Piccolo: Don’t fear blank notebooks

Comments ⁹

1. Howard Tayler

   Kevin Wasden gave a great presentation at BYU a couple of years back about “sketchbooks for kids,” saying, in essence, that children need to doodle, draw, make notes, scribble, etc, and having a space devoted to that fosters creative skills in great ways.

2. Jim Lavery

   I’m too afraid to write anything in this blank space

3. patty leidy

   Jim- blank paper is our FRIEND! lol
   I USED to be scared of blank books..no more.. I go NUTS when I get a new sketchbook!
   if you’re scared of paper…and old art school trick is to take the paper and mash it up,crumble it ,ruin it a bit..THEN unfold it and you won’t be afraid of ‘wrecking’ it!
   Though you can’t really do that to a sketchbook.
   I spend time making a title page and doing all kinds of goofy stuff on it..then I can move on to the heart of the book!

   the only time I really got intimidated was when Cranes Stores closed and I bought a large amount of their calfskin- Moroocan leatherbound gilded paged blank books.. originally priced at around 75 bucks or less,but purchased for DIRT cheap, I finally got over the fear when I kept reminding myself I got them super cheap! I view them as a whole little art show contained in a fine presentation piece..HAHHA

4. George Ford

   I was afraid of brand-new sketchbooks myself until I realized that the first page doesn’t have to showcase a masterpiece. If I stop dreading and worrying about sketching, and simply shut my mind down and let it go, I have found that I’m more than pleased with the results.

   The best way to draw is to just get started. Rina’s advice is right on the money!

5. Stephen Beals

   I draw on everything. It’s a compulsion. I like to think that the people who receive my bill payments are delighted at random doodles on the blank spots, but I’ve never seen anybody I’d regard as delighted in an accounting department.

6. Dave Stephens

   Ha! I’ve always been that way too, Stephen – every blank spot on every grade school and high school text book had to be filled, relentlessly and non-stop, especially when a teacher was talking… My poor mom had to buy the textbooks from the school…

7. Bridgett Spicer

   I want to publicly thank my high school art teacher, Ms. Zinn, who insisted that every student in her class carry a sketchbook. It’s a habit I have developed & kept over the years, and like Linus and his blanket, I feel “wrong” without it. It goes everywhere with me… so I can capture the world in it. I am nearly done with #99… and I will throw a big ol’ party for number #100! Come on by!

8. Ben McCormick

   I have several unused or minimally used sketch books that I can’t bring myself to use. I admit being intimidated by the clean pages demanding that I draw upon them. I realized that this problem increased in relation to how nice the sketch book is. The cheaper the sketch book the more I would draw.

   Now the majority of my sketches, doodles, character designs and comic thumbnails are on yellow legal pads. I have stacks of them full of sketches, joke ideas, hands, eyes, etc.

9. john gustav

   You know that for every 200 drawings you do of a character your skill in drawing that character doubles, every time you reach the 200 sketches mark. another reason why sketchbooks are so invaluable