Birds, lighthouses, self-portraits and fleeting moments from everyday life populate the sketchbooks of London artist Milly Greer, known online as @MillyDoesGood.
Through her vibrant, approachable artwork, she encourages artists to embrace experimentation, let go of perfectionism and find joy in the creative process. Rather than carefully curating every page, Milly views her sketchbooks as living records of the seasons, memories and ideas that shape her life.
We spoke to the illustrator about creative confidence, the importance of finishing a sketchbook, and how she balances artistic fulfilment with the demands of sharing her work online.
Your sketchbooks are such a central part of your work and what you share online. What is it about working in a sketchbook that allows you to expand or express yourself in ways that a finished piece might not?
Milly: I’m such a big advocate for sketchbooks. I love them. I think they’re amazing because what you get from a sketchbook that you can’t get from a finished piece, like a canvas, is the opportunity to explore ideas across 60 pages. It’s impossible to have 60 good drawings back to back, so inevitably you’re going to have some bad stuff in there.
That helps everyone loosen up in their sketchbook, especially me. I know there’s going to be some bad work in it, so I’m not afraid to start work that could potentially be bad.
Whereas when you commit to a finished piece, you want it to articulate what you want it to be. In a sketchbook, you just play so much more because inevitably some of it is going to be really good and some of it isn’t going to reflect your best work. It’s such a low-stakes environment in which to practise art, which is one of my favourite things about it.
The other thing about keeping a sketchbook is that it represents a period of time. A finished piece is very specific about what you want it to achieve, whereas a sketchbook is something you keep over several months. I now have 11 finished sketchbooks, and they’re like journals of those periods of time. I take so much inspiration from things that happen in my day-to-day life that I can flick back to a sketchbook from 2023 and tell you exactly what happened on that day for that sketch to emerge.
They’re such beautiful timepieces as well.
It’s funny you say that because I have the exact same thing with notebooks. I’ll just scribble away, and they capture a piece of my life at any moment.
Milly: Absolutely. I keep all my diaries, journals and to-do lists lined up in a cupboard because I can’t throw them away. They’re so good to look back through, especially my to-do list pad. I started it in 2021 and finished it literally the other week. It’s really interesting to see what your priorities were three years ago.
I saw you had a video where you completed a sketchbook in just one day. What’s the longest stretch it’s taken you to fill a notebook?
Milly: My first sketchbook took me three years to finish, from the first page to the last. Halfway through, I realised how much I was enjoying using it. I think that’s the case for most people: they have a sketchbook they dip in and out of.
The longest a sketchbook has taken me was three years, but since my sketchbook practice has become something I’ve dedicated myself to, the longest one, aside from that first one, took just over a year.
It obviously depends on how big your sketchbook is as well. The bigger the sketchbook, the more space you have to fill. I put very little pressure on myself to finish a sketchbook within a certain amount of time because you don’t want to add too many pressures or constraints to what you’re making. That can interrupt the process and often negatively affect what you produce.
I try to take a relaxed approach to how long these things take me, unless it’s a challenge like filling a sketchbook in a day, which was really fun and tested me in other ways. It allowed me to explore and expand.
You don’t want it to become a liability.
Milly: Absolutely. Because I’ve chosen to make it my job, I have to make sure I’m in love with it and that it isn’t taking away from the fulfilment I get out of life. It would be such a shame to ruin something I love so much because I’ve decided to monetise it or make it my job.
As you’ve developed as an artist, has your relationship with sketchbooks changed? Do you approach them differently now compared with when you first started drawing?
Milly: When I first started drawing and keeping sketchbooks, I was doing them alongside school, college and university. The only time I was practising art was in a sketchbook, so each page was much more curated and carefully considered because all the time I spent making art was spent in that sketchbook.
I was posting it for fun, so I wasn’t too concerned about its performance. It was very much a hobby.
As time has gone on, I’ve had more time to do other, bigger work outside the sketchbook and try new techniques. I’ve also done a master’s in art, so I’ve tried lots more things.
The sketchbook has become somewhere I play a lot more. I’m much less precious about what goes in it, how much time I spend on it and what it looks like. Because I always have stuff to post, I’m not fussed about how beautiful or aesthetically pleasing it is.
It’s much more my accomplice in my day-to-day practice. I do spend time thinking about how it looks and what I can post, but I’m also very relaxed about everything else that goes in it. There are notes, really rough sketches and things that never make it to social media.
That’s how a sketchbook should be used. The biggest thing that’s changed over time is that I’m much more laissez-faire about how I use it and what it looks like.
You’re developing Sketchbook Secrets to help other creatives finish their sketchbooks, share their work and potentially make a living from it. What do you think stops people from getting the most out of their sketchbooks? And what would you say to people who feel their work isn’t good enough to share?
Milly: I think people miss so much of a sketchbook’s potential by never getting to the end of one. I think that’s such a common thing: people buy a new sketchbook before they finish the one they’re using.
There’s so much to get out of a sketchbook if you persist. There’s always a dip in motivation when you get about halfway or three-quarters of the way through because you’ve done so much, but the end still feels really far away. If you think about how many pages are left, there might be 20 or 30 potential pieces of artwork waiting to be born.
People give up too early, before they reach the back cover. You miss out on so much by never finishing a sketchbook because the joy and fulfilment you get from finishing one are unmatched. Once you finish one, you feel you have to finish another.
As for someone who feels their work isn’t good enough to share, there’s a lot of pressure to share your art, but it’s okay to wait a little while if you don’t think you’re ready yet.
Especially if you’re young or still at school, you have so much more time to develop your practice and style and fulfil your artistic potential. There’s no harm in waiting until it feels like the right step for you. You don’t want to kill the cat too early by putting your art online when it’s potentially going to be subject to criticism.
It’s the equivalent of having a bad art teacher who tells you your work isn’t good enough, because the internet can be a nasty place sometimes.
But it’s important to be confident in your work because that confidence is transferable, and people pick up on it. Whenever I share my work, I share it with joy. I want other people to see it, and that’s contagious because I believe in the work. Other people believe in my work too.
You can also fake it till you make it. Confidence is such a learned skill, and you can learn it by faking it and doing it even when you don’t feel confident.
You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by posting on social media. Just do it when it feels good.
How do you balance creating art because you genuinely love it with the pressure to make content for social media? Has being online changed your artistic style or the subjects you choose to explore?
Milly: I’ve learned to make content creation part of the process. This year in particular, I’ve really enjoyed making content. I’ve now fully integrated it into my practice, and I’ve learned the type of editing I like to do, along with all the shortcuts that make it super efficient.
That means it doesn’t feel like a burden.
It was a big learning curve when I started taking social media seriously because it’s hard to detach your value as an artist from how your work performs against statistics like views and engagement. That took some getting used to.
I’ve adopted the attitude that, as long as I’m making artwork, I’ll always have stuff to post, and if I always have stuff to post, there will always be opportunities coming my way. None of that depends on how well something performs.
Performance is important, but it isn’t as important as making the artwork. That’s the attitude I’ve taken over the last year or so as I’ve been doing social media as a job.
Sometimes I don’t film. I’ve realised that making the art is the most important thing. If I know filming is going to take away from that experience, or mean I won’t do the artwork because I can’t face filming it, I just won’t film it.
I need to make the art. It’s part of who I am. As a creative, you’ll probably understand that too: if you’re not making and doing the thing you love, your quality of life decreases because it’s part of who we are as creative people. We need that creative outlet.
My artistic style hasn’t changed as a result of social media. In the past, I’ve sometimes leaned into things that are popular. For example, there was a period when I painted lightsabers and took commissions for them because I made a video painting my ex-boyfriend a lightsaber for Christmas. It went viral, and for ages I took those commissions because they were good money and people really enjoyed them. I didn’t mind doing them, but it was initially my idea.
I’ve never bent to the whim of what people wanted in the comments. For the most part, my work is well received, so I don’t really need to take suggestions. I really like what I choose to do.
I’m in such a fortunate position now that my audience is quite large. Whatever I choose to do, at least a fraction of that audience will enjoy it.
I’ve taken suggestions in the past and leaned into things people will enjoy, but I’ve never sacrificed my artistic integrity, if you will, to a comment. I’ll take suggestions, but I won’t make art solely based on what other people want to see. I’d rather make what I want to make.
You clearly love birds. What is it about them that fascinates you as an artist? And is there a particular bird you never get tired of drawing?
Milly: I’ve always found most of my inspiration in my day-to-day life. When I started taking an interest in birds, I started painting them too.
I don’t think there’s anything in particular about their physical form that makes them more appealing to paint or draw, but the more you learn about them, the more you realise they’re such beautiful, intelligent creatures. There are so many types, with so many colours. They definitely have artistic appeal.
I also find it awesome that they have an extra dimension in which they can exist because they can fly. We have an X and Y axis, and they have the Z axis as well. It’s super cool.
As for a bird I never get tired of drawing, I didn’t have one that came to mind immediately, but when I looked through my work, I realised I’ve drawn so many pigeons. It’s proportional to the pigeon population in London. They’re the birds you see most often, so of course I’ve drawn them the most.
I think pigeons are underrated. They have so many colours, and we’ve done them dirty as a species. They deserve to be celebrated every now and then.
The other bird I draw a lot is the heron. They’re my favourite birds to see. They’re pretty common, but they’re so funny-looking and a bit clumsy for birds with such long limbs. I really like drawing them. They’re super fun, and I love spotting them.
If you could spend a day sketching anywhere in the world, with unlimited time and no pressure to make anything shareable, where would you go, and what would you fill your sketchbook with?
Milly: I’d choose somewhere pretty close to home. My family have a bungalow on the Norfolk coast in a really tiny town.
We’ve been going there for a very long time. My dad was little when my grandma bought it. Every time I’m there, I paint something, and it’s usually the lighthouse. I can’t tell you how many renditions of that lighthouse I have in my sketchbooks and on canvas.
It’s such a small place that it’s always peaceful. You get there and immediately relax. Nothing bad can happen there. It’s so quiet and tranquil, and it’s one of the best places to make art because you’re unburdened by any kind of busyness.
You’re so far away from work that it can’t really touch your day, and time moves more slowly by the beach. It’s such an amazing place to be.
I could have chosen anywhere in the world for this question, but I don’t think anywhere has the same appeal as the coast. There’s so much different subject matter around.
Because I live in the city there’s so much hustle and bustle. It’s nice to change the scenery, get away from all the building structures, rectangles and straight lines, and be surrounded by organic forms, colour and shape.
Whenever I’m there, I always feel creatively restored. So I’d choose Norfolk in England.
Looking at your work now compared with a few years ago, what do you think has changed the most about you as an artist, and what are you still trying to figure out?
Milly: The best thing about art is that you never fully have it figured out. If you think you know what you’re doing all the time, you’re not growing.
I still have so much room to grow, and I’m so early in my career. I have so much time ahead of me, and I often remind myself of that. I’m super excited about the future.
For artists, some of your most successful years can come in your 40s and 50s. I know I’m doing really well now, but I also know I have so much more to look forward to, which is exciting.
In terms of my practice, I trust my artistic intuition much more now. Being persistent and dedicated over the last few years has shown me that what I make is working for me. I really trust what comes to my brain and my hand when I’m making art.
I’m much looser and less of a perfectionist. I know I can make things perfect later on, but the most important thing is to start and bring my ideas to life. Ideas have an expiry date, so you need to make them exist before you forget about them.
Another big change in my art is that I have a studio. That gives me the opportunity to work outside my sketchbook, make more paintings and try many different techniques.
Going to Central Saint Martins really helped with that because you’re exposed to so many more resources and artists. I’m much more experimental now than I was in the past, when I stuck to what I knew. Having a studio means I don’t have to work exclusively in my sketchbook because I have space to do other things too.
Follow Milly on Instagram – @MillyDoesGood
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