On keeping sketchbooks | Hacker News Reader

On keeping sketchbooks

attainablefelicity.mattkirkland.com

224 pointsmatt_kirkland81 comments

Helps to reign in the inner dialogue. At some point, a soft, friendly voice was discovered. She'd tell me to be nicer to myself. Seemingly we're 3-4, maybe 5 ppl inside this skull. Lately she changed into a nice granny and I found that it would be nice if she became my dominant self.

The current dominant self is all about herself, addicted to gaming, distracted, annyoing and anxious, and yearns for the end of life when frustrated. I'd never noticed these things if I hadn't given them a voice.

goes like this:

I'm dumb, I'm worthless, everyone would be better w/o me

her voice: What happened?

current me: I can't do this, this should be easy, I want to be dead

her voice: That so? What's your fear with this?

current me: I could be seen as lazy, I'd rather be dead than be seen as lazy

her voice, ironic tone: seems rational

Then the voices just stop and I can refocus... it's really weird. Anyways. Journaling really helps!

That was beautifully put. Thank you for that story.

I have also used analog sketchbooks and notebooks for a long time. Recent years it has been mostly text in Apple Notes. But I think my mental health requires me to start using paper notebooks and doodle more again.

I also love the tactile and aesthetic experience of paper and pen/pencil.

I read The Artist’s Way a long time ago that suggests you should start each day with writing two pages in flow (morning pages). I have some friends who are very hooked on this and I’m about to try that as well. It is really something with expressing thoughts regularly into words in physical space.

If this is a description of your own experience then I would very much recommend reading No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz, if you haven't done so already. It will probably resonate with you and hopefully give you some tools to expand the process you're describing.

Absolutely. Internal Family Systems \ Voice Dialogue perspective enables this process to continue and deepen. I would say that IFS puts too much of an accent on trauma, healing, changing (it is therapeutic approach after all), where VD is (in my opinion) more allowing, more positive, less patologizing. It does not matter after all, the perspective of having these voices is key.

That is beautiful and gentle. Thanks for sharing.

The hell you talking about.

If you know you know. We all think differently.

Go get a notebook and a pen. Sit outside. Write about something that's on your mind from a different person's point of view. You'll discover what he's talking about.

This isn't unusual or new-age at all. Writing from a second point of view or imagined conversations as a tool for thinking goes back to at least Plato's Dialogues.

I seem to have very little on my mind, probably why I struggle to maintain journalling.

I was exactly the same. It really helped me during some of my darkest teenage years, but after few years, it just stopped. Sometimes i really missed it because i liked a lot the arguments we had. It was like someone smacked my head during various times and told me to stop with the non-senses.

During the Renaissance/Enlightenment, there was a lot of discussion among intellectuals on how to best keep notebooks/journals. A widely used system was to carry a small pocket notebook which was filled logbook style, with things entered as they came up. The material from the pocket notebook would later be transcribed to topically arranged journals. I believe I've read reference to this practice going back to Classical times. Given the frequent discussion of jornaling on HN, I'm surprised at the lack of discussion of this method.

Can you recommend sources to find out more about this?

John Locke kept one: https://fs.blog/john-locke-common-place-book/

Richard Yeo (2014) Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science

Ann Blair (2010) Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age

You may also consider looking into Morning Pages - part of The Artists Way

I've tried maintaining a diary and a sketch book and can't usually last more than 6 months before they are lost and totally forgotten. It's still nice to find them in all fairness.

I've never found any personal benefit in the moment using them, I'm not sure if 6 months is not enough or for whatever reason they don't work for me.

I tried to keep a physical notebook/common-place book, several times, but after a while i just stopped. I like handwriting but since i started using obsidian i don't believe i will return. I'm thinking perhaps of using papers as first draft or impromptu writing, and then final drafts will be stored or transferred to Obsidian.

I use paper notebooks as the first point for very quick rough notes which I then build on in Notion, for me it works really well as I can quickly write the point down without really needing to look which is better for focus in meetings etc. The act of capturing it twice also seems to embed it better in my memory as well, but your mileage may vary with that.

Yes, for years I would carry around an index card or a small notebook. I would jot down significant thoughts or events in bullet point format. Later, I would write out longform a blog post about the ideas and events of the week, trying to weave it together into a coherent essay. Having something light on me at all times was critical to capture ideas. Letting them marinate for a while was typically a good thing, since I could continue thinking through the angles and making horizontal connections to other things going on in my life.

