[085] Musings On Me (30): Journaling and Sketchbooks

[helenorvana]

I have never in my life every managed to complete a paper journal, I don't know what made me think I'd be able to keep up with an online one. The last time I wrote in a paper journal I was keeping semi-regularly was April of 2014, which was only about a year before I dropped this one cold turkey. No one should be surprised. It's really sad, because I love the ~look of paper journals? I have a lot of empty, very pretty journals.

Sketchbooks, on the other hand, I've finished a surprising number of? Like, I dug up and flipped through all the sketchbooks I still have possession of, and most of them are finished! Or at least, finished except for two or three pages at the very end, which is good enough for me, honestly. Okay, I just counted them, and it's actually less than that, 5 finished and 6 not, but that's partially because I just got two new ones in the past month, so I'm sticking by my "most are finished" assessment.

I've been getting back into sketching and drawing, lately. This is largely Youtube's fault. I have no idea how I stumbled across him in the first place, but I've been subscribed to DrawWithJazza for a couple of months? And following him led me to a whole bunch of other art channels, like itwentbang (Doodle Date) and MsChlosey (Chloe Rose Art), who are all delightful and hilarious. It got my fingers itching for a pencil again.

So out came the old drawing case (a toolbox with my art supplies from school: charcoal pencils and sticks, graphite pencils, erasers, a couple of inks?), out came my sketchbooks from the back of the unorganized closet, and out came my Amazon wishlist. Most of my old sketchbooks are of the 9x12 spiral bound variety, though I've also got an 11x14, a 5.5x8.5, and a giant 18x24 that was for my college class. The two I'm working in now are a Strathmore softcover multimedia sketchbook, and the 5.5x8.5 Canson Sketch. Flipping through them, I found my two main subjects other than fanart are, to no surprise, maps and fashion, so since everything is spread throughout all of them with no real sense of organization (which is driving me nuts), I've been working on copying things over. The small book is becoming my Fashion Journal - I've got most of the sketches transferred from one of my finished ones, and I'd forgotten how much I'd like the layered looks for a while there. My maps are all going into one of my newer spiral bound books, since it already has a bunch of map icons and stuff in there.

...and this is why I rarely manage to finish a written journal: I've already lost the thread of whatever I was talking about here and can't think of a graceful way to wrap it up, so I'll just end it here, I guess.

Comments

[domarzione]

When you find your thread again... congrats on finding your way back to a hobby that brought you joy. :)

[helenorvana]

I'd forgotten how much I loved it, which seems like it should have been impossible, and yet I went for a good several years only picking up a sketchbook once or twice a year (with the occasional exception). Granted, now that I think about it, this was both a) around the time I started teaching myself how to crochet, and b) during one of the worst periods of my life, mental health speaking, which Explains A Lot...

(sorry for the late reply, Life Happened)

[pinetreelady]

yay for using sketchbooks!

[helenorvana]

so many sketchbooks, mostly all the same boring style. time for some variety!

[merelydovely]

I have a hard time with finishing diaries as well. I've done it, but they end up being pretty spread out over the course of a year or two before I actually fill them all the way out. Sketchbooks are definitely easier.

I actually really love using sketchbooks as quasi-journals – I try to date and add context to as many drawings as I can, which allows me to look back through sketchbooks and remember what was going on when I decided to draw a certain thing. I used to draw little comics about what was happening in my life, even.

But I got a lot less consistent about that when I started carrying a laptop around when I left for college, and then things got even worse when I acquired a smartphone a few years later. Now if I have restless fingers they tend to start scrolling instead of scribbling.

Maybe the tumblr exodus will be a good excuse to start generating more of my own content instead of passively consuming...

Thanks for the sketchbook recs! I'm still working my way through my first Moleskine. Sadly, the results do not look anywhere near as cool as the photos other people post of their doodle-saturated Moleskines, but hopefully I'll get there.

[helenorvana]

(sorry for the late reply, Life Happened)

I just sorted through all of my journals, and I've filled up a lot more of them than I thought I did. None of the full ones were dedicated diaries, most of them had fan and original fic snippets, or I'd used them for notes for both school and Bible study, etc, but I've got eleven (of 29) that have something in them, four of which saw substantial use and another couple I got at least a quarter of the way through. This is not counting the two I'm actively using right now.

As for the sketchbooks, I used to draw a lot more when I was younger, and then I just kind of ... stopped, for a long while in the middle there, I'm not really sure why. Which is weird, because of my two main creative outlets for a while, writing and drawing, drawing was the one I saw the most improvement in and so was the one I stuck with for much longer.

I've seen a lot of people who use their sketchbooks for semi-journaling! Youtube is both amazing and terrible for inspiration - so many gorgeous sketchbook flip-throughs and creative uses of sketchbooks! But so many of them are watercolor or marker, neither of which I'm particularly proficient with. I've only just now started adding dates to my sketches, which makes figuring out the order in which I completed my old sketchbooks really frustrating. The nice thing about the little Fashion Sketchbook is that it actually fits in my purse, so I can take it with me and sketch on the go. I'm right there with you on the scrolling instead of scribbling when bored train, though.

You're welcome for the recs! So far I've decided I'm not a huge fan of actually drawing/painting in the softcover Strathmore (particularly painting, since the dip of the spine makes all the watercolor flow to one side or the other, depending on where I am in the sketchbook), even though I love the look of it. I don't personally like spiral-bound journals (sketching or writing) for a variety of reasons, but they're actually the easiest to draw in from my (admittedly very limited) experience. The only one of my old sketchbooks that isn't spiral-bound is a flip-up, glue-bound one, which is always losing pages.

Good luck with your Moleskine! I personally find color intimidating, as most of my art experience is in graphite or some charcoal, but I've committed to at least getting the basics of watercolor figured out so I can try out some ideas. Forward progress! Cool, doodle-saturated sketchbooks await :)