I haven’t drawn in sketchbooks for a very long time. I simply didn’t have them. Even when I became a professional illustrator, I worked mainly in Photoshop and immediately on commercial projects. It took many years before I “saw through” what was the meaning of the illustrator’s sketchbook and what the value of this small (and sometimes very large) collection of our victories and epic defeats was.
At some stage, namely when I was studying to be an illustrator at the Cambridge School of Art, they gave me a few sketchbooks, and they said – go draw and don’t come back until you draw everything … This was the task of the first semester. I left very angry and completely confused … What am I going to do with them? I already know how to draw … Why are they to me? Just wasting time….
But the task had to be done. And I started to paint on the sly. First, cursing and horrified at everything drawn, and then everything with great pleasure and excitement. But I screwed up this semester anyway. Because I began to really understand the value of sketchbooks much later. Now I would have coped with this task much better.
Every illustrator dreams of finding a reliable way to develop and nurture their talent. Experiments, materials research, solving various visual problems, free flight of imagination and a readiness for mistakes are reliable helpers for stimulating creative thinking. Sketchbooks allow you to practice all of the above on a daily basis without fear of judgment or criticism.
My sketchbooks are the single most valuable and inspiring asset in my professional development. And here I am in great company! Leonardo da Vinci wrote and drew in his notebooks daily, leaving behind about 13,000 pages. These pages are filled with drawings, diagrams and notes about what he saw and what he thought. They are priceless! During his life, Picasso painted 178 sketchbooks. In them, he conducted thematic, compositional and color studies, and then transferred his ideas to canvases. The excellent English painter and sculptor Henry Moore once filled his sketchbook with only sheep that often wandered outside his workshop window.
