I don’t know if you’re like me but I love when artists show their sketchbooks! How they put their ideas, seeds of future concepts. And everybody has its own rules. Some people doesn’t draw on pages they have passed, like if it’s not touched, it has to stay that way because it’s too late. Maybe it forces the person to make an effort to use every space and if not, there’s some sort of consequence. I don’t do that, I’ll eventually fill every blank pages but when my sketchbook is done, I won’t touch it anymore.

Some use colors and mediums. That’s a good way to try medias, but I can’t do it. I’ve tried like you can see but I don’t like it. Probably because I can’t erase anymore and I hate this feeling of lost control. And there’s is no way I’ll try watercolors or paint in it, all the pages will curl and it looks messy. I use my sketchbooks more like a personal dictionary, a compilation of my ideas so I prefer to keep them nice and clean. And because I like to have the possibility to erase, I use a HB or 2H lead. It doesn’t leave remaining streaks when it’s erased but it’s much harder to take pictures like you can see.

Main sketchbook

Second sketchbook

Also, for the past few years, I now work with 2 or even 3 sketchbooks at the same time (4 would be a bit excessive 😉 ). Maybe you know the struggle of making a small doodle of a very good idea and you want to expand it. But, of course, you drew it on the corner of the right page, which is now full, and you have to turn the page to draw it. And then, you loose your reference, doomed to turn the page over and over again. Well, no more problem if you have 2 sketchbooks!