10: Daily Conversations in my sketchbooks
One simple rule: follow what feels exciting
The holidays always stretch me thin. Between family responsibilities, tasks around new year, and the general holiday mood, keeping up with my creative practice is tricky.
I’ve come to accept that I find holidays difficult. In the past, I felt guilty about this. Not being able to enjoy this “festive season" properly meant something was wrong with me. But as a mother of three running a household, and someone who thrives in the quiet rhythm of everyday life, holidays are a bit too much. Now I understand just how much I’ve come to love my creative routine and how vital it is for my wellbeing.
Rather than giving in and losing myself by the end of the holidays, which had been my norm, I’ve adapted. I’ve learned to seize any pocket of time I can find for solitude and quietness. Even 15 minutes of just touching my creative project briefly keeps the fire alive and nourishes my soul. I call it tending—just like how tending to a garden a little bit everyday makes a difference.
In my last post, I shared about how my sketchbook practice started. Today, I want to dive deeper and show you how I actually use it day-to-day. It’s so simple, I don’t know if there’s that much I can write about, but here I go.
Each studio morning begins with journaling. It’s like a daily meeting with myself, slowly shifting from the day’s hectic energy into focused studio mode. After filling a page or two, I feel centered and ready. I’ll select one of my five active sketchbooks and open to a fresh page.
You might have heard about “fear of blank pages,” but for me, it’s quite the opposite when it comes to sketchbooks. These aren’t truly blank pages— you are not really starting from zero. The work from the past few days carries the momentum, and all I need is just to find a way back in. This continuity is what makes a sketchbook practice so powerful.
I look at what I did the day before with fresh eyes. Often, a specific spot catches my attention—perhaps a particular line, a color, or an energy that speaks to me. I listen to them: “Build on this mark.” or “Try this idea bigger.” So I follow their lead. Sometimes, when things feel stagnant, I deliberately do something entirely new to bring new energy.
Throughout this practice, I only have one rule:
follow what feels exciting. Your heart knows the way.
The moment you start doing something you think you should do, or worse, something that might make others happy, you are listening to the noise in your head rather than intuition.
In the past, I’d find myself often trapped by my own head talk:
“Make more bird drawings, they were popular.”
“Don’t go too abstract, it might confuse people.”
“Stick to the style everyone expects.”
These voices always led me to creative dead ends. Looking outside is never an answer.
The voices I’ve learned to trust comes from inside feeling:
“This color combination feels really good.”
“I wonder what would happen if I mix these materials.”
“That mark has energy I want to expand upon.”
These thoughts, led by excitement and curiosity, are the ones that actually move my work forward.
For me, a sketchbook is a space where I have conversations with myself. It’s a safe and quiet place where I try to meet my intuition as honestly as I can and give it visible form. And the beautiful thing is, this is a skill that you can learn and get better at over time.
Since it’s like a laboratory, not everything turns out pretty. There are plenty of unexpected results and “failed” pages in there too—the ones I don’t share. But I’ve learned that they are as important as the good ones. I believe good work emerges from a whole lot of not-so-good work. Bad pages are actually stepping stones, each one teaching me something new about my creative voice. I’ll write more about that next time.
As always, thank you for being here. Wherever you are, I wish you a peaceful new year and here’s to finding those quiet moments.
Akiko
Thank you for sharing your work and words with us. Your posts bring me so much peace to read!
The festive anxieties you write about completely resonate with me. I love getting back into the quiet post-holiday rhythm, which my family consider routine and boring, but to me, it's freedom.