The Forgotten Sketchbook

I’ve always been annoyed with the idea of a sketchbook.

I know that sounds weird coming from an artist, but I just don’t get it. What can a sketchbook do for me that my digital tablet can’t? I mean, think about it. If I simply want to sketch, why not do it straight on the drawing board itself? I could skip the tediousness of trying to replicate what I made in the first place and hey, if I like it, I can keep working on it. It’s like magic in my fingertips really, where my pen can play the role of both the ink and the eraser, in a multiverse of colours that a single pencil can only dream of beholding. It truly is almighty when you think about it. So, I ask myself, why do I need these ancient pages? What good does it do for me that my limitless art canvas cannot?

Until one day, the plugs are yanked out of their sockets and my limitless white turned into a standard black square. No good to draw on. The power went out, and so the forgotten sketchbook needed to be found. Those blank pages taunt me. I know I can do it, I’ve done it a million times before. I just need to get into the right headspace. Perhaps if I just flip back and forth between these pages to reminisce of a time where I knew I had once done the thing. You know, the thing. Oh, don’t ask “What thing?”. I’ve felt it before. Where my pen and paper meet in harmony, illustrating sweet lines of flowing positive space to create shape and form herself. It truly is amazing, that feeling. Come on now, you know that feeling. Where art and soul meet as one, and the mind leaves behind thoughts of what should or could be, because the line had not destined herself into her own fate, she was simply created.

Anyhow, I cannot seem to find it in here. All I see are scribbles. What good are scribbles when I am trying to create beautiful art? I'll find it if I keep flipping through these pages, so I flip again.

It’s been so long since I’ve taken a moment to look at what I’d drawn in this book… flip, flip, a couple of more pages, flip once more… and it’s blank. I’m blank. And there is nothing but more blankness. It’s a mess, and what good is a mess when I want to create something that makes sense? Nothing in this sketch book makes sense and I simply cannot bring myself to call these scribbles art. How uninspiring. Of course, it’s silly of me to think that I’d be able to draw something spectacular when half of the pages are blank and the other half are just full of disproportioned and fluffy concepts. Can I even call myself an artist?

Oh, be quiet! It has been 10 minutes already, and I have yet to leave a mark. Let’s just draw something. The blank page stares at me; I stare back. It’s a contest in which the page attempts to twist my thoughts into the limitless possibilities of what my mind can come up with, and it’s agony. I think the paper is winning. It recognises my indecisiveness and feeds on my deepest fears, then dares me to overcome it, to create something that cannot be undone. Of course, I can just erase a line here or there, but that makes a mess and I’d like nothing less than exceptional line work, so that I can show all my friends.

Oh no! What if my friends look through this sketchbook? I can’t show them this! I need to make something beautiful, so that I can prove to everyone that I am a talented artist. “Who is everyone?” oh, it doesn’t matter who everyone is, what does matter is this page and it’s still blank. How can I show my friends anything if there is nothing to be shown? I have yet to ruin another perfect page. I have had too many perfect pages ruined by my futile attempts at drawing. Too many books filled with lost pages of art, created to be forgotten. It all felt kind of pointless now.

I want to capture those moments. You know those moments of emotion, in which the soul captures a quick still image of what the eyes perceived the experience to be. I want my artbook to be filled with wondrous sketches that make the average person want to look twice, and then get lost in its spine. It’s just too much pressure. Perhaps I should put the pencil down.

A moment of silence passes by as I sit in disappointment. I cannot call myself an artist, because I have now put my pencil down, and what artist can make art without their tools? I cannot be an artist, because what artist does not have a beautiful collection of sketchbooks to showcase all their amazing ideas and talented linework? Am I even an artist if I don’t have any art that can be gazed upon at all? For if I do not pick up my pencil and draw, then I have not made art and therefore, I cannot call myself an artist. Oh, forgotten sketchbook, what have you done to me? If only I could delete your unfinished pages and start from the beginning again. I hold you fondly in my heart, but I do not like you. For I do not have the time to spend making mistakes that cannot be undone neatly and with precision. There are many of you and only one of me, yet today I mistakenly created you with all your flaws and all the beauty that lies within your pages. There is a story to be found within you that I, a storyteller herself, tend to forget. You may not be perfect but your character shines a light on the journey that leads me to find something more beautiful than art herself. That is, if one is to have freedom with what they create, one has to have patience to love all its challenges and imperfect edges.

For it is through you that I have learned the mastering of circles and found the hidden lines between where sense could be found. I look at your pages knowing that I can do better, but that your pages are where it all started. The world may not see you the way that I do, or may never see you at all. Yet underneath the layers of colours painted for only a moment’s glance, your lessons reside subtly in my canvas. You remind me of what art should always be, a safe space for freedom to be created within the moment. So, I shall keep you sweet sketchbook, because as it turns out, you do have something that my limitless art canvas can’t offer me - the simplicity to create, between just you and I.