On the first day of class my freshman drawing teacher had us all go out and buy 9″ x 11″ hardbound sketchbooks. We were expected to carry them around with us over the course of the semester, and draw constantly. Now, thirty years later, I find that I have an encyclopedia set of these books filling a shelf in my studio. Keeping journals/sketchbooks has become an integral part of my art practice and my everyday life. But the way I use them has changed.
I think of a sketchbook as something you draw in, and a journal as something you write in. And though I’ve always used the same book for both, I see that mine have evolved over the years, from more sketchbook to more journal. In the early ones I did very involved drawings, sitting for hours doing studies from nature, or drawing people. These days the drawings in my journals tend to be notational, and if I do anything more finished it’s on single sheets of paper.
My journals function as sketchbooks, idea books, diaries and scrapbooks. I always have the current one with me, in the bookbag that I carry around, along with whatever I’m reading at the time. And over the years I’ve developed certain conventions for them. For example, I’ve gotten in the habit of starting each entry with the date, time and location, so it’s very easy for me now to look back through them and see when certain ideas initially occurred, or where I was when I was writing about something. I also, early on, started keeping a list on the back page of the journal of the books I read. I list the title, author, and the date I finished reading it, and if the book made a particularly strong impression on me I put a star next to it. So at this point I have a running list of pretty much every book I’ve read during my adult life, including re-reads, and a simple rating system that is useful when I want to go back and retrieve information, or recommend books to friends. When the journal is full I put a number on the spine and add it to the shelf, and I start a new one.
These journals serve several functions for me. The most obvious is that they’re a place to store ideas so I don’t forget them. Putting them down on paper also forces me to clarify the ideas somewhat, at least enough to put them into words or a sketch, and it also relieves me of the burden of carrying them around in my head. Often seeing the idea on paper helps to spur variations. Sometimes these ideas are visual, sometimes verbal. Sometimes I’ll start with a quick drawing, spin out a verbal list of associations or connections, and then do more drawings. So the journal becomes a place to not only record ideas but also to develop them.
The journals are not just for my art practice, but are part of my everyday life. I use them as diaries; to record my thoughts, concerns and activities. They are scrapbooks that contain newspaper clippings, postcards and concert tickets. I’ve been writing songs almost as long as I’ve been painting, and the journals contain endless lists of possible titles. It’s pretty obvious how a title can be a starting point for writing a song, but I’ve also had titles launch whole series of paintings. The old cliche about a picture being worth a thousand words also works in reverse –a word can evoke a thousand pictures. Sometimes the same title will result in both a song and a painting. I keep all of these possibilities pretty open-ended, and don’t try to figure them out right away.
Keeping the journals has taught me a lot about my creative process. I see ideas appear, and then reappear months or even years later, but changed in some way. Like they’ve been percolating under the surface, accumulating resonance and layers of meaning without my awareness. I can read diary entries from years ago, see the things I was excited or worried about, and gain perspective on how they’ve played out in my life. And most of all, the journals are a library of ideas, some terrible and some pretty good, more ideas than I could ever execute in several lifetimes. I’ve learned not to edit or judge the ideas when I get them, everything goes in, and later when I look back through I pick the ones that are most promising to pursue.
When people visit my studio and see the journals lined up on my shelf, they say “Oh, you must be very disciplined. I’ve tried to keep journals before, but I always stop.” But the truth is that I’m not disciplined about it at all. Here’s the big secret, the way I’ve been able to keep these journals going all these years – I don’t write or draw in them every day. When you try to do something as a discipline, like a diet or a New Years resolution, it’s easy to start out very gung ho, then miss a day or two, and decide that you’ve failed and you might as well give up. In my case, sometimes I’m working in the journal several times a day, and other times weeks will go by without an entry. But I’ve always got it with me, so it’s there when I need it.
I’m sure many of you keep sketchbooks or journals of some kind. In what ways is your process similar to mine? How is yours different?
I will take you as a role model for how to treat my sketch books. For example, to finish one before starting the next to preserve chronology. Rereading some stuff recently, I was pleasantly surprised of how interesting some of my ideas were. – Changing the topic, today, in my yoga class, we had a guided meditation. Someone handed me a big Petoskey stone that I put on my solar plexus. I only could breathe energy into it by holding your picture of the raven with the yellow background in my mind.
David, I am envious of your ability to keep sketchbooks/journals over the years and that you are able to keep them and refer to them. And what a great documentation of your experiences!
I work out all of my ideas and images in the first stage of my paintings and that is very satisfying to me. I have periodically tried to keep a journal over the years, and like you, was required to keep one in college, but they have always felt so contrived to me. Actually I am the contrived one, I always felt too self-conscious and embarrassed when going back through them. Somehow, that hasn’t happened with keeping a blog which is a form of a journal of course. I think it’s the filter for public consumption that I have to put it through first that helps me stick with it. I’ll keep trying though, maybe someday keeping a sketchbook will stick:-)
And maybe your collection will end up in a museum someday!
David,
sketchbook = photoblog (Today
journal = blog (Photostream
There are differences, obviously, with what you say you have done, but these aren’t great. They are public of course, and from the outside it isn’t always possible to tell the difference between a sketch and a finished piece when they are both photographs. A web version is also backed up and more secure than a paper version. It is less pleasurable to browse on screen though (but it is something I do. I’m currently transferring Photostream from an old location quite slowly because I’m rereading it along the way).
However, the working model strikes me as very similar.
As to the discipline. I agree with you. It is something one does because it is useful. When it stops being useful, one doesn’t do it.
