As December rapidly comes to an end, one of my favourite rituals is revisiting all my sketchbooks from the past year…

2025 was a good year for me – I filled 20 sketchbooks!

This represents significantly more sketching than the last few years thanks to my 9-week European trip which accounts for 9 of the 8×10″ Alpha sketchbooks (8 while travelling and 1 trip prep before I left). 

BTW I took this photo earlier in December and the bottom sketchbook is now almost finished!

Please note: The number of sketchbooks I completed in 2025 is not important in itself so please don’t compare this with your own amount of sketching! We all have different sketching practices and should never compare in regard to output.

However I do find it interesting to compare the quantity from year to year as one way of reflecting on my own sketching practice. But the total number is just the starting point!

If I take out the 9 trip sketchbooks from the total, the number of everyday sketchbooks is not greatly different from last year’s number of 12.5. But I also have realised many of my sketches this year were more ‘completed pieces’ than the quick watercolour pencil work which made up a lot of my sketching in 2024. So even though the quantity might be similar, I’ve been spending more time sketching in 2025 – and that’s a good thing!

But it’s the sketches themselves that I’m most interested in, not the number of pages completed! And to be even more specific, I like to focus on my everyday sketching practice and how I manage to keep my regular sketching even during busy seasons. 

As I only recently completed my epic series of blog articles from my big European trip (see here) I limited this review to my non-travel sketching. I flipped through the pages of these sketchbooks, taking photos of the work that caught my eye.

These were either sketches that:

• I was happy with,
• that I enjoyed doing at the time,
• that represented something different from normal or
• introduced an idea that I want to explore more in my work.

And after a little cull, I now have a collection of 60 sketches that are meaningful for me!

This single image has helped me identify three important themes from the year and also contains many ideas for me to explore further in 2026!

But before I share those I want to recap some of the media I have explored in the last 12 months…
 
 

Watercolour Changes

After many years of more or less the same watercolour palette, I made some significant changes in 2025. These include starting the year using Gansai Tambi paints and ending the year using a small palette of regularly changing Aquarius paints. 

I also made three changes to my everyday palette for my European trip which had a big impact on the feel of my watercolour sketches. These changes were: Michael Harding Warm Light Yellow, Schmincke Naples Yellow Reddish and Daniel Smith Bloodstone Genuine. I’m really loving having these new colours in my palette and exploring ways of using opaque pigments in my work.

For now these colours are locked in and I will finally get around to updating my Current Palette post in the new year to reflect these changes!
 
 

Mixed Media

And then there are all the other supplies I used at various times during the year. 🙂

Different ink and fountain pen nibs, markers, distress crayons, different selection of watercolour pencils, different brushes, Neocolor II, Neoart, tempera sticks, highlighters and Poscas. If you are part of my Sketching Adventure Community on Patreon you might be interested in this video where I discussed how I used many of these tools during my European trip.
 
 

Why all these changes?

Changing colours in my watercolour palette and adding extra media are a great way of helping me see colour and light differently. It’s so easy to fall into formulas when watercolour painting so mixing it up and constantly being just outside my comfort zone means that sketching is still an exciting adventure every time!
 
 

Three major themes of my 2025 sketching

As I reviewed my sketching as a whole from 2025, I’m struck by how many different things I did over the last 12 months. However these were three recurring themes:

1. Focusing on a different concept each month
2. Exploring new or limited colour schemes
3. Balancing simple vs complex.

1. Focusing on a different concept each month

Its hard to adequately express just how great an impact my Patreon monthly themes have had on my work this year.

Everyday sketching is by its very nature repetitive – sketching the same scenes that I come across day after day. So having a different concept to explore each month has filled me with lots of inspiration as I’m constantly seeing my subjects in a new way!   

I love having 4 weeks to explore a theme and each time it has developed in ways I didn’t expect! For example, I never thought I could survive an entire month only doing monochrome watercolour sketches (ie. only using one colour in each sketch)!

You can see all the themes from 2025 over on my Patreon here but I’ve also created a number of summary posts on the blog…

Negative Shapes – Going to the Edge – Foreshortening – Limited Palettes – Watercolour – Monochrome

A huge thanks to everyone who has been part of the Sketching Adventure Community in 2025 – you are a constant inspiration!
 
 

2. Exploring new or limited colour schemes

As mentioned above, regularly changing the colours or media that I use is a great way to prevent formulaic work. And while I reviewed all my sketches from 2025 I was struck by how I was constantly trying new colours.

For example:

• In the limited palette month I explored some different ways of limiting the hues that I used in a scene – starting with one or two hues and then simplifying the rest. 
• As a result of the monochrome month I started using a small palette by Roman Szmal and I’ve been loving creating experimental palettes of 8 Aquarius colours which I’ve been changing every few weeks.
• And this month I focused on red (my least used hue) and really enjoyed the challenge of using red in some form on each double page spread in my current sketchbook!

3. Balancing simple vs complex

I’m really loving the variety in my sketchbooks at the moment!

I find myself changing my approach constantly – from simple sketches using monochrome direct watercolour or ink and graphite, to sketches with complex colour and texture. I find myself using less media (a simple approach) for complex scenes and more media (a complex approach) for scenes with simple shapes.

But despite all the crazy experimental work that I do, watercolour remains my favourite medium! So it’s been great that in the last three months I’ve been able to get back to doing more direct watercolour work.

All the mixed media sketches I create only increase my love of watercolour and help me see new ways to say more with simple and bold washes.

So as I finish a fun year of mixed media I’m happy to get back to my roots and it’s perfect timing for me to host a Live Version of my Watercolour course starting next week! It will be a great way to start the year so if its a good fit for you I hope you’ll join us! 
 
 

Reviewing and Setting Art Goals

I only had a single art goal for 2025 and that was to finish my sketchbook pages each night!

I certainly didn’t manage to finish my pages EACH night but if I slightly modified this goal to finish my sketchbook pages each week, I have certainly achieved this and in a way I wasn’t expecting!

This is because, during 2025 I filmed update videos each week for my Sketching Adventure Community. These became an incredible way of finishing and then reviewing each week’s work leading to the development of new ideas to explore in the coming week. (So once again, I’m so super grateful for the impact Patreon has had on my sketching practice this year!)

I don’t really feel as if I need to set goals for 2026 – but I do want to sketch more objects at home, tell better stories from my day and tackle more complex scenes.
 
 

Finally…

Thank you for following my sketching from 2025 here on my blog and a special huge thanks to all of you who have taken time to leave comments over the past 12 months.

This year I reduced the number of articles I publish each week (so that it is more sustainable for me) but this blog continues to remain an essential way to share and document my sketching adventures. So thanks again for your support.

I hope that the coming year will be a good one for you and your family!
 
 
Have you reviewed your 2025 sketches? Are you happy with what you achieved? Have you set art goals for 2026? I would love to hear all about them in the comment section below.

(If you are reading this via email, please click on the article title link below and add a comment on my blog. Thanks!)