Saturday, January 30, 2010

Sketchbooks

This is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. When I was younger sketchbooks terrified me! I would buy a hard-bound book simply because I have always thought spiral bound ones look and feel cheap (in all honesty it doesn't matter, it's just a preference). The difficult part about liking a hard-bound sketchbook was that I couldn't tear out the pages when I did a bad drawing. If I did there would be evidence. That fear kept me from doing very much sketching.

Years later I still struggle a little with that fear. I am also happy to say that I'm getting better. None of us will ever be able to do our best and most creative work if we are too afraid to make a bad drawing. So I'm still working to get over it, and not care so much what anyone thinks. It's really quite liberating when I do break free.

Ryan Woodward recommended a book to us last semester called An Illustrated Life. It includes sketchbook pages from different artists and designers, along with their personal thoughts on sketchbooks. I usually read one entry a day. I highly recommend checking it out.



4 comments:

Aaron Ludwig said...

Nicely put. I need to be less afraid.

nate said...

I know how you feel. although I hope you are learning from the oones that you think are failures

Ben and Jana said...

"strange stuff"- that was funny. I think that it's great that you're willing to address some of your fears here. And I think that you can learn from anything, weather it be a (so called) failure (because really, you usually only fail when you stop trying) or a success. Keep up the awesome work!

Will Strong said...

I understand what you mean. Those hard bound books are nice ... but scary. People will see that I'm a hack.

I used to carry around an exacto knife to cut out the bad pages. But now I'm just trying not to care when I do a bad drawing.

Everyone has their own idea of what a sketchbook is for, and that's great. It's very personal what goes in there. I say just make it fun and beneficial in any way you can.

For me a sketchbook is for two things: having fun and learning. It's definitely not for creating great art.

Oh no, I'm rambling again.