Ugly Sketchbook Tour!
My ugly nonsense concept-sketches vs the final piece
April fools! I have nothing to fool you with that wouldn’t be annoying so I shall refrain from pranking but ‘tis April all the same! Showers and flowers and all that! Summer feels within reach and still too far away all at the same time, but we’re definitely close here in the Toronto area to putting the winter coats and snow boots away at least, and that for me is always a very exciting development.
Speaking of development! For this month’s paid subscriber post, I thought it would be fun to share how my illustrations begin - as barely legible scribbles in my ugly notebook. My “ugly” notebook is particularly ugly - which is great! Most notebook and sketchbook entries probably SHOULD be ugly. My regular notebooks and sketchbooks are a mix of both ugly notes and pretty ones. But my ugly notebook is ONLY ugly. That is its purpose.
This tiny little pocket lechturm isn’t at all made for sketching. Its pages are bible thin, and the only thing it can really handle is a pencil or a ball point pen and that’s just fine by me! All it needs to do is be small enough for my pocket or purse and be happy to withstand a beating as I carry it with me throughout my day.
My ugly notebook is really an ideas notebook. Too often when I’m out and about with the kids, I see something or day dream something that inspires the idea for a drawing. When that happens and I am out with the kids, I have exactly .08 seconds to write it down before I forget and that means that what makes it onto the page….
…is a bit of a mystery. If I can get back to it that very same day, no problem, I know what I’m looking at. But if I forget about it and find it again days or weeks later? It’s a bit of a struggle to try to make sense of the scribble.
Luckily for the following, I managed to decipher my scrawl well enough to take the initial scribble to final illustration. Here are some of my favourite ugly scribbles turned final illustrations!