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A Creative Sketchbook, Dec 2025

| Sheree
My creative sketchbook
My creative sketchbook rules

I’m not sure how my creative sketchbook differs from my visual journal. Intention maybe.

Perhaps, I think , I’m attempting to develop my art practice within a designated space. A study maybe.

I haven’t really been in the thick of my art making practice since the preparation for my Baltic exhibition back in 2022-3.

This was quickly followed with the writings and (re)drafts of Darkling, my poetry/hybrid collection published in October 2024.

After this 2025 has been a period of extended rest and refusal.

But something has been niggling me. The desire to create with paint again. the desire to play without expectations and outcomes/ products.

I’ve just scratched the itch through scrolling through Pinterest. Adding another abstract or landscape painting to a board that I’ll probably not look at again.

But it satisfied this niggling feeling. Until it didn’t.

It was going back into the classroom. Completing a few days of supply that pushed me over the edge.

The time I gave away for money. The time I’d lost pursuing my own pursuits. And realising that I wasn’t pursuing all the pursuits I wanted to pursue in the time I had/have.

So out came a creative sketchbook, inspired by the 30 days sketchbook challenge created by Cheryl Taves over at Insight Creative.

This is as much as I’m willing to share for now about the challenge, my creative sketchbook, processes and insights.

One of my rules is that it’s just for my eyes only. I want to see how this rule changes my practice. I want to create without fear but with curiosity. I want to give myself all the freedom without worrying about what others will think or say or comment on.

It’s not like I’m hanging on other people’s responses and reactions but I have gotten into a habit of just sharing anything and everything on my blog and I’m curious to see what happens when I keep things to myself.

Just for my eyes, heart, and soul only.

So far I’m enjoying the process of the challenge and I’m reflecting and paying attention to what makes my heart sing, what’s my creative vocabulary, what pushes my energies.

Do doubt whatever I explore within my creative sketchbook will be showing up in everything that I create. In everything who I {BE}. For sure.

Drawing in nature

| Sheree

I’ve been meaning to share this before now.

It’s a process journal I created for my last trip up to Glencoe.

I sat outside Kiwi, all wrapped up in blankets, and just drew what I saw.

It was another way of capturing to memory and heart my favourite mountain – Etive.

I used a graphite chubby pencil and an ink wash and just played.

I filled the whole journal bar two spreads towards the end there.

It was so much fun. I plan to return and do it again.

No mission. No pressure. No product to sell. No expectations.

Just mindless play. More.

creative dispatches

| Sheree

sometimes i’m writing. my body is writing and she doesn’t know . she doesn’t know what / how/ where. the body just doesn’t know yet what to say. how to say it.

my body writes what is doesn’t know yet.

what is put down on the page, the words and language doesn’t know either. what is it trying to say?what does it know? what doesn’t it know?

i was going to say that things become clearer in the process. but that’s not true. in the process more questions are raised. not answers. but more curiosity, wonder and play.

here, i’ve cultivated a safe space. a safe container where i can be intimate and vulnerable. i can experiment and play to locate my voice, my knowledge and wisdom.

i embark on another journey with my body writing what she doesn’t know after completing an amazing commission/ gig/ assignment. i’ll share soon. i feel depleted after fullness. i’m tired but also lost.

i know i need to rest before anything else. so i rest for now. i rest in the not knowing.

Find me in the backyard

| Sheree

This weekend you’ll find me in the backyard.

It’s nothing major or anything spectacular. All the the time I’ve lived here which will be coming into it’s third year at the beginning of July, the yard hasn’t really featured on my radar. Yes maybe to put the washing out or store my bike. But as a place to hang out, like an extension my home, no way. Maybe having neighbours who allowed their dogs to pee and shit in their backyard which is joined to mine, separated only by a short fence, was a put off. It was a smelly place I didn’t want to be.

Now we have the sun, the fresh air and the morning bird song, I find myself flocking to the backyard as soon as I wake. I throw open the kitchen door and give thanks for seeing another day. I’m setting up a table and chair and having my morning coffee in the backyard while I visual journal. It’s helping me with my mood. I feel as if Mother Nature is holding me once more as I go through a health issue that is making me stay close to home.

I know I’m privileged to have an outdoor space which is private. It’s waiting for me to put my mark on it. Of course that will involve colour. But for the moment, with my permaculture hat on, I’m just observing and interacting within the space. I’m sitting in the backyard and marking where the sun is and moves. I’m dreaming into the space and opening up to how I want to feel while in this space.

At the moment, I’m feeling expansive within the space, within a contained way. It feels good to feel the sun on my skin and the breeze moving through my hair and clothes. It’s being outside as well as being inside, as my kitchen is just there for a refill. I’m also close to Miss Ella’s bedroom window and I can hear her talking to herself or watching TV, chatting to her friends. The backyard is my sanctuary and I want more.

There is something here in terms of fugitivity. There is a quote that I used just the other day when I finally completed my chapter on black mothering and fugitivity. Hold on let me find it …

In Stolen Life (2018), Moten writes, “Fugitivity … is a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed. It’s a desire for the outside, for a playing or being outside, an outlaw edge proper to the now always already improper voice or instrument” (131). BECOMING FUGITIVE: refusing what has been refused of us dr. sheree mack

That desire for the outside, I’m feeling it on so many levels. I’m choosing to lean into it. No matter where it leads, I’m enjoying how it feels. I’m enjoying that sense of freedom, out from the enclosure. Continue.

The Sinners Series – 003

| Sheree

The second time I went to see Sinners, again it was fitting it in before going away somewhere else. But I knew I had to see it again.

A different cinema, and much fuller this time. I was sat between two black women out for one of theirs birthday’s and a white couple.

The black women introduced themselves to me. Something that has never happened before to me in the pictures. I thought it was a lovely gesture. It meant I could also tell them that they were in for a treat.

Again I got lost in the world of Sinners. Even thought I’d seen it before, I still jumped at the frightening bits. And I say frightening bits, the bits that are in there to make you jump. There’s blood but most of time the biting by the vampires is done off screen or you see it from behind and hear the noises.

I love this movie for so many reasons but I think the first thing is how Coogler plays with the genres and conventions and expectations. This is a mixture of genres ; horror, action, romance, musical etc. Coogler takes creative liberties with what’s gone before to create something rich, unique and full.

I love how this is a massive permission slip to any creative to go with their own flow. Bring in all the possibilities you want to express your point. It applies to the Creatrix in me because when the energy flows, when I’m in the zone and listening, the creations knows no boundaries or limits or rules. It just be.

Sinners is just that. And more. It’s layered , culturally and spiritually explorative and travels through time and space with music as the connection.

This second viewing of Sinners was important because for the first viewing, I had to rush off into try dark and catch a bus, therefore missing the multiple endings. So this time, I stayed put and also told those around who were fixing to leave, ‘there’s more.’

I’m not going to spoil the film for you by telling you what happens in the multiple endings but please don’t leave until the very end. Even if the lights come up, hang on in there to the very end. Even if they’re coming in to clean up after you, hang on in there to the very ends.

Making Journals

| Sheree

A while ago, I got the idea into my head to make junk journals to sell on Etsy. I got a variety of papers and cardboards and ephemera together to make them and enjoyed the process.

While decluttering last month, I found my stash of handmade junk journals. I’d sold none. I’m not even sure if I’d put them up for sell. Sometimes as a creative, you can have these ideas and instigate them only to fall short of the finish line. Something else might take your attention away, something more shiny or you could allow fear and doubt to step in and paralysis the process from moving any further.

I’m not sure what happened with these junk journals but I felt the urge to just use them on my return from Iceland.

I need something that’s self contained and discreet as I put myself back together after the time away. I felt free and unhurried and playful while away. Now back I have to slip back into responsibilities and worries and demands from others, and to be honest it’s a rough textured blanket against my skin at the moment.

I’m still remembering and wanting to be with the smooth soft caresses of Iceland. And dream into the landscape.

So maybe keeping the bar low. Just making sure I turn up to the page daily and working out the feelings and kinks is enough right now.

Almost like beginning again. Each new day is day one. No pressure and no comparisons just be. I feel attempting this in a clean journal, a clean slate is doable at the moment.

Hence cracking open my homemade junk journal and just allowing whatever needs to turn up, turn up.