Using a Sketchbook Commonplace Book to Jump Start Your Creative Thinking

The summer semester of Creative Thinking is coming. With only four weeks until class, my wintery and myopic mind, preoccupied with work and dulled by the grind of the New England weather, has finally bloomed and started to look forward to the horizon like a sailor in the crows nest.

With the fire of teaching rekindled in me, I take stock of the syllabus and begin some tinkering. I keep the general format of the class and the core lessons, but I tighten and hone the information that enhances them. While I am looking forward, I also look back and review a few things that struck me about the last couple semesters. From here I brainstorm on what I can introduce or communicate better to give the students more tools, information or interpretations to make the experience more dynamic and effective.

My post-mortem introspection of the fall semester, coinciding with some mind-blowing reading of Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From, actually presented me with a new way of presenting one of the core tools in the class. As it so happens to also be a very important paper-based idea connector (of which I can’t overstate the importance to creative thinking) I thought I would assemble my thoughts here and test them in the wild. Which is why this long promised blog post is about a key creativity tool: Commonplace Books.

In the large and detailed document that is the class syllabus there is a list of supplies that the students must have for the class. One of these is “a sketchbook roughly 9 x 12.” By the second class I notice that two camps form: students who embrace the sketchbook as though they have been looking for permission (or an excuse) to buy one and carry it around; and students who only bring a sketchbook to class when required. In lieu of a sketchbook as a constant companion, this group likes ruled notebook paper, small lined journals, and other structured note-taking items that have lines, margins, and generally no really great place to let your mind wander.

It is important to mention here, that I have no bias against how the students are taking notes in the class or using note paper or their sketchbooks. My main focus is that the information is engaging, that it helps them learn, and they have a place to capture their thoughts. To a certain extent though, from my perspective as a teacher, that requires the right tools. Through the last few semesters, I have begun to pick up on an increased level of “Why do I need a sketchbook?” or even as I was asked one time after class “How do I use a sketchbook?” (which is a completely valid question.)

I have come to realize that to a group of highly intellectual and analytical graduate students a sketchbook is an oddity. It was something that some of them had never worked in or owned before, and many believed that sketchbooks are solely for sketching. I understand that this makes it a discerning object, especially if drawing as a form of self expression is not your forte.

Even more "terrifying" is that which also makes the sketchbook so great---finger-flip after finger-flip of blank pages. No lines running right to left to tell you where to start and keep your writing. No lines to sever illustrations or charts. No margins to keep everything framed and boxed in. Just blank pages that can be filled with a little, or a lot. Categorized however you deem to place the information. Diagonal writing, full bleed images, illustrations and text, just images, cut outs, sketches, collage, lists, ideas…there is nothing that can’t go into a sketchbook—that wild white abyss—and become a testament to your creating something new and unique centered around a single theme or a testament to your exploration of ideas.

Also, without lines, the possibility exists that the true nature of your crooked handwriting is revealed and with it—the freedom to create mind maps and integrate other images and things that you may discover your mind likes to read much better—and, most importantly, sparks ideas from the randomness and spontaneous placement of the gathered information.

Which brings me to commonplace books and why I am going to begin the summer semester by making the disclaimer that the Sketchbook tool for the class is really a Commonplace Book—a place to gather ideas. To integrate mediums, to take notes, draw mind maps, do musical interpretation exercises, list things, etc.

Commonplace books date back to the late 15th century Europe and played a key part in the intellectual ideas of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Key thinkers used common place books with the goal of nurturing focused thought and logic to lead humankind away from superstition and old traditions (ultimately this thinking leading to the ideas that inspired the American and French Revolution). Commonplace books were also a way for the people of the time to deal with information overload. Similar to our fascination and frustration with the Internet now, the invention of the printing press provided a never before seen amount of information in the form of books and pamphlets. The information would be amassed (through copying or pasting) by scholars and thinkers into their commonplace books and interspersed with personal thoughts, quotes from letters, illustrations and other relevant information that related to the owner’s passion or the theme of the commonplace book.