Posts like these make me wish I could be consistant and keep a single notebook until its done and then move to the next. I always end up starting a project or scibbling down a thought on random scraps of paper. I try to organize and consolidate but really there is not much point after the fact since, if the note is made, transfering it is just busywork.

I leaned into it last couple of years, I have a 2 corkboards (a bit larger than A4 sized) on the back wall of my desk and I actually mounted a stationary clamp under one to have blank papers (A6) handy. It works pretty well until I fill them and move on to another notebook scrap paper etc.

I wish I could stick to a notebook and have everything from each time period but I have too hectic thought process I think. Maybe I could somehow combine them...

I wouldn't sweat it... it's customary to start a new laboratory notebook for each project.

The book Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher helped me get through notebooks. I could only ever get a few pages in one before switching interests.

This is the book: https://amzn.to/3OQxX4J

I started with these, and got through them easily: https://amzn.to/3YJwBx7

Now I use notebooks like this: https://amzn.to/47VJeJI

Hey, thanks! I will add this to my list of book to read seems interesting.

I bought a Supernote recently as a note-taking device, and that's worked out really well. It's almost like pen on paper to write on, but I can open new documents freely to make notes in, then consolidate them later because they're all already in one place. The stuff that's just working out or temporary diagrams I can delete later, and the rest I can archive.

On the other hand, I have gone from having a clutter of paper on my desk to having a clutter of notes on my Supernote, so maybe I've just moved the clutter from one place to another. But at least it's now less visible!

Digital notes are not for me, they seem to put up a mental barrier and have tradeoffs that I am not thrilled about. The epaper/e-ink ones have the best battery life, best feeling when writing but the delay when the display changes just halts my thinkin. When changing documents to reference especially. Also the process of changing implements (e.g. from pen to highlighter) in tablets in general just annoys me.

They are awesome for pdf annotation though, If they ever get to be a bit more affordable I would enjoy having one of these just for that purpose (maybe even in color! probably in about 10 yrs).

As i said on another comment: I tried to keep a physical notebook/common-place book, several times, but after a while i just stopped. I like handwriting but since i started using obsidian i don't believe i will return. I'm thinking perhaps of using papers as first draft or impromptu writing, and then final drafts will be stored or transferred to Obsidian.

This is awesome. I love this kind of stuffs, especially when it involves pen and paper. Reading the article, and seeing the dates on the notebook, made me felt bad. The author did realize the logic of a better dating system than we use everyday; the Big-endian is, to the best I know, easily sortable, sequential, and likely to be understood by all other cultures.

In normal conversation (either for business or personal), I like to use the "MMM DD, YYYY" format as it is easier to read and there is no ambiguity. While for recording/archiving or appending as part of a file-name, I've found YYYY-MM-DD to be most reliable.

YYYY-MM-DD is really good and I use it everywhere.

For a shorter sortable alternative see the base-36 Rickdate http://www.yak.net/rickdate/

That is absolutely charming :)

> Plus, I love the disconnectedness of a sketchbook. I can sit and think and plan in a sketchbook, and it doesn’t distract me from what I’m doing.

This is why I still keep pens and physical notebooks on my desk. It's so much faster to flip it open and start writing than opening a 99th browser tab and navigating to an empty page on Notion, all while more desktop notifications start popping up on screen. Another side benefit is the act of writing / drawing out stuff actually helps me remember things better. Sure, my handwriting is atrocious but I rarely go back and read them anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Note taking is keeping the receipts for conversations and ideas. Most of the time you move on. Sometimes you need to go back and find the receipt.

Noice! Reminds me of a bookbinder in my city that gives you full control of the journal: type of paper, type of cover, textile used on cover, side font and engravings.

It's not expensive. My yearly journal is around 20 euros.

I tried my best to explain to the owner in making an online "journal creator" but failed.

For those interested - - > ://www.bottegafagnola.it

This reminds me of the various people who kept commonplace books in the "19th century and the Renaissance": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book

This additionally reminds me of a Bullet Journal; for me, a Bullet Journal fulfills the role of the author's sketchbook; the creator, Ryder Carroll, brands it as a planner, diary, sketchbook, calendar, and a 'catch-all for life': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_journal

A quick note on the history of sketchbooks. Though artists have always drawn, it was the rise of the atelier system in France which saw sketchbooks become a thing. An atelier was a small private art school, usually run by an older experienced artist. The best ones encouraged young artists to find their own creative identity, and a part of this was going out into the wilds of the Parisian night life to draw direct from life. What distinguishes the drawings in a sketchbook from those done in a studio was that there was (and is) no need for sketchbook drawings to serve any real purpose of application. It was drawing for the hell of it... as an exploration of the world.

