I bought a gigantic (17″ x 11.75″) Moleskine watercolor sketchbook the other day. Which is funny since I don’t really do either watercolors or sketching. Lately I’ve had to be in a lot of meetings at my job, which means I’ve been doing a lot of doodling. I’m sure people think I’m just spacing out, but it actually helps me concentrate (Science is on my side on this one!) and not just sit there fretting about how much I hate meetings, 85% of which are just a way to turn an issue that could be resolved with a brief discussion/email/phone call into an epic torturefest that is most likely going to either ruin my lunch plans or force me to have to stay late.

So I’ve decided that I actually am really enjoying making these doodles or drawings or whatever they are- it’s sort of meditative and calming to just start moving the pen and see what happens and I want to do more of it. I think I’ve harbored a lot of bad ideas about drawing- that it should look like something and not just be random marks. And that’s why I’ve tended to think that I hate drawing and am not good at it- it is simultaneously boring and frustrating for me to do realistic drawings; because I already know what it’s supposed to look like I don’t even want to bother because there’s no surprise or evolution in it, and also I’m not very good at making things look realistic and the less it looks like what it’s supposed to look like the more annoying it is, even if I’m not even all that interested in making something that looks like something. What a mess. So I bought myself this gorgeous book and I’m just going to start drawing or doodling or making marks or whatever and see what happens. No collaging, no painting, no cutting pages up. I’