Years and years of ideas and inspiration
I've kept a "sketch book" for as long as I can remember. My best friend gave me a black bound version when I was in, I think the 5th grade and told me that her sister had a book like this for school. It should be filled with things that inspire me. Words, images, thoughts, anything really that tickled my fancy and made me want to create. Her sister was much older then us and going to school for fashion design. I thought she was so cool. I immediately began to fill the pages and years later I still have that book and the many that I filled after that first one.
In art school I got into the habit of keeping a few versions...
- Page after page of photos ripped from magazines to inspire me when I was working (I still make these and keep them at arms length when I need a jolt of inspiration)
- Books with actual sketches of anything from figure drawing to projects I was working on. (I also still keep this version, now filled with jewelry and web site ideas)
- What I came to call my sketch book...photos, calendars, to do lists, notes, mementos, inspiring images, project notes, movies stubs...you name it.
When I began Manic Trout I pretty much continued that same 3 book concept, and oh was I filled with ideas! I was filling the third version in three or four months at that time, starting the business and trying to figure out what I was doing. Soon however technology shifted my perception a bit, I started relying on the computer more and more and it started ever so slowly, that I hardly noticed it. Until about a year ago, when someone asked if I still carried around a sketchbook with me at all times. I realized that not only did I not, but that I had unwittingly began a digital sketchbook of sorts though the blog instead.
versions of the first category below are kept right next to the jewelry supplies
I didn't really think about it again, until a few months ago, I began to work on the blog a bit...thinking about the point of it and what I wanted to accomplish with it and I again came back to the concept that I was using my blog in place of what used to be my sketch book. That made me really happy. I had been so disappointed in myself for abandoning something that was such a part of me and that I adored so much, but now I see that really it had just evolved. Even better, now I can share it.
Now that I realize what I have been doing sub consciously, I plan on making it a bit more obvious. I will bring in more of what I missed from that 3rd kind of sketch book. I also may share a few of the pages from sketch books past, because they are so dear to me.
I keep versions of the second category of sketchbooks by my bed and in my bag
I was just going through the whole pile of them all and it was kind of strange traveling back through the years so vividly. My journals were all thrown out after the last flood, but I wasn't that sad about it as I hated reading them years later. The sketchbooks however show more then just what was going on in my life...they show what inspired me, what I was doing, what was on my mind and as cheesy as it sounds, in my heart for all those years.
A page from one of the third category of sketchbooks in 2003
It was kind of sad to see the courting and love story unfold between my ex husband and I...he is the king of little notes and sweet things like that, and so many are forever saved in those pages. At the same time though, it now seems that maybe I was so caught up in the romance that I couldn't see what was so obvious...we always wanted such different lives right from the start. Oh well, at least we did realize it and now both have the lives we desired and have grown from our mistakes.
My my, I am so wise this afternoon! Well, before I get caught up in memory lane I will sign off. I hope you enjoy this digital sketchbook of mine...and onward we go...
