Why every artist needs a secret sketchbook, according to character creator Greg Baldwin

Becoming an artist wasn’t my first choice. I actually dreamed of being an animator for feature films, but even as a kid, I knew I didn’t have the patience to draw the same thing over and over. One day, I was at a friend’s house, and their older brother was playing Dungeons & Dragons with his friends. They were prepping their characters and he asked me to design his.

In exchange, he gave me Iron Maiden albums and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics. That’s the moment becoming a character designer latched onto me; I wasn’t interested in playing the game nearly as much as I wanted to be a part of creating it!

I started learning about all the amazing artists who created my favourite comic books, toys, games and films. I desperately wanted to be a part of it. Ever since then, I’ve been fixated on character and worldbuilding

Sketching before I start my workday and working in my sketchbook is essential for me to keep pushing myself as a designer. I draw from life almost every day.

Most importantly, I find that exploring new ideas, forms, and materials – anything that grabs my attention – helps me build a repository of elements I can use when creating new characters or designs. Being comfortable drawing as many things as possible lets me focus on the design itself rather than getting bogged down with how to draw specific aspects.

I think sketching and being in my sketchbook is the number one part of my practice that lets me focus on the design itself, unhindered. Investing in my process to continue to improve both my skills and thought process is basically an artists’ way of training at the gym. It can be tough to get motivated, but once you get started things will start to flow.

I really love to draw my dog, he’s probably what I draw most, and in turn my animal anatomy has become less reference-based, more instinctive, allowing me to focus on the idea.

Both. Lately, I’ve been more interested in using spontaneous and new ideas. As artists we face a lot of hurdles. There is so much incredible content being made every day, and it can be hard to stay relevant or feel like it’s possible to bring anything new to the table.

My personal solution is to avoid stagnation and constantly push my comfort level. The sketching process allows me to try out as many bad ideas as I can muster up before stumbling across a good one with very little risk of wasting time. Ruling out the bad ideas takes practice and helps to refine your personal taste for what it is you actually want out of your work.

I definitely return to the themes and genres I’m most excited by. I love monsters, zombies and robots. But these are just kernels for exploring new ideas.

If I want to focus on a unique shape language, a composition, a pose, or even an emotion, I can take a theme I’m comfortable with and use that as a starting point for the challenge I’m trying to work out. I always want to focus on the actual challenge and not be distracted by other aspects of the sketch. Trying to find something unique and fresh is hard enough!

The truth is, I keep two sketchbooks, and I’d recommend this to any artist that I meet. One is for the sketches I wouldn’t mind somebody else flipping through, while the other is for my eyes only. It’s a hot mess that’s filled with terrible sketches, scrawls of illegible notes, and the occasional shopping list. It’s my safe place – a book of free thoughts uninhibited by what anyone else might think of them.

I love having a place where I don’t have to be performative; where I can fail miserably with no consequence. If something amazing comes out of it, great! But I don’t put that pressure on those sketches. It’s simply a safe place to draw like a kid again and make mistakes to my heart’s content.

My sketching process is super organic. I usually start with something in mind; a subject or a pose I want to try out – something to get me into the page. But almost immediately I think, “If it comes too easily, it’s probably been done before.” Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t, but it nags at me, and I force myself to explore further, finding the least obvious juxtapositions to see if I can make them work.

For me, the goal is to end up with something I haven’t seen before. I think that’s the most exciting part about making art and seeing other people’s art: being presented with something unexpected that feels like you’ve always been searching for it.

I think they’d notice a shift towards more organic, cleaner forms and shapes. Focusing on what makes something iconic and relatable has become a major point for me. Finding the most efficient way to express my ideas without any unnecessary fluff. I once had the chance to sit and talk with Chuck Jones, one of my absolute idols.

He mentioned how a budding artist might spend so much effort on drawing every little wrinkle and bump on a finger, while a seasoned artist could say the same thing with just a single line. That idea has stuck with me as an endless pursuit ever since. How can I say more with less?

Style for me isn’t something that you deliberately choose, it’s your interpretation of the world and how you choose to distil it down to the parts that you find most important. I think there are through lines in my work from the very start, aspects that linger in my art. I see them as the small success along the way in my career that I thought worked and continued to refine.

Worldbuilding, backstory and implied history are at the forefront of every sketch or final piece I create. When I was designing for video games, it was crucial to tell the player as much as possible about their location or the point of view of an enemy or NPC without having to record dialogue or add a cutscene.

The more we could imply and inform through the design, the more time we could spend on progressing the gameplay or story. As an artist, these aspects are exactly what we’re acting out in our heads as we get to know our surroundings or the character we’re designing.

I definitely have my one-and-done concepts, but I try not to stop at my first idea. If I can design it too quickly, then the idea probably hasn’t been pushed as far as it could go. Iterating on an idea is all about ruling out the obvious solution. If the goal is to create something new and unique, it’s important to get those first ideas drawn and set aside as soon as possible so the unexpected solutions can be explored too.

Sometimes the first idea is still the best, but that can only be said with confidence after other ideas have been ruled out.

Other than having a secret messy sketchbook, practise drawing from life for five minutes every day. I wanted to say an hour or so, but that was easy to justify skipping by blaming my busy day. But five minutes? There are no excuses! You can absolutely sketch a plant, your cat, your dog, your hand, or almost anything nearby.

At first it may feel awkward and meaningless, but over the course of a year or five, it will vastly improve your skills. It’s kind of crazy, but as it becomes more effortless, so does drawing more complicated pieces.

The by-product is that you fall in love with the strangest things: how the wing of a wasp shimmers, the way a pine cone is constructed, or even how your right pinkie finger has an interesting crook in it. And I love it, because it’s an investment made in ourselves, which these days is huge.