Sketchbook: as always, rely on stationary

One thing I have always believed in is new stationary makes you creative. It’s something I’ve been more sure of than anything else in the world. From the beginning of my life, and particularly in my teens, the solution to not drawing or designing enough was to go out and buy a new sketchbook or notebook and maybe some new pens or pencils, with the hope that one look at the blank pages of this fresh new sketchbook would inspire me to fill its pages with all the ideas I had floating in my head. But that’s where things just didn’t work out. 

Once I had bought the sketchbook and new pencils, sure, I did use it, but just a bit. I would fill the first couple of pages with ideas I had the day I bought the book, (which were normally fairly good ideas too) then I would do something else the next day, and the next, and the next. The sketchbook would become a bit of an afterthought, beginning to slowly collect dust on the desk shelf, silently dreaming of attention. It would occasionally be used again when I decide I haven’t drawn in a long time, but the passion wouldn’t be there, and the sketches and ideas would just turn to doodles. The once loved sketchbook is now lumped in the same category as a school book, just aimless doodles to pass the time until something more fun comes along. In the end, stored on the shelf would turn to put in the draw, and when something gets put in the draw, it never comes out.

But then, months or years later, I get the feeling that I’m not designing enough, not drawing enough. So, with the logic I’ve used so consistently before, I head down the shop with a pocket of cash and a head of ideas, and the sketchbook cycle continues. The 21 sketchbooks and notebooks with a handful of designs and hundreds of blank pages in my desk draw are evidence to that.

But now I’m thinking differently. Having opened the draw to tidy things up I found the sketchbooks, like the airplane graveyard of paper, and I looked through them and saw how many there were, how many blank pages were screaming “Fill Me! Fill Me Seymour!”

So those books are going to get resurrected and get the filling and attention they need. I won’t buy another new sketchbook until the ones I own are all full and I’m going to see how that turns out for me.

Saying that I did see a Moleskin today that I was rather attracted to. It will have to just wait.