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The olive branch is an international symbol for peace, which is why I chose it as the theme of today’s sketchbook page tutorial. It’s my hope that creating artwork like this will help you to reflect and recalibrate, which is exactly what it did for me.
When I was a junior in high school (2006), everyone in my class had a history assignment. You picked a year, then you made some sort of project over everything that happened that year. I chose 1973, and as I created my project — an illustrated handmade book — I couldn’t help but notice how chaotic and dramatic all of the events seemed. Watergate, hostages at Wounded Knee, the Vietnam War coming to an end … it was a lot.
As I created that project as a highschooler, I was interested in the history, but I also felt detached. All of the events had happened so long ago that it seemed unfathomable to run into those world-changing situations again. The kinds of events and changes that bowl you over seemed to be something that occurred with regularity in the past, not something that I’d ever personally experience. Then, 2020 rolled around, and this past week knocked the wind out of me (and the rest of the world).
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