I throw all my sketchbooks. I don’t have a lot of space but whatever I do like, I cut them up and keep them in a “Big A3 Book” (some terrible quality paper I bought form ASDA i refuse to touch cause it upset me)

I got the advice from an artist to just throw away your drawings if you don't immediately love them, to get over the hoarding instinct and be less precious about art. Hard for me but probably a good idea!

TBH, the big book trick lasted only so long until it got full of work I didn’t care about later. I went full insane and wrote my own client app which let me take pictures of my art and version them as I was working through them. Cause I did that, it was easier to throw the originals that I didn’t feel were that great. I personally really am into the technical process so this was far more valuable to me.

I do this too! Here are some of mine: https://i.imgur.com/eVql2EO.png

I've been keeping sketchbooks since the early 90s. It's a real treat to be able to see my work from that long ago.

I've been doing more or less this with a small pocket size notebook since October. I admit that I initially fell for the romance of the idea and made an impulse purchase, but started to use them a couple of weeks after I bought them.

I tried different formats and pre-planning and have basically made peace with my reality, that I don't know what I'll be doing in it on any given day. So I operate like a log, whatever is next comes next. Sequentially. But I'll also jump to a page, or two-page spread, for notes on a particular project.

Here's what I use:

Moleskine Cahier Journal, Soft Cover, Pocket (3.5" x 5.5") Dotted, Black, 64 Pages (Set of 3) https://a.co/d/9jXRxNt

I also use a 4 color flexion erasable pen, but I can't recommend that since you're liable to lose all your notes if you leave it in a hot car. Not so bad though, it comes back if you stick it in the freezer. No joke.

I finally got rid of most of my sketchbooks and diaries this year. I found keeping mine vain. (I'm not saying you keeping yours is vain, but mine definitely was). It was liberating, like getting rid of a lot of burden of thoughts and impressions I wanted to rid of by putting them down to paper in the first place

I 'discovered' big-endian dating for myself as early as using first computers and been using them consistently over the years. It just sorts so well. I don't even use hyphens and eyes are trained to see year, month, day in 20230823 pretty quick. Used to add time with _ like this: 2023082_2340, now it is 20230823-2340. Generally I tend to always tag notes & sketches with date/time pretty much.

> Why do I keep them all? I really don’t know. But they’re fun to make and fun to look back at… even if the tower is getting a little unwieldy.

This collection is impressive and seems, from what author says, like it's a byproduct of a process and not goal in itself. I think its good to keep 'em this way.

I've migrated to Rickdate http://www.yak.net/rickdate/

For time I'm considering going base-6, base-36 or base-60 with astronomical midnight as 0, a 40 minute precision is good enough for me, matches my portable sundial, goes better with polyphasic sleeping and makes time more spacious

I'll pass on Rickdate, this would require too much time to become swift in it and advantage is dubious. I prefer to learn something else.

However, it's interesting what you mention about considering going further... Are you using portable sundial? Time feeling more specious when counted differently? I can absolutely feel it may be that way. Sleeping polyphasic? The way we count time can absolutely impact all of that. Seems you live in different frames of reference (Sun, polyhphasic,...) Could you please tell some more?

Yes, I use a portable sundial to become more aware of the positions/orbit of the sun and the possibility of measuring time with it. I also rely on my apple watch which I have in sun position mode.

I am interested in the passing of time in a psychological sense, 'when having fun', in meditation, after meditation, in flow state. https://mediaecologiesresonate.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/on-b...

When I was younger I experimented with polyphasic sleep, 6x23 minutes of sleep for a yar. Whenever I'm napping I sync the napping time up to the sun position, with current local astronomical midnight as 0 (1.37 am), and the next phases at 5.37 (1), 9.37 (2), 13.37 (3), 17.37 (4) and 21.37 (5). I'm not doing the 6x23 minute schedule for a long period due to health and social concerns, only for occasional napping, but use it also for prayer or meditation anchors, similar as to muslims or christian monastaries schedule their prayers. About the potential issues with polyphasic sleeping (which I have once maintained a year): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235272182...

YES, another rickdate enthusiast!

I even made a little demo page to help calculate for me: https://lastres0rt.github.io/rick-date/

In my drawing graveyard there is a couple dozen sketchbooks and (if stacked) a 5 foot tall pile of loose paper.

Sketchbooks are useful to me when travelling, they keep everything thing neat and in chronological order, but beyond that I like the idea of a sketchbook more than the reality.