David, I started the same habit many years ago; a hard copy of my thoughts, studies, and curiousities, in some chronological order, one feature I began to add was a date at the top of the page. This way, I copuld go back and really see where my thoughts had taken me. Sketch pads eventually faded to “graph paper” pads for the same reason you mentioned; they had turned into journals.
The art of writing with our hands is an important part of eye hand coordination, it helps penmanship, allows visual altering, and the roughest sketches of thoughts can be recorded. I have lost information magnetically from disks, programs, human error, and other cyber toys, now I trust the mighty pen and paper with all my valuable tinkering, I can always transfer the info to a computer later if it is worthy. Taking notes is always useful, having a single place to place your notes is as important as taking them,(if you want to find then easily). Habit is the word here, artists should always near their tools of craft.
Tracy, I’m with you. I have tried over the years to keep a consistent sketchbook or journal but I can’t seem to stay on track or keep interested in the project. I find my comments contrived also. Although the last 2 years I have been blogging fairly consistently and really enjoy it.
And about 4 months ago I started a fresh clean sketchbook with all sorts of good intentions and I’ve been getting better so maybe the habits of writing online will pay off. There are just some comments that don’t belong on a blog and are best left for the private journal.
Thank you all for your comments! It’s interesting to hear your different experiences with this process.
I should point out that I only keep these journals because they’re useful to me. If they weren’t I’d stop. I find that my attention and interests are all over the place, and the one way for me to channel all this diverse input into my work is through these books. Also, the fact that I’m writing songs as well as painting is probably a factor, because fragments of song lyrics come and go, and I don’t want to lose a potentially good one.
If anyone else were seeing these journals, I’d probably be extremely self-conscious about them and they’d stop being such a valuable tool for me. I don’t worry about whether what I write or draw in them is contrived, cliche, or downright dumb. Much of it is. But by keeping it all going into the journals without editing it, I’m able to later look through all the garbage and pull out potential gems. For me that’s the payoff.
I wouldn’t say disiplined so much as well organized. I have scraps and scraps of papers and sketches all over the place. Journals started and never finished but never in the same place. If I could just keep it together I bet the amount of information I have would startle even me;)
This is a fun question, David.
I’m not one who’s ever been able to keep a consistent journal, but at various times, for various periods, I have. The last time, I was travelling for a couple years. Roughing it. Camping. Going to bed shortly after dark and getting up at three or four in the morning, and during those early morning hours, I would write in my journal by flashlight until it was light enough to see. I used the journal writing to practice my penmanship, teaching myself a modified italic rather than that icky cursive I was taught in elementary school and could never, ever, quite do.
But once I came back to civilization, I started using the computer to do all my writing. tracy mentioned the blog as a form of journal. Though it hasn’t become that for me, it might. I sure have a huge backlog of writings.
I think this practice of yours is really very cool. There is something intimate about writing by hand that somehow is interuppted by a keyboard. And the chance to sketch too? No substitute. An art form in its own right.
David,
It would be interesting to see you start a blog, but not if it detracts from what you’re already doing. I don’t think computers will ever completely replace handwriting and hand-drawing. But I don’t think the two things are necessarily in competetition. In particular, the private nature of making marks on bound sheets of paper is something we should value more as a society.
I’ve never been good at keeping a journal or sketch book of any kind (as my Eye readers have no doubt figured out). I do make “doodles” and take notes, but these end up all over the place, not in a book, not in (lasting) order. Its too bad, because I have a lot of good ideas that get lost. Certainly blogging has been a big help.
Arthur, I think you need a partner or a boss or a side-kick to help you get organized. You have a lot of talent but I believe it when you say, “I have a lot of good ideas that get lost.” I can name a couple of these myself.
Arthur, thank you for suggesting I start a blog. I don’t think it competes w/ handwritten or hand-drawn works in any way but one, which is time. And that, unfortunately, is the thing that will prevent me from starting one.
A blog of course is a presentation to (and conversation with) the public, and operates very differently from my journals, which are a part of my private art process. So I would never consider giving up one to do the other, but if there were more hours in the day a blog would be fun. As things stand, however, my occasional posts to A&P, and my more frequent comments, will be all the blogging I’ll be doing for the present time. Thanks again for the encouragement, though – I appreciate it.
One trick to organizing random doodle and notes is to paste them into a journal. I’ve got a number of cocktail napkins and placemats scattered through mine :)
David: I’m interested that you say “A blog of course is a presentation to (and conversation with) the public”. It could be either, or both, of course, but it could be neither as well.
This is an extract from my about page:
“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”
In quotes because it is attributed to Flaubert. There is another similar idea expressed by Margaret Atwood on the same page.
I write what I write because I want to write it. Sometimes a conversation strikes up, but not very often. Of much higher value are the email conversations that I have with people because the blog exists. The people who think I am making a presentation are a bit of a pain actually.
Sometimes I use the blog to get feedback about specific issues. It is the ability to do so that makes me use a public forum rather than a private one (well that and the fact that my handwriting skills are well atrophied), but that is definitely a ‘sometimes’.
Hi Colin. By presentation I didn’t mean a performance or a lecture, but simply making things available to be seen by others. The things that one might put on a blog are, by the nature of the medium, on public view. The things in my journals are not. Sometimes I want feedback on my thoughts, and sometimes I don’t. I don’t necessarily want to work out all my thoughts in public, just some of them.
For both Flaubert and Margaret Atwood, writing is their art form. It is something meant to be seen by others, or at least what they published was. I’m sure both have written things that they chose to keep private.
Karl,
Arthur, I think you need a partner or a boss or a side-kick to help you get organized.
Or maybe just a good kick in the side.
I can name a couple of these myself.
Go ahead.
I think I need a dominatrix.
Arthur, take two and call us in the morning :)
I think I need something stronger, Doc.