My very first sketchbook, which I started in 2004, was just titled “SketchBook I” and it took me about 3 years to fill it, despite the fact, that it only had 80 pages. I didn’t draw as much then as I do nowadays, but during the last pages of that sketchbook I realised, how much fun it is and that I want to be really good at it and would like to make a living out of it at some point, so I started to draw much more often …
Around that time I thought about how sketchbooks are kind of best friends to oneself, or maybe the term children is more suiting in this case, you care for them most of the time (somedays you don’t), they are like companions and follow you everywhere when you let them.
But what would children be without names? So I decided to give them names (Gilmore Girls is probably to blame for that), names that have a meaning for me, not just random human names, but more like phrases that relate to me, my state of mind or to media, that impresses me in a touching way. These names also give my sketchbooks a personal, an alive touch, at least for me that is.
Beginning with the second one they will also have individual covers, which correspond to the particular names.
Additionally I decided to also categorize my new sketchbooks:
• Sketchbooks that I only draw into when I’m not at home, so everything I draw in parks, during trainrides, during classes, at friends, at bars and so on, ends up inside these. I do some clean ups and flesh outs on pages in these sketchbooks at home on occasion, but the main ideas and roughs are done outwards.
These sketchbooks belong to the category “SketchBook Urbane” or SBU in short.
• Then there’s a sketchbook on my desk that only contains fleshed/rendered out drawings, though its still pretty empty and I should draw inside it more often, but thats not the point right now.
This sketchbook belongs to the category “SketchBook Royale” or SBR in short.
• Furthermore I plan on getting sketchbooks extra for the purpose of being a reference collection. So always when I learn something and practise it for a while until I think I got it, I would draw it inside this sketchbooks and write some descriptions and notes in addition. So these sketchbooks would act as kind of a rule book whenever I’m not sure about stuff I knew before.
I’m still not sure about the category name though, for now “SketchBook Educate” and “SketchBook Brainfood” are on my mind, but maybe something better will pop up …
• I’m also thinking about starting another sketchbook category, something like the “SketchBook Urbane”, but for the use at home, where I could doodle some ideas and experiments without having to flesh them out in the end. Right now I use loose sheets of printerpaper for this …
I’m also not sure about what to call this category, “SketchBook Zone” is on my mind, but it doesn’t fit that well …