Commonplace books also by their very nature integrate two of the most essential elements of learning and mentally processing information: reading and writing. By arranging and commenting on the information gathered in a commonplace book, not only are reading and writing a continuous joint effort for understanding the world, but the information also comes together in a unique way to spark new ideas. Johnson discusses how the commonplace book plays an important part in “the slow hunch.” As the owner of the commonplace book rereads or browses all of the information, the lack of organization leads to a more organic and powerful source for fostering ideas or sparking the final “ah ha” of a hunch. Johnson recommends, “Imposing too much order runs the risk of orphaning a promising hunch in a larger project that has died, and it makes it difficult for those ideas to mingle and breed when you revisit them. You need a system for capturing hunches, but not necessarily categorizing them, because categories can build barriers between disparate ideas, restrict them to their own conceptual islands.”

This organic, intensely unique, idea-sparking book is the special roll that a sketchbook can play when it becomes a commonplace book.

A little extra:
• Commonplace books can contain any assortment of information, from ideas to observations, from recipes to photos and scraps of textiles. The most important thing is that you have a place to capture and integrate items that spark your thinking.
• Commonplace books are essentially sketchbooks, just customized with information rather than sketches. So you have lots of styles to choose from. Just remember that the most important thing is to get started and then, as your common place books grow, figure out what are the elements (size, shape, paper weight and texture) that help you work best.
• Commonplace books have been at the side of some of the world’s greatest thinkers: Darwin, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau to name a few.
• In recent literature, Klaus Baudelaire, of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events keeps a commonplace book.
• For more information on ideas and the role of commonplace books, I highly recommend Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From. Also wiki is a great source of information to get you started if you want a more detailed history.

Delay Tactics: In Search of the Perfect Sketchbook or Refreshing Your Relationship with Your Sketchbook, Part II

A few weeks ago, inspired by my desire to reclaim my sketchbook usage from the acres of business meeting notes taking over its pages, I set out on a short walk to the local art & craft store. With the treaspassing fickleness of Goldilocks, I had been through many sizes and shapes of sketchbooks in the previous months. My intention now, was to return to my visual, idea exploration roots in the soon-to-be-found, Perfect Sketchbook.

With the precision of a visual thinker and one who obsesses over paper, I had been mulling it over for weeks. I wanted a sketchbook that was at least 8.5 x 11, thin rather than thick for ease of carrying, have a hard cover, rich smooth pages possibly perforated, a pocket and an elastic closure for when I abusively stuffed things inside the cover.

Thirty minutes later, twenty of which had been spent comparing sketchbooks from the generous selection that crowded the long aisle, I was still not satisfied. The options existed but never in the right combination. I headed home, determined and stubborn and still without a sketchbook.

In the next few days, I hunted down sketchbooks during visits to book stores, paper stores, and art stores all without discovery of The One. It was beginning to turn into an exercise in over-thinking and (I began to scent) a procrastination tactic. There was a lurking left brain sense that only this Perfect Sketchbook would help me return to a sense of play and productivity. Not true, I said. It is only a vehicle, only a tool.

So I returned to my starting point in the aisle of the art & craft store that smelled satisfyingly like fresh paper and oil paints. The worn linoleum of the aisles was smooth and dusty under my soft-soled shoes. I worked my way back through the aisle, touching the textures of the sheets, the heft of the book in my hand, until I found it: a sketchbook very close to my dreamed up specifications. With its canvas cover, slim page volume and thick paper, I decided it would do just fine.

The lesson learned was not one of looking and not seeing (although that too is true) but of setting an expectation level that prevented me from quickly taking action. This idea that I needed The Perfect Sketchbook to begin my new mission, was a classic over-thinking tactic of believing in the tools more than myself.

When I came back to the aisle of the art store, I let myself experience the selection as it was, rather than projecting what I wanted onto it—which inevitably lead to nothing being the right fit. Similarly, sometimes when we are creating, it is easy to shut ourselves down based on an aspiration, rather than taking an idea from where it currently is and working through the many stages of action to make it into what you want it to be.

When I reconnected with my goal, I knew that it wasn’t about obtaining The Perfect Sketchbook, but actually reconnecting with my visual, curious, playful self on paper using the sketchbook. In stepping back to see the big picture of the goal, the elements of what would work opened up before me.

Thinking Points

This experience was a nice way to see some of my behavioral and thinking habits and inspired some questions that may be of interest to you too.

• What artist tools do you use that make you feel more creative than others? Do these empower you or limit you in anyway?
• What ideas are you not putting into action because of lofty ideals? Is there a place that you could start teasing out the idea and be comfortable experimenting?
• Are you attached to a certain style of sketchbook or type of writing or painting tool? If so, what would happen if you swapped it out with something different? How would your work or thinking process change?
• Are there any points of a project where you are stuck? If you re-address your goal on a broad level, does it help you see beyond the sticking point?

