Yesterday marked 50 days of my creative sketchbook practice. 50 days of consistently turning up to the page to play and experiment.
What I’m learning is that I can trust myself to turn up for myself. I’m learning that my practice muscles can be strengthened. I’m learning that I love creating colour fields. It like what I create with visual journaling but different.
Here with these colour fields, there’s layers built up and then stripped back. Marked into. Scratched away to leave textures I like to see and feel. This practice is definitely expanding my palimpsest exploration and obsession.
I’m learning that I want this my creativity to be the main focus of my day and everything else is the add on, not the priority. Not the main meal. My creativity is my life source/force.
I’m practicing taking my creative sketchbook practice into my life. The attitudes, the risk-taking, the consistency, the trust in self and my art-making, these values and practices I’m carrying with me throughout my day, no matter who I come into contact with.
This creative sketchbook practice keeps me centred and focused on my feelings of joy and abundance. This practice keeps me present and checked in with myself, moment to moment.
On top of my visual journaling practice, this safe space of play and to {BE} me, is enough. Is more than enough to fill my day with bliss and connection. A practice that I’m finding opens up doors inside and outside of me, for me and others.
Reading Bone Rooms by Samuel J Redman, which starts off documenting the beginning of the frenzy to collect bones in the 1800s, especially Native American bones, as a means of establishing pseudoscientific ‘evidence’ to support the racial hierarchy, I am hit by the continued disregard/ disrespect/ lack of recognition of the humanity of black and brown bodies. History is littered by these practices one example being the transatlantic slave trade.But it would seem that history continues to repeat itself and we as a civilisation have failed to put in place safe guards against these atrocities happening again and again.
Has there no just been Holocaust Remembrance Day and the rally call always that we will not let this happen again, and yet we stand by and allow it to happen again and again within our lifetimes because we, and the establishment, pick and choose who’s life is more valuable and recognised and willing to fight/ stand up for. Usually black and brown bodies are not protected and usually there is no up roar in our blatant and deliberate destruction .
I come here today enraged and saddened as hear about the case of the USA funded , Danish scientists medical study on Guinea-Bissau newborns around the hepatitis B vaccination.
Within the UK, newborns are given the hepatitis B vaccination within 24 hours of birth as it is proven to lower the paediatric contraction of the disease. There is no cure for this disease which is life threatening. But does not pose a threat here or any of the western countries because of this preventative medicine as birth.
In December 2025, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made the announcement that they were stopping their country’s hepatitis b vaccination programme for newborns as there was worry about the effectiveness and safety of such vaccinations. Bearing in mind that the programme has reduced new infections, with up to 90% effectiveness in preventing perinatal transmission when administered at birth and 98% immunity for infants, resulting in decreased liver cancer and mortality.
Why this change of policy? Robert F Kennedy, and the Trump administration.
Then just two weeks later, there is the announcement that the USA will fund Danish scientists in Guinea-Bissau to carry out the medical study on newborns around the effectiveness of the hepatitis B vaccination.
Over 14,000 babies involved where half would be given the vaccine within 24 hours of birth and the other half had the vaccine withheld until 6 weeks old.
1 in 5 people in Guinea-Bissau are infected with hepatitis B far more than USA, Denmark etc. This country is one of the poorest in the world. Why run tests on a vaccine that they know works in reduced the contamination of the disease. And why if there’s concerns about the vaccination why not carry on this study on American babies or Danish babies?
Guinea-Bissau has not asked for this study to take place. This is ‘medical’ colonialism.
The effectiveness of the vaccine has been proven so why carry out further tests that they know will endanger the lives of newborn babies? Will probably plunge the country into further poverty and disease, suffering and deaths related to hepatitis B.
This is just another example happening now of a foreign ( white) state/ power/ institution acting as if they have a god given right to exploit, extract, experiment on black/ African/ brown bodies? As if our lives do not matter as we are just disposals.
That our only value upon this earth is to further the will/ need/ wants/ lives of white people.
This sickens me. This is a policy, funded by fascists, to deliberately murder African babies. Why? Because they think they can. Because they have done so before. Because we live in a system where whiteness reigns supreme.
History does continue to repeat itself and whiteness finds new ways to justify the same harm. Or is the harm getting worse?
I would say for the last quarter of 2025, I was getting myself into a spin because I wanted to get back to painting but wasn’t.
I was spending my spare time on Pinterest scrolling through all these beautiful artworks wishing I was painting and knowing that when I did, my work was never that good. I’d fail and fall into the comparison trap.
The more I spent on Pinterest the more I longed to be painting but the further away I became from my practice.
Until … as I mentioned in a previous post, I gifted myself the 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge with Insight Creative created by Cheryl Taves.
At day 26 yesterday, and I came to the page late as it was the first day back at school after the Christmas break and girl was I tired. Still am and it was touch and go if I was going to make it to the sketchbook. But I thought to myself if I can get up and do the fucking dishes, then that shift of energy is going to get me into my cave a create.
And so be it. The focus was about risk taking. How we might be okay with it at the beginning of a piece, be loose and alive but to hold this energy to the end of the process, not to overwork things by holding on too tight but maybe take some risks was the challenge.
Using browns was the first risk for me – I’ve probably shared it before how I have a hating relationship with brown. But not so much now. My feelings are softening towards the colour. Practice using browns helps.
And then when I thought I was finishing up with this piece I just stopped. I didn’t carry on to complete or tidy up but left it edgy and raw in a way because I feel it still has a fresh energy and isn’t overworked or tight.
Keeping my sketchbook practice isn’t about making good or bad art pieces. It’s about information. What am I learning as a result of the time spent within my creative sketchbook?
Like yesterday, what have I learnt or better understand about the role risk-taking plays in the creative process? Keeping a creative sketchbook practice isn’t a great, safe space to take risks, explore my style and voice at the same time as really leaning into this place of discovery for me and of me.
I know for a fact that knowing this creative sketchbook is for my eyes only means I’m not performing or looking for feedback or admiration or criticism. It reduces the pressure to make art, formal art-making, good or bad art. It’s play and exploratory feeding my curiosity rather than my ego.
It’s a place where I can be alone in the company of my thoughts and feelings and offer myself kindness and compassion and no judgment at the same time.
I’m glad I said ‘yes’ to myself and my art-making practice. It’s strengthening that muscle of saying ‘yes’ to my art-making rather than ‘no’, more often than not.
Living Wild Studios 