Brook & Bramble Art

Another recent page, and another small relief: I don’t hate it.

The perspective is still doing its own thing, slightly unbothered by reality, but it’s no longer actively fighting me. The buildings mostly agree with each other. The windows line up well enough. Nothing feels like it’s about to slide sideways off the page, which, at this point, counts as progress.

A lot of that comes down to tools. Good paper, excellent brushes, and suddenly the work feels less like a negotiation. The paint goes where it’s asked. Lines stay put. Washes behave themselves instead of blooming into chaos at the first opportunity. I’m not spending half my energy correcting problems I didn’t intend to create in the first place.

This one was also a quiet stretch for me creatively, which might explain why it feels steadier. No big expectations, no dramatic breakthroughs, just showing up and building something a piece at a time. A shopfront. Then another. Then the awkward middle bit that tries to glue them together. Slow, slightly clumsy, but intentional.

I even pushed myself into some light experimentation, which felt oddly brave for something so small. Letting one side fall into shadow, suggesting depth instead of outlining everything to death. It’s subtle, but it changes the mood. Less flat. More considered. Still cautious, but learning to trust that not everything needs to be spelled out.

What I like most is that it feels like things are starting to work more often than they don’t. Not consistently, not confidently, but enough to notice. Enough to keep going. The mistakes are quieter now. The wins don’t shout, but they linger.

It’s not perfect. It was never going to be. But it holds together, and for this sketchbook, at this stage, that feels like exactly the right kind of success.