:

Left (Expectation): Perfect inked botanicals, labeled in calligraphy.

Right (Reality): Lopsided doodle with eyes, coffee stain, random idea scribbled at 1AM.

You should be proud of page 37. It’s the page where you didn’t give up. The page that got made instead of staying stuck in your head. The page that doesn’t care about likes or algorithms or being “good enough.”

It’s real. It’s yours.

And it’s a page in the story of your growth: just like Emily Carr’s, Frida Kahlo’s, and the countless women artists who kept creating anyway.

✨ Final Thought

You don’t need a perfect sketchbook to be a real artist. You don’t need flawless drawings, clean corners, or curated spreads.

You need curiosity. Courage. A pencil and five minutes.

You need to believe that page 37, doodle and all, is part of something bigger.

You are an artist.

And that sketchbook? It’s proof.

As always, thanks so much for watching. Please like, subscribe and tell us something you plan to use from today’s conversation to help your art.

Remember: proudly call yourself an artist.

Together we are Artist Strong.