This post is part of my series, Courting the Muse. Subscribers to my email list receive a weekly prompt focusing on one aspect of creativity.

This week’s prompt: Sketchbooks

Prologue

“There’s a Barbi and Ken in a pink convertible on my kitchen table, both nekked and contorted in a way that would be impossible if they didn’t have detachable limbs”

Note from sketchbook circa 2020

Entries from 2018 in the same sketchbook based on a trip to Norway (and yes, that’s my morning chocolate in the upper right because a day doesn’t go by without a bite o’extreme dark 95% goodness in the AM).

Part 1: By the Book

You want to grow as an artist? Keep a sketchbook.

Keep a sketchbook? Wait a minute, thems teeth gnashing words for me. Fingernails on the chalkboard of my creative soul. SKREEEEEEK!

I’m an intuitive painter– no sketchbooks for me!

And yet…(dramatic pause) when it comes down to it, I’m a sucker for a blank book of any kind–all that potential, all those empty pages begging for marks…. Pages that feel rough or smooth under hand. Pages calling for ink or watercolor, crayons or collage. And don’t get me started on the binding–how it lays flat when open, doubling the area and changing the shape and you can continue drawing onto the next page. Or not.

Pages that seduce me into thinking I’ll actually mark them up one day–intuitively, of course.

So somehow–even though I’m against sketchbooks just because I AM–somehow I end up buying them over and over again, leaving multiple assorted size and shape BOOKS MEANT TO SKETCH IN scattered and stashed in every room of the house, where they multiply over night like random Tupperware lids, mismatched socks or a 4H bunny breeding project.

But I don’t just sketch in them.

I fill them with other stuff–random thoughts, brilliant ideas, to-do lists, a few doodles and drawings here and there, not in any kind of order. I just grab the nearest book, open it to a blank page (which could be in the middle of a bunch of other blank pages) and do a creative dump. The one I have in front of me has sketches from 2002 along with the observation about Barbi and Ken during Covid and the Norway sketches from 2018.

Some pages are simply a few lines representing the beginnings of ideas with color notations along the sides–drk blu, rust brn, b yellow gr. Some skip the lines and go straight to a list of colors. I have no idea what they’re supposed to be but someday I may see the list and go oh yeah, that’s the perfect palette for this piece!

Part 2: Muse Candy

On those days when you’re bored or uninspired, flip through one of your sketchbooks. Read over the entries and see if your Muse has something to say.

Once in awhile I’ll stumble upon a cryptic idea for a painting jotted down years ago–like this one:

• sky – deep grays, hints of purple and green fading into dark blue ocean
• ocean distance:dark blue/purple
• ocean foreground – lime green, blotches of purple

Bingo! I read those notes years after I wrote them and I was instantly transported back to the beach at Asilomar in the early 90s. A storm was coming in, the wind was whipping up and the light–OMG, the LIGHT! The clouds were purple and gray with hints of green and where clouds met water was a band of the darkest blue and purple, so dark I couldn’t tell where water and sky came together but they did and then it all became the brightest lime green towards the shoreline.

It. Was. Unreal.

Today I would’ve whipped out my cell phone but back then I had to take a mental picture, scribbling notes on a scrap of paper that ended up taped in a sketchbook.

Years later those brief notes and my memory created this:

Was this an exact rendition of the memory? Absolutely not! But it’s a painting inspired by a memory that would have undoubtedly remained buried if I hadn’t written it down. And now it graces the home of lovely collectors in the valley.

Part 3: Your Turn

So yeah… sketchbooks. Love ‘em, hate ‘em, hoard ‘em. Turns out they’re less about being perfect little art journals and more like time machines stuffed with random genius, cryptic color codes, and the occasional nekked Barbie.

Now I’m curious—what’s your sketchbook (or anti-sketchbook) story? Got a favorite scribble that became something bigger? Or maybe a notebook full of grocery lists and world domination plans? Either way, I’d love to hear about it–especially the WDP because…y’know… Drop a comment below and let’s swap sketchbook confessions. 🖤

Until next time, keep making marks—on paper, canvas, or wherever your Muse shows up.