117. Does Your Sketchbook Need A Privacy Setting?
Plus, an easy way to add drawings and COLOR to a notebook!
Is your journal public, semi-public, or private?
I’ve been thinking about something Tina said last week:
In the past, I briefly tried keeping an abbreviated journal in my sketchbook, but I tend to feel that my written thoughts are private, while my sketches are not. I felt self-conscious sharing sketches when some unedited writing was on the facing page. After that experiment, I decided I would always segregate sketches from writing.
But while githerments are certainly personal, they usually don’t need to be kept private (most are more fun if shared). Maybe I need to keep written and drawn githerments in the same place. The book would certainly be more interesting to look through that way.
This is something I’ve been thinking about, too! In a weird way, my sketchbook was starting to feel too impersonal, too share-able. I wondered if there was a way to put more of myself into it, without filling it with deep dark secrets that made me want to hide it under a loose floorboard at all times.1
So when I started thinking about this idea of githerments—of using a journal or sketchbook to record all my weird little interests, the things I read, watched, wondered about—that felt like something that could be a little more public, a little more shareable.
But I also wanted to resist any urge to make it Instagram-worthy! I’m glad I lived enough of my life in the pre-internet era to be able to say with authority that before about 2010, artists basically didn’t show their sketchbooks to anybody, unless maybe a friend happened to drop by.
A sketchbook was not a performance, or an audition. It was a tool. An idea generator. A practice session. A workspace. Maybe it was a treasure. Maybe it was the thing you’d grab if the waters were rising and you had ten minutes to get out. But it was mainly useful and interesting only to you. And that’s what I want this to be.
As evidence, I submit these two pages. It includes many interesting things, including a couple of books I’d like to read, a building that I think about every time I walk by it, the first day a particular witch hazel in my neighborhood bloomed (a recurring topic of interest to me), and some stuff about this Ursula Le Guin exhibit that I might write more about at some point. Also, I’m experimenting with a different way of drawing faces, so this is one of those experiments.
Lots of good stuff! But not, I’m sure we can agree, a swoon-worthy couple of pages.
Anyway, back to Tina’s comment—I am feeling like this kind of thing can work into my travel sketchbooks or around-town sketchbooks or just generally any kind of more art-focused, share-able sketchbook very easily. Pages like this might not end up on Instagram, but who cares? The point is that I’d be happy to hand it to a friend and let them look through it. And if they wanted to ask me why I’m so obsessed with that old building? GREAT. I will tell them ALL about it!
I’ve also noticed that adding some amount of art to these pages makes me slow down and read them and think about them more. Maybe everybody has a different perfect combination of art and text, but having a little art definitely spices it up for me. So here are more ideas for adding art even if you’re not usually a drawer of pictures:
