Create and capture

Painting, drawing, and other forms of hand sketching bring balance to the time spent in front of a screen.

Here are a couple of spreads from my sketchbook, which ended up in the world’s largest sketchbook collection at the Brooklyn Art Library… with rather unfortunate consequences.

At first, I spent months worrying whether the book had been lost in transit. Luckily, I had taken photos of my sketches, even though they were also supposed to be archived digitally as part of the Sketchbook Project.

I couldn’t help but think of the garden gnome from Amélie, traveling the world; had my sketchbook embarked on an adventure of its own? Eventually, it did arrive safely!

Then came the plot twist that turned the story from a charming French film into a fast-paced disaster movie: during the library’s relocation, the moving truck caught fire!

Some sketchbooks were destroyed by the flames, others by the firefighting efforts. I read a few survived, but I never heard from mine again. In the end, the entire collection was discontinued, including the digital archive.

The moral of the story?

Document your process. Take photos of your work-in-progress and sketches. You never know when your project will take an unexpected turn!