Recommendation:
If any of the above points resonated with you, take the time to try something different or step back and gain a different perspective. Write/draw/explore the answer in your sketchbook (of course!) Also, responses and sharing to the above questions are always welcome.

What the Water Taught Me or Refreshing Your Relationship with Your Sketchbook, Part I

Postcard No. 3

Remembering Night Swimming

Mixed Media, Collage

Several weeks ago, right on the heels of the amazing Ghost Hunter’s weekend, my boyfriend and I arrived home to find our basement flooded with nine inches of water.

Driving home in the cloud soaked twilight, the neighborhood was an eerie scene, with the rain streaming down and fountains of water bubbling up from the manhole covers and storm drains. My intuition said it didn’t bode well for our seepage-prone basement and I was, sadly, correct.

We lost a few things, some that can be replaced and some that can’t, but thankfully important items, like my sketchbook that my mom kept from when I was little, made it through perfectly dry. My large, unwieldy art portfolio was in the basement and while some of the contents were quickly subscribed to the trash bin, other items, like my sketchbooks from college, I couldn’t give up on and I dragged them upstairs and set about a campaign to dry them.

For weeks, my sketchbooks were spread out on the radiators around the house or, on nice days, propped up in the windows of the back porch, the breeze fluttering the thick damp pages.

Not being one to sentimentally return to mull through things, it was an interesting lesson for me to see how my use of a sketchbook has changed. In college, my sketchbook was filled with images, sketches, design ideas for silk scarves and pillows. I used my sketchbook as a place to try out ideas and play before putting paint to paper, or dye to silk. Sometimes, there were also just big, emotionally-driven, playful drawings or the drafts of poems that later were published.

The sketchbooks, as they steamed and curled on the radiators, lived and breathed with images and the play of ideas. They clearly showed a colorful phase in my artistic journey.

In contrast, I realized that my current sketchbooks are filled with more notes than ideas. That business meetings and To Dos dominate the pages and the occasional “this-meeting-should-have-ended-20-minutes-ago” doodle decorates the edges. There are also notes on books I am reading, or activities and ideas for things that I want to improve in my Creative Thinking class. So while it is important material, it is very distant from the colorful playfulness of the pages of the previous decade.

I like the liberty of having a sketchbook for work, but it made me realize that I need a sketchbook to play in again—and that I need to take the time to play; to return to more visual exploration and expression.

The other thing that I saw in my open and drying sketchbooks was that they held the blue prints of many projects that had made their way from idea to tangible object. Which was an interesting observation—creating a master sketch seemed to make something happen. That or I was just closer to a finished project at the time that I was testing it on paper.

The damage of the basement flooding served as a catalyst for not only looking at my artistic process but specifically my use of sketchbooks and the role they play in cultivating ideas. The resulting search for a new sketch book and its insights are topics for my next post… Until then, I invite you to think about your artistic journey and how you can refresh your relationship with your sketchbook in the activity below.

Sketchbook Meditation

This activity is designed to help you take a look at your own work and see if you there are some new directions or explorations that may stimulate new ideas or work flow habits.

Take out your current sketch book (hopefully it is always nearby!) or, even better, if you keep sketchbooks, take out a selection at random and line them up. Flip randomly through the pages and observe what you see about how you work. Some questions to ask yourself:

• Do you use a lot of words or do you use more images?
• Is there a focus, or do you cover a wide variety of ideas and topics?
• What mediums do you use (paint, ink, pencil, mixed)?
• Is the information organized or random?
• Do you go back and review pages or information?
• How many of the ideas in the sketchbook made it into bigger, tangible pieces?
• How many of the ideas are “blue prints” and how many are exploratory or from playing?

After going through the questions above, think about what you may want to introduce that is different in your current sketch book. Maybe you realized that you want to play more or use more visuals. Maybe you want to better balance blue prints vs. playfulness. Maybe you want to use paint, rather than your standard pencil.

Pick one item/element from your observations and introduce it to your sketch book in the next week. See what happens and how you feel about your relationship with your sketchbook and documenting your ideas. Hopefully it will be a little bit of a “refresh.”

Want to get an idea of how others are using their sketchbooks? Check out http://sketchbooks.org/