My notebook fetish

What can I say? I can’t help myself. When I go into a shop and see a notebook I like, I have to buy it. I have at least twelve and that doesn’t include my sketchbook collection.

I go through a serious rationalization routine before I buy them. I start by saying ‘Oooh a notebook…I like that.’ I then open it to check the paper quality. I then say to myself ‘Yes but I already have lots of note pads and I don’t even use them all. Do you realize how irrational this is?’

I then start to have a conversation between me and myself about how I like the notebook but buying another one makes no sense. ‘I’ then ignore the conversation between ‘me and myself’ and pick up the notebook and stick it in the trolley.

When I get home I put it on my bookshelf and hope no one notices.

I don’t think it would be so strange if I used them, but I don’t. They are all filled with empty blank pages. Buying the notebooks isn’t really the issue; it’s the reason why I struggle to fill them that is.

I so want to fill the pages and I know that whatever I write or draw will be a documentation of my life and learning. I think about the diaries and journals handed down form generation to generation. I think about how history is evidenced by events written down by peoples of the past. I have books written about the sketchbooks of great designers and illustrators and I sit and look at their books over and over wishing I had such amazing sketchbooks like them.

I may never know the real reason for my notebook inclination, to be honest it may just be that I simply like note books, in the same way some people like stamps (I like stamps too by the way). But when I went to the Miro exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park there was a section of a letter he had written to a friend. It read:

I was a very poor student. Had little to do with my classmates who called me ‘egghead’…Quiet, rather taciturn and a dreamer. I took drawing lessons at the same school after the regular school day was over. That class was like a religious ceremony for me; I washed my hands carefully before touching the paper and pencils. The implements were like sacred objects and I worked as though I were performing a religious rite. This state of mind has persisted, even more pronounced.

This letter tells me a lot. It tells me that Miro had within in him a need to create and with that need came respect. A respect for the tools that would help him fulfill that need.

I have a respect for the sketchbook and notebooks I buy. But I shouldn’t be so respectful that I don’t use them. They are tool’s, they do hold all my ramblings and investigations. They contain my experiments and learning. They hold moments of expression. I have a sketchbook for mark making and it has become a book that I love to look through, even though I’m the one who made the marks in it, I turn the pages with respectful joy at the process I have gone through to make those marks. I really enjoy exhibitions when sketchbooks and notebooks are on show; they help me see what processes other artists are going through.  They inspire me to write in mine… oh and they also help me justify buying more books!