What is a sketchbook? Depends. It could be a vast stockpile of trial and error efforts all on the path to finished work completed elsewhere. A sketchbook could also be a finished work in its own right, a showpiece, every page its own complete and final piece of art.
Artistic anarchist or dogmatic creative? Examples abound.
One of the best and easiest ways to become an artist is to always have a sketchbook handy and use it. A good artist is never far from his sketchbook. I use mine and I have at least one with me all the time. My sketchbooks are many things but rarely are they tidy and they’re never art pieces in their own right. I do sometime try though.
Showpiece proponents argue for perfection. One popular YouTube artist begins by describing what a sketchbook is not, ”I don’t mean random dog-eared cheap and nasty books filled with scribbles and half-baked ideas for major projects completed elsewhere.”
The Youtuber goes on to argue, “A sketchbook is an end in itself, it's the final product, it’s an art piece” And then they thumb through some gorgeous sample pages. See for yourself at the link above. In 2019, a writer for My Modern Met, curated a collection of 14 sketchbooks by a cross-section of artists working in different styles. The selected sketchbooks are exquisite evidence for the precious object argument. See the story here.
Poor me the antithesis. My sketchbooks are an amalgam of every whim, notion, guess and want that ever crossed my creative brain. Here’s support for my camp. I've unknowingly followed Jane Davie’s advice all my creative life. She says, “So this is a sketchbook and this is the kind of thing I do in a sketchbook. “...fool around with new paints, get acquainted with paints in a sketchbook. Get to know your materials without the pressure of making 'art'. Davies also makes “mood boards" where she collects elements on the page (of her sketchbook) that she'd like to use in a larger work.
Like Davies, JMW Turner's “The Channel Sketchbook”, ca. 1845, features notes and pencil sketches alongside schematics in watercolor for future work. Meanwhile, Eugene Delacroix’s notebooks from his trip to Morocco show pages bursting with watercolor sketches blended over full paragraphs of notes.
My own sketchbooks long for coffee table status but also don’t fit the showpiece mold. I begin my renderings in earnest but soon digress. I pursue other interests, forever forfeiting the coffee table. My sketchbook pages include: finished pieces, collages-cum-mood boards, technical experiments, meditation practice, notes, opinions and quotes . Some sample pages can be found here
Whichever camp calls to you, the sketchbook is or should tell the story of you as an artist. It is the visual archive of your artist's mindset and progress at a point in time. Sketchbooks capture your artist's life moment to moment. Whatever your sketchbook camp, swear you’ll always include dates. Check now to see that you have. Someone, someday will be ever so grateful.
Now Showing
Please join me Friday, 1/19/24 from 4-7 p.m. for the opening of Mariana de la Vega Gallery’s “Face to Face” show. See my work, “Fair Wind to Java, Chapter 837” on found book covers. I’m joined by a host of other artists creating self portrait work in a wide variety of mediums. Should be a very fun show.