“It was like I asked my sketchbook a question.” Minnie Small takes us on an inspiring journey through one of her sketchbooks.
Mistakes are a part of everyday life and, in this sketchbook tour, Minnie Small talks us through how she learned to love her mistakes during the time she worked on this sketchbook. We learn in depth about the pieces created, the ideas behind them, why she chose to use certain media, and the memories that coincide with them.
While it’s easy to capture memories nowadays with smartphones readily available to take photos, Minnie changes things up to remember the good times by putting them onto paper. She starts this video talking about a music festival she attended, capturing the event by sketching various performers she had seen throughout the weekend, and painting her campsite and the outfits she wore.
Experimenting is a recurring theme that is spoken about in the video. While you can learn easily enough by just doing the same thing over and over, you can’t progress further unless you explore new ways of creating and broaden your horizons.
“This was my first time trying my more kind of minimal painting style on faces,” Minnie explains at one point. “[It] didn’t turn out great, but it was a good start, and you’ll see pretty soon where I ended up with that.” Throughout the video, it’s clear how she has improved through experimenting with different ideas.
Mentioning how important her attitude is when creating art, she explains that she makes sketchbooks to “enjoy the process of painting”, and recounts how she “asked [her] sketchbook a question” and followed her gut with one particular piece. Despite it not turning out exactly how she would have liked, she points out that she isn’t annoyed about it, and she appreciates the final result for what she learnt from it.
Minnie continues to experiment throughout this book and it’s wonderful to see how progress is made as an artist, from the first rough sketches to testing out various colours for the painting through to the final pieces. The video makes us feel like we were there when these ideas were born, and we love seeing how they ended up. You’ve inspired us to get painting, Minnie!
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