When I start a sketchbook it's usually a belaboured drawing that sets a standard I feel obliged to live up to, and that can turn into a creative constraint.

If I really want to explore or experiment, I feel a lot more freedom with loose sheets of paper that I can crumple up and chuck across the room if the drawing isn't turning out.

> But it DOES help me actually THINK. Just like people say ‘writing is thinking’, drawing / sketching / and even note-taking is thinking for me as well.

A picture, as they say, it turns out, is worth a thousand words.

I feel like hand written notes are great for people who are artistic.. I would love to take hand written notes, and be able to connect dots with lines on a page, draw diagrams, doodle etc, but I'm just so not creative enough. I need structure. I need my lines to be perfectly aligned and spaced, I want to be able to search for things that I would have written down, because I don't remember which notebook its in. I admire people who can/do take hand written notes. For me, I need a computer (or phone) to take notes in, digitally

Yeah, it's just such a cool image, the person with the notebook at the meeting, he's probably doing something cool, with the same media that a lot of my favorite works of art and technical things probably started on.

He's got his job figured out so well it makes sense to have dedicated accessories and actually carry them around. He's a master of his tools, he must be really passionate about what he's doing(Or else he'd be staring at a screen). He's really made it.

But the actual experience... feels like work. And creates physical artifacts, which is then even more work, and phones are so highly addictive it really feels like work by comparision. Then if I go back and read them, I can't, unless I was carefully paying attention to each individual letter as I write it.

Not exactly something you can just pick up, it takes lots of experience to be able to write without being so distracted by trying to get your hand to make the letters that you stop paying attention...

Really the only time I ever write on paper these days is tabletop RPGs, a few checklists for very high profile projects worth having both digital and analog versions of, and a play I volunteered for where real paper made the most sense for tracking cues on lines of the script.

I agree! I love hand writing, I love the feel of pen in hand, and hand on paper, but it's so time consuming and inefficient for me, that it's not something I ever do

I have found I remember my notes better when they are handwritten. Even when they are messy and semi-legible.

the very act of writing it down by hand helps commit the contents to long term memory

that's a very self limiting belief. the first step to getting good at something is being bad at something. live outside the lines a little. computerized notes encourages clean crisp digital lines, pen on paper evokes analog flowing lines of freedom.

I was very inspired by Dennis Dawson's "sketchnoting" lightning talk at Write The Docs Portland 2023: https://youtu.be/Bv6VlPBLPco?si=e9w9QcfOONV0AAoi

I remember when I bought a sketchbook for myself after starting a new job, and I found just making a mess with it endlessly freeing. Instead of trying to make sure every idea I put in it was perfect, i just put was on my mind. Ideas for projects, ones that were possible (Text Editor in Python) and even some that were not (Phone that could fold twice over to become a tablet), and it was great! Just let yourself wander. Pablo Picasso had a great quote:

"When I paint my object is to show what I have found and not what I am looking for." [0]

[0]: Pablo Picasso. "Art as Individual Idea." Picasso, Fifty Years of His Art, by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1946, pp. 270 -271.

I notice he’s using roaring spring composition books. Roaring spring makes the only engineering notepads worth buying - the glue holds up, unlike all the others, and the paper is the right weight. I would expect their composition books to be better than the 99 cent ones.

Any advice that has worked for you on learning to sketch? I have a journal while travelling, and I don't have a lot of artistic talent but have always wanted sketch landscapes, objects, or people in.

Nice post! I've always kept a journal since using laboratory notebooks (and learning how to organise them) at uni. Over the decades I've settled on taking a notebook and running a bullet journal from the front page, in, and an "autofocus" to-do list from the back page, in. This year I'm hosting it inside a day-to-a-page Moleskine diary because I never really spill over one page for my daily log and I was going through three journals a year which incurs three-times setup overhead.

I kept all of my notebooks. They are a completely different insight into my work and thoughts. Travel notebooks are particularly interesting to re-read.

I went digital about two years ago with my iPad Mini. It's more convenient, especially if you keep different kinds of notes in separate sequences. However I miss flipping through the pages, and the satisfaction of finishing a notebook.

This is great inspiration. And I like the humble tone of this article. It isn't telling me to do something but is moreso presenting an idea and how it helps the author.

I have never been a good or consistent journal writer nor can I draw, but I'd like to. I have been buying some Muji notebooks to try and find a notebook size and style that I know I will consistently use.

I used to keep sketchbooks, but don't anymore. A couple years ago I took photos of every page of every sketchbook I had, then threw all of them out.

I always started these but always stopped. Instead, there are a bunch of A4 sheets lying around that I've been using over the years!

I prefer taking notes one-sided on loose sheets; unlike a bound notebook, you can freely insert, remove, and re-arrange pages. Taken directly from the zettelkasten concept, I date each sheet for a unique identifier, and then notes in a series are numbered hierarchically, so that, for example, a page inserted between those numbered #1.1 and #1.2 would get the number #1.1.1 ; for storage, I staple or clip my stacks and stash them in a hanging file.

For writing on the go, steno pads integrate well into this system; when I fill up a pad, I (eventually) unbind it and re-file the pages as if they were loose sheets.

Big endian dates always make me laugh.

They are okay, but exist mostly because American insist on using a terrible MM-DD-YYYY format usually and while DD-MM-YYYY makes more sense it'd be confusing while Americans continue to use MM-DD.

Similarly, imperial units are terrible 12 inches to foot, 3 feet to yard. Fractions of inches for small lengths...

And British driving on the left. A hold out that complicates the entire worlds roads and car production.

While little endian dates make sense for ephemeral communication, big endian is the better format for things that are going to gazed upon in two or ten years' time. The author's regret lines up with this.

The date format and imperial/metric examples seem to me to be objectively better. Is driving on the right objectively better, or is it just a case of "more people do it that way"? Otherwise, why shouldn't everyone drive on the left?

MM-DD is not terrible.

It was a useful format for a very long time, and in contexts even today, it is still appropriate. Say I have a bunch of dates associated with things I want to organize, maybe physical things. First of all, in my organization, the year is either inconsequential or it's just implied - "the current year". Ok. What's next? The month. So the month and the day are most significant. And say I want to file things away in a cabinet for the implied or current year - we go by month first, then day, not day then month - that would be silly. And colloquially we say "month/day", and again, the year is implied. So then we write the way we speak things, and that yields MM-DD. When we do add the year, it just comes at the end. That's not terrible, it's useful for what we need it for.

In American, the format emerged organically, it was useful (still is), and it just stuck.

If you're a software engineer and you need YYYY-MM-DD dates because they're easier to work with and they collate more appropriately, that's great, that's your use-case. Engineers, however, are infamous for not considering others' use-cases, least of all the use-case of the users they're actually building their program for! Perhaps that's why so much modern software is just so user-hostile.

Perhaps the engineer should consider that his goals and use-cases are not necessarily the same as other people's. And perhaps he should stop trying to impose his own goals and use-cases onto others. And before he criticize others' specs, reqs, and use-cases, perhaps he should make an attempt to understand them to begin with.

Year-Month-Day for ordering files in a way that makes sense to me.

LHD countries include lots of parts of the former British Empire including most of Africa that's DRC or south. I believe only Guyana is LHD on the main American continents, and the only LHD-RHD switch in the Americas is on the border of Guyana and Brazil.

+Suriname

Ah true. Even weirder though is that there are no continuous roads between Guyana and Suriname, if Google Maps is accurate. The roads end at waterways, and I guess ferries are the way you cross borders. So there's still just the one driver side switcher on the Guyana side of the Guyana-Brazil border.

Suriname appears to have a ferry crossing with French Guiana at Albina. If it transports cars I wouldn't be surprised if muscle memory causes a lot of confusion on both sides of the river.

For more inspiration check out the YouTube channel "Peter draws"

All I want is a landscape oriented b5 notebook, not that many around.

oh if I could draw worth a damn, it is probably all I'd ever do.

I used to draw a lot as a kid, I just never got good at it.

It's a learnable skill that just takes time and effort.

I recommend the book "Drawing on the right side of the brain".

if you're willing to spend a bit of money and and put in the effort, you can learn a lot of classical art skills from www.nma.art

Its sort of a netflix of art lessons (although a bit more money since its niche). very high quality stuff.

focuses on classical art skills rather than modern styles of art.

What does “draw worth a damn” even mean? Personally, I much prefer to see people’s unique perspective on things through their art rather than just another hyper-realistic rendering of something I can already see in hyper realism.

"draw worth a damn" means that I could draw a thing, give the drawing to someone else, ask them what it is a drawing of, and get the correct answer, for anything beyond simple shapes and icons.

Have you thought about digitalizing them?

I’ve tried notebooks but wikis like Confluence are much better.

They force you to structure your thoughts in a way that others can understand.

Notebooks are extremely unorganized and un-understandable after a few days.

I have a couple of nice leather covers for my composition books. One for personal notes and one for a work notebook. <https://amazon.com/gp/product/B00ITXB8UQ>

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