One day, I gathered my scattered sketchbooks and laid them out in front of me and started to leaf through them. Some were on white bound paper, some on scraps that I taped into my sketchbook. My latest acquisition was a Moleskine that has one of the smoothest paper I could draw on with my Artline 0.4 pen and the occasional 0.6 nib for more defined outlines.

My interpretation of abstract foliages

I realised that I drew a lot. I wrote a lot, and somehow though I never made them out to be my journal, in a way, they were. The drawings and jottings of my thinkings were made permanent by ink—recorded in my sketchbook although I might have forgotten about why some came about to be.

From Marieke’s Treats and Treasures Journal

And so, I find it thoroughly lovely to look at other people’s journals and sketchbooks because the process of discovery means so much more to me than a finished product. No airbrushing, digitalization or tweaking. Just raw, unedited loveliness.

From Mattias O Adolfsson’s Sketchbook

From Kevin Cornell’s Bearskin Rug

When before I would have just tossed aside another notebook filled to the brim with silly sketches and doodles, I now keep them safely away in a drawer and slowly wishing that the pile keeps going higher and higher. I know how fast the days can pass by without ever realizing its significance, until I stumble on a small drawing I drew that made me remember that small window of time that passed by too quick.