Should sketchbooks be messy or pristine?

Il quaderno degli schizzi caustici e caotici rappresenta il Santo Graal dell'inventiva e della creatività. Da lì si denota l'autenticità dell'uomo prima ancora che dell'artista, o meglio ancora dell'artigiano del proprio ingegno... architetto della propria immaginazione... alchimista dell'invisibile e dell'introvabile.

Sketch books are a vital part of being an artist. I picked messy- it's a late not a gallery however I have pristine drawings in my sketchbooks as well. I teach K-8th grade art and in 3rd grade I start asking my students to keep a sketchbook. The sketchbook is the heart and soul of the artist. I believe you should always have a sketchbook.

This is such beautiful work 🤍 I really love the way you’ve put this together. Do you have a website where you showcase more of your work? I’d genuinely love to see it. You can also reach me through the link on my profile if you’d like to connect.

I don't draw in a sketch book, but I have a fairly cheap pad of drawing paper from Hobby Lobby that is too thin for using for finished work that I use for trying out ideas and working out compositions for pastel and colored pencil. That way any issues that arise happen first on my cheap stuff and not my expensive papers. I tear the sheets out as I use them, and for pastel work, I trace my drawing onto the Pastelmat that I use bc it is very unforgiving as far as erasing grid lines and erasing mistakes goes, at least I haven't found a way to erase the graphite from it.

As a writer (in addition to making eco prints on paper), I do morning pages and ideas-for-projects plotting on legal pads, and buy them by the half-dozen. It's very freeing to scribble on something so not-special and utilitarian (as long as the paper is heavy enough to be able to use fountain pens; an aesthetic & sensory pleasure/indulgence/ritual). The expendable, inexpensive nature of legal pads does help keep my inner editor at bay--when I'm working generatively, I want to eliminate any thoughts of revision or pressure to Produce Something I Can Publish. But I also have hardbound blank books I fell in love with, which can be, in themselves, inspiration or motivation to write a scene, a memory, some fragment of an idea I have. I don't try to keep the writing in them pristine, but usually go there when an image of what I want to explore on the page has begun to emerge, rather than when I'm casting about for a way to begin or just clearing the pipes in preparation to write on a work in progress.

Ah I have managed to 'solve' this by having a set of blank books that one day I will have the courage to do something amazing with, but are way too precious to spoil with my current level of skill. (Though 'precious' does not always equate to 'expensive' or 'high quality'.) And then I buy Walmart or Dollar Store or cheaper Michaels sketch pads for work-in-progess / practise, usually chosing ones with tear-out pages. Though it took several years before I was comfortable with tearing pages out and trashing them.

I would love to think that if my sketchbooks were studied in the distant future by art historians that they would appear neat, orderly and conceptually consistent! But that is not me. Personally, that kind of restraint freezes me and I end up not doing anything. For me, creativity and chaos go hand in hand.