(Hand-holding can be helpful too.)
You know I didn’t need another art instruction book.
I moved to a tiny-house-in-apartment-form a few months ago, and every single art book I owned had to pass these tests:
- Is the print large enough to still read (this is my 2026 reality.)
- Do I smile when I see the book’s cover?
- Am I likely to ever reread it, and finally do the exercises?
- Will owning this book move my own artwork forward, with stronger compositional clarity and impact?
Over half of my beloved books didn’t make the cut. I knew I would never need another art instruction book, but I was wrong. This one is different, and for where I am in life, it fits me perfectly.
Here’s why: Even us watercolor purists have been collecting unrelated art supplies for decades. Now many of them are sprinkled with a thin film of both dust and buyer’s remorse.
Gouache, charcoal, gesso, colored pencils, water-soluble crayons, fountain pens, bottles of ink, tinted paper, masking fluid, tissue paper, it’s endless.
I don’t have any creative blocks, really, but I do have a bulging art supply cabinet whose contents were a good idea at the time, but now, I’m clueless. Or unmotivated. That is, until I found this book. Thank goodness most art supplies don’t have a shelf life, they are still as good as new and perfect for this next adventure.
Introducing The Ugly Sketchbook
The Ugly Sketchbook gently holds my hand, guiding me to dust off all those orphan tools and let them finally speak, perhaps even sing.
Take the circle exercise, for example:
This was way more fun than I expected it would be. The Ugly Sketchbook offers the reader ten warm up exercises, followed by twenty projects to help you overcome any brain cramps you may have about stepping out of your current comfort zone, or your current default art kit.
If you’re like me, you won’t need to buy anything, just use what you already have. Who knows? You may fall in love with one of those dusty old friends.
If you would love a low threshold way to access a stress-free daily creative habit, Tawnie Jeanne Terry may have written just the book for you.
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