Sketchbooks (revisited)

[ben swift]

I use a sketchbook everyday. I don't really like moleskins, I use a 8.5x5 black book kind:

[standard]

I don't carry around a big sketchbook much anymore, unless I'm specifically going out to draw somewhere. I usually keep my Miquelrius graph paper notebook onhand all the time. I am always writing down random shit, ideas, notes, shit to google, etc in it, but it is never used for drawing anything near finished art. Like my W!T!F! ideas - since the comic isn't exactly a visual tour de force - usually look like this:




which of course is more concerned with the script than the "art", which ends up like this here:



On the other hand, most of my artwork for Broken Lines I draw the "finished" artwork right in my sketchbook (run o' the mill hardcover Caslon 9x12), because I am lazy and cheap. So a crappy Sharpie drawing -



is magically transformed into a crappy Sharpie drawing with computer shit on top of it -

[Plantweed]

I've always sketched. I have all my stuff going back to elementary school.

[adrenochrome]

I would say 90% of my work begins with sketches. I stopped carrying around a specific book because they often got left behind after long nights at the local Denny's and various coffee shops.

Lately, I have been really bored at work, so I just grab some paper out of the copier and go to town. I can basically knock out the majority of the "thinking" work while I sit in my cubicle. I guess the bosses do not mind, because I have been caught in the act numerous times. It probably helps that I do not smoke cigarettes every 20 f'n minutes like the rest of the staff.

10 years ago, I wound up losing my entire portfolio of my High School work in a very nasty flood. I probably had about 6 full books of ideas including works for a comic book a friend and I wrote in the 5th grade. I am kind of tearing up as I type this.

[JohnnyThief]

I never use a sketchbook. I have plenty, people keep giving them to me, & I have a great leather cover that fits sketchbooks, with cool Sailor Jerry tattoos on them. But I hate it. I never want to sketch in a sketchbook. It seems so formal, like a real book,... & if I hate something, I can't rip out a page & throw it away.

The converse is that most of my art starts on shitty copy paper, where I think I'm just going to rough something out. Then things work out & sometimes I take that rough on shitty copy paper to finish. So I have boxes of paper at the shop,... it's fairly retarded,...

[adamturman]

I have used sketchbooks regularly since Junior High, so going on about 19 years now.

I was really gun-ho about it through college and just after, and now I pretty much just write down notes and super quick little scribbles/thumbnails to get compositions going.

I'll have to take a pic of my shelf of books.

I'm using with Ben Swift posted, but mine is like 9x12 or something.

[Steve Chanks]

Adrenochrome, I feel your pain. I would be a wreck if I lost any of my books.

I actually carry a sketchbook everywhere and draw in it very often, on the train, at work where ever. I've also gotten into the habit of cutting out and pasting my printer paper, bar napkin, loose leaf doodles into my sketch books just so I don't loose them.

The sketches in my sketch book actually become all of my finished illustrations.

[Pedini]

Originally Posted by Steve Chanks

The sketches in my sketch book actually become all of my finished illustrations.

same here. I do a lot of enlargement to get them to poster size, but it adds character to the line. The problem is that some of those drawings look cooler in pencil, and then once I ink them and erase the pencil so I can scan they die a little. oh well.

[Pedini]

I plan to sell all of my sketchbooks for a villa in France some day.

Or, to start the fire in my grill.

[Plantweed]

I had all my college art wrecked in a flood, three big boxes of it. Had to throw most of it out.