Books, Boxes or Drawers?

Time to take stock of my sketchbooks — or more precisely, how I’m using them (or not).   My latest sketchbook is a year old and barely half full.  I draw mostly when I’m traveling, resulting in a motley collection of birds, faces, architectural details, a pinecone, boats in harbors, my leg, a hospital bed.  It’s a mishmash of colored pencils, markers, ink, graphite and charcoal.  It’s been months since my last drawing there.

I’m just not feeling my sketchbooks.   Perhaps most telling, I haven’t yet added to the sketchbook tab on this website.

A number of years ago now, a mentor made the point that we are most ourselves in our sketchbooks.  It’s where we draw solely for ourselves.  He was recounting the story of an illustrator we all knew who early in his career had a hard time garnering attention from art directors.  He felt stuck and uninspired.

Let’s look at your sketchbook. . . .  and there it was.   

He’d been pursuing one thing in his professional portfolio and quite another in his sketchbook.   Do that — make a career with that.  He did and is now an award-winning artist and writer, publishing with an A list of clients and doing his thing.

I like this story, but the underlying lesson isn’t so simple for me.  Look to your sketchbook to find your authentic self.  Yeah, . . . but no.   I see drawings that I don’t want to do more of — even if someone were to offer me a career with “that.”  Of course there are plenty of artists whose sketchbooks are one thing and their commercial work is quite another.  Be it subject matter, materials, or function. They prefer it that way.   

Not so for me — it bothers me that my sketchbooks aren’t where I’m doing engaging work.  The drawings there don’t feel like the way in to something, to anything.

In fairness, that happens elsewhere.   Media explorations, for one — I do these on loose paper.   They go on the whiteboard for a week, then to a designated drawer.  Same for color studies.  When urban sketching I bring a clipboard with loose paper.  A smattering get pasted into my sketchbook; most go into the drawer labeled “2024 drawings.” 

Daily warm-up drawings are done on cheap copy paper and are thrown into a box under the table.  All this serves me just fine.

Might these drawers and boxes be my equivalent of a sketchbook?  The drawings they hold feel like me (my crows especially) and include approaches I’ve put to work elsewhere.  They get get me thinking about my interest in the relationships between people and animals, and surface new ideas when mixed and matched on my table.

All grand things in themselves, but I’ve noticed something missing in my drawings, whether in sketchbooks, boxes or drawers.  Rarely are these pages designed.

Which brings me back to our (now famous) illustrator and his sketchbook.   With each page turn, he drew a different element, place or moment in the world of his imagining.  Complete immersion.  No sketches of his dog or drawings from a day’s outing, followed by jotted notes, thumbnail ideas and a doodle.  There is a lesson in that for me.

My intention for the next couple of months:   

Work in a new sketchbook.   Use only the materials I’m loving from my media explorations — like pan pastels, charcoal, ink, and a brayer.   Design pages with crows, chimpanzees, rats, and lab coats.  That’s it.

My sister, a writer, when she’s writing flash fiction asks, what’s the very next hook that will keep me reading?  I’ll ask the same, then draw it.   In my sketchbook.

Page 1 in new sketchbook