My 2026 annual art workbook is full of ugly art and other experiments. Sometimes the ugly duckling becomes the swan, but that’s not the point of the workbook. The point is to experience making art and to stretch the envelope in order to grow as an artist.
This is the cover of this year’s workbook.
2026 art workbook
I bought two blank books a year ago and could never bring myself to use them for “frivolous” purposes becaue they were hardcover and imposing. It took a long time to stop feeling envious of other people’s lovely workbooks and start using my own (artists’ workbooks are messy, the pages are often warped, and they are incredibly exciting to see).
My beautiful messy pages
2026 title page – watercolor & black marker
Then in early March I took an online art class that required daily workbook exercises and… well, that’s a story for another day.
What I’m telling you about now started five days ago when I opened my workbook and saw what at first seemed to be a problem (the OH NO of the title of this blog post). The left-hand page started as gelli monoprint that I was going to come back to and work some more after gluing some dried rose petals on it (those brown blobs). The day before I had thought the page was dry and closed the sketchbook, but then it turned out it wasn’t. Some of the paint stuck to the opposite page.
Was that page ruined? NO! This is a workbook! I gave that page page a wash of orange right over the blobs of paint, then propped up the workbook so I could look at it and see what might come of this new development. Because yeah, blobs turn out to be a great inspiration source for me.
A day’s exercise and the next day’s decision that OH NO can become OK
After staring at the blobs for a while they suggested a landscape. Do you see it? No? Well, check out the next photo, which shows what a little pencil work revealed. I propped that up again so I could look at it while I did other things. I kind of felt too intimidated to do anything to that orange page, but I kept reminding myself it’s a damned workbook, I can do whatever I want.
Paint blobs, orange wash, now some pencil work reveals a landscape
I grabbed some water soluble pastel crayons and began suggesting light and shadows. Why do that and not keep painting with the acrylics? Who knows. This is a workbook and I’m supposed to be trying stuff out. So yeah. Crayons with a fancy French name.
And whoa, there was snow involved. It was 94° and I was thinking snow (that heat dome has passed now and it’s regular March weather for a few days).
Underlayer of water soluble pastel crayons
I got a wee bit crazy with the color, mostly because this was the first time of my using such a strong wash to start with – at least with paint. I’ve done it with fabric art, but that works in a different way. And that’s the point of this workbook, for me to experiment to see what I can do with these other materials.
Ugh. I ruined it with that red. What was I thinking? I tried to fix it with dabbing a bit of water on it and rubbing with a Q-tip. Then I decided to just move on and see what else would happen.
The pastel crayons suck!
Well, what I moved on with was going back to acrylic paint. I liked the more subtle pink left behind from the red. It suggested sunrise, maybe. So I got bolder with the acrylics and the highlights on the trees. I toned down their shadows, too. And then I realized I had no idea how to paint water. That’s not a blue pathway, it’s a stream. At least that’s how I saw it.
When is a stream not a stream? When I stop thinking of it as water and start remembering it’s art.
I had to keep reminding myself that the point of this exercise was not trees, sky, snow, water, etc. – the point was for me to master my materials (layering, mixing colors, mixing media) and also to make art, not a photograph.
What is that? Mist rising from the water? Maybe.
Using some scrunched up paper towel, I dabbed on some white paint mixed with blue and whatever else to make it not so bright. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I didn’t expect mist rising from the water. Kinda cool. But… did I like it? So I propped it up and looked at it for the rest of that day.
The closer I get to “finished” the more scared I get that I’m going to ruin what I’ve done. STOP THAT!
The mist was cool but it didn’t look right. It didn’t glow with the morning light and I didn’t want to screw with morning light glows. It had to go. I decided the stream could have some reflections in it, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to go for rapids. So I painted in the reflections and propped it up again to study because I had other stuff to do. I have a book that needs to get published (the sequel to Stolen Sisters) and I hadn’t done a thing about it while all this workbook stuff was going on, so I got to it, glancing every so often at the little painting. Something about the reflections just wasn’t working for me.
OMG I think I’m going to stop now!
Next day I had a wee little epiphany about how mirror images really work. And how I would see the light if I was standing in the snow seeing that view. The reflections looked wrong to me – in retrospect I think it’s because those pine trees don’t have round clumped tops. I don’t think that matters, though, and besides it’s too late. I painted in more reflections. Then I decided it was done and I pulled off the masking tape before I changed my mind. OH NO had officially become OH YEAH!
It’s not done. I think I need to suggest a little bit of darker shadow right at the bases of the two tall pines. I like the way the shadow works for that little pine at the top of the stream. Maybe I’ll do something about it, or maybe I’ll start a new page in my workbook. Don’t know and it doesn’t matter. It’s my workbook and I can do anything I want in it.
Additional thoughts on workbooks that I’ve already shared in the private art group I’m in on Facebook:
I think the greatest treasures I have are my sketchbooks, for so many reasons, but the most important one can be stated in one word: permission.I have permission to consider my paper, paints, and other materials as resources instead of valuable objects in themselves that must be hoarded. THEY aren’t the treasure – using them is the treasure.I have permission for everything in sketchbook to NOT be precious. What is in it is telling the story of me as an artist, and the real me is still developing. Not done yet and so not perfect. That means anything can be changed and maybe it’ll be for the better, maybe not. I can’t know until I do it.I have permission for everything to be something else. Like this photo [of the page with the rose petals and the page with the blobs]. I started with the page on the left with the aim of making the most abstract landscape I could. One that only hinted at a real landscape. I let it dry, came back the next day to work on another page but instead discovered I had not let the paint dry enough and some of it had stuck to the next page. Interesting.While I thought about that, I painted some more on top of the day before’s experiment. The day after that I accidentally dropped some dried rose petals on the page and liked it, so I mod-podged them in place.I was still thinking about that ‘mistake’ page. I really liked it. So this morning I mixed up a nice shade of orange to use as a wash over it till I see where it calls to me next.Permission to do anything I want is the most fantistic and valuable tool I have in my artistic toolbox. I don’t know what took me so long to give myself that permission, but I don’t care. I’ve got it now.
