VIDEO:
Welcome back to Sketchbook Time Machine, Iām Harper and today weāre talking about sketchbook journalsā how I got started and why I still keep one 23 years later. And, since this is a sketchbook story time video, Iām gonna be drawing and using water color to paint a page of at least 47 and a half characters of whatever magically pops into my head.
It was a battered old storage trunk held together with rotting leather straps that ran around the circumference and locked with flimsy metal fasteners. Not big, but a body could be folded into it and discreetly transported to the desert in a pinch.
It once belonged to my great Aunt So and So on my fatherās side, and was now sitting in our carport flaking decades of decay onto the cement floor. Somebody else in the family had held on to it until they died and it was passed on to my dad.
We opened it with a skeleton keyā itās super hazy nowā but I think there were some clothes, a few books of little interest,Ā a pair of shoes… and maybe a bible inside. They werenāt my memories, so I didnāt understand why anyone would keep them. But on the peeling, water damaged bottom of the trunk were two scrapbook journals.
I was in my late teens and didnāt care about old stuff from people I’d never met. I had always enjoyed the scrapbooks my mom made, but they were well crafted, good-looking collections of my immediate family in funny clothes and regrettable hairstyles.
These bound time capsules pulled from an otherwise collection of junk held photos, newspaper clippings, movie ticket stubs and hand written journal entries in the margins and open spaces of the weathered pages. A piece of a 45 record, a gumball machine ring, and a second place ribbon from the state fair were barely sticking to the pages with cracked yellow glue.
The first one was pretty full but the second went mysteriously blank about halfway through as if the author had said, āAh, who caresā and quit. I wasnāt enamored or amazed, epiphany hadnāt touched me in the secret places, but I liked something about those books. And though I never found out who they belonged to, the idea of personal experience being recorded and available for future discovery was intriguing.
A few years later I started keeping a mini journal in the Ansel Adams monthly planner Mom gave me for Christmas every year. (I think today the style would be called a bullet journal.) Short weekly recaps with a handful of standout stories and mundane reminders. I kept these little reports for three or four years planning that I might move on to a full size journal at some point.
I think that early experience ofĀ finding those old scrapbooks with part of a stranger’s life story locked in the time-worn pages stuck with me. In the summer of 1995, I moved a hundred miles from home to start my first big-time art job and a new chapter in life. Being in this exciting and inspirational place, it felt like the perfect time to start recording my experiences.
I’ve kept a sketchbook journal ever since.
Out of sheer embarrassment, there are plenty of entries that I would love to black out like a redacted government UFO report, but the good stuff and memories far outweigh the screw-ups and naivety.
So why write in a journal? Artists usually keep an ongoing sketchbook to practice drawing and try out new techniques,Ā but why add words into the mix? I think the writer/artist Austin Kleon answered this question with a great 1,2,3 punch.
1. It helps me pay attention to my life
2. I have a terrible memory
3. Itās a good place to have bad ideas
Iāll add a fourth reason to the list:
It’s my therapy.
In addition to the ideas, drawings, writing scraps and small delusions, it’s a place to unload all the garbage in my head where the only opinions are mine. A self-sounding board. You can write ugly things and get stuff off your chest. Itās a steam vent for lifeās hogwash so I donāt stab the next jerk I meet.
Writing is a great way to get your head right and get your stuff togetherā like a long drive on an open highway. A journal is the place for those secret project ideas, grand designs and thoughts youāre afraid to say out loud.
Bonus Value: Itās a great progress report that shows how youāve improved your writing, drawing, and critical thinking skills over time. A personal inventory and life review. Meditation. Motivation.
Sounds great, right? Well hereās the catch:
Unfortunately, this time machine is only programmed to travel backward. You can only time-jump through history. Itās a great tool for plans, goals, and mind maps that project into the unknown, but the future is always a blank page of possibilitiesā¦
All right, hold on, that last part was super cheesy, I knowā¦ but the thing is, itās also true.
