A couple of days ago I bought a new sketch book. I didn't really need a new one as a dear friend bought me a beautiful new sketch book for my 21st and I have barely used more than a couple of pages but there is beautiful pleasure to be taken in opening up the cover of a new sketch book and flicking through the crisp white pages which are yet to be covered in inky smudges and eraser crumbs. Bloody eraser crumbs! They haunt me, follow me everywhere. Or rather, I create them everywhere. I don't think I have ever sketched something without employing the eraser. If the eraser wasn't an option I wouldn't make anywhere near as many mistakes. Or I at least wouldn't think of them as mistakes. I'd think of them as a first attempt, or an interesting take, or not quite what I was going for but something to work with all the same. The eraser is the instigator for second guessing yourself, making you question if what you've done is really good enough, and lord knows I do not need any encouragement to do that, especially not from a dirty square of rubber.
One of the main reasons I'm yet to have crowded the pages of my sketch book with my scrawls is I'm scared that they won't be worthy. But what good is a blank sketch book? Part of the pleasure of opening the new sketch book for the first time is the excitement you have about all of the possibilities to be created on those there pages.
Doubt is forever holding me back, taking over all facets of my life and creating tiny eraser crumbs everywhere I go.
Enough is enough. No more erasing!
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