With ditching my Candy Crush app earlier this year, I wanted to do something really productive with the free time I was getting back. So I started an illustration sketchbook project – I’ve been challenging myself to draw something every day, just for me. I’m trying to play around a bit and have fun with this, no pressure to create something super duper amazing… I’m trying to get a little out of my comfort zone.

Some drawings have been really cool and successful and I have plans to expand upon em… Other have turned out kind of dumb. But the whole point of my sketchbook project is to do just a ton of drawing this year, and get that much more zeroed in on my style in the process.

I would really love to start getting more into surface pattern design, and I’m trying to experiment with creating hand drawn repeat patterns with lots of fun little details in them. This kind of stuff is really fun to do, and is a little challenging because I pick a theme and then try to come up with different ways to draw the same thing. Like in this instance… Cute cat illustrations.

I wanna clean this hand drawn typography up a bit and burn it on a screen so I can make it into a tshirt.

Hand drawn paisley patterns have been coming up more and more in my doodles lately, and I’m not a hundred percent sure why that is. Maybe it’s just the flowy organic feel of drawing all the drop shapes… I dunno but I dig it and I wanna draw more paisleys like asap!

If you’ve been paying attention to my Instagram feed, you’ll notice everything since January 1 has been cute illustrations from my sketchbook project. I’m challenging myself to stick with that, because I really think it sets my feed apart from the usual. I created this cute recipe illustration to help promote a blog post I wrote last week about my mom in law’s amazing tomato sandwiches.

You’re gonna see this sweet and cool strawberry again soon as part of a Valentine’s day project. Promise.

This is my biggest reason you should be taking on a drawing challenge like a daily illustration sketchbook project. I feel like the creativity has been flowing so much easier since I started it… and this spoof of David Bowie’s Space Oddity lyrics just jumped out of my markers last night.

This is Ground Control to Major Tomcat, people. It’s my favoritest drawing I’ve done in a while, and I’ve got plans for this guy, too.

Have you started a sketchbook project or creativity challenge of your own this year?

What’s the project? Tell me about it in the comments!