Fill Your Journal: Feeling freer with a limited color palette

Embracing simplicity in your sketchbook so you can actually enjoy it

The Fill Your Journal series is all about helping you joyfully fill the pages of your sketchbook. It offers prompts, advice, and personalized feedback to encourage you to be kind to yourself while developing a consistent and enjoyable creative practice. Consider becoming one of my treasured paid subscribers to fill the pages of our sketchbooks together!

Let’s fill this new sketchbook together!

Starting a new journal can feel daunting. It's easy to paralyze yourself with questions like- What should I draw? What colors do I use? What if I make a mistake? Like misspelling "ginkgo"?

Well that's what this series is all about! Together, we're going to fill the pages of this new sketchbook with joy and ease, leaving behind all the unnecessary stress and drama. Fill Your Journal is here to help make your practice what it should be, what it wants to be- fun!

I'll share everything that has helped me go from an overwhelmed empty sketchbook hoarder to an avid, more relaxed journal-er- filling stacks of them with memories, experiments, and observations from my life I’m so grateful to have today.

The first change I made that helped everything about sketching become easier and more enjoyable was limiting my color palette. Simplifying the color-picking process from a chaotic free-for-all to a curated few freed my mind to consider all the other great things that make drawing fun- like line, energy, and composition.

Over time, I noticed myself becoming more confident and my color choices were improving! It was a key change that made me realize that my time in the sketchbook could actually be a relaxing, rewarding experience.

I’ve been keeping it simple ever since. And for the first spread in this pretty pink sketchbook I used a limited palette to draw a few things I found one November weekend: great pork buns, a pocket-size book called “The Art of Peace,” and a beautiful bright yellow ginkgo leaf resting perfectly flat in the bottom of my boot.

How to pick your palette

Limited Palette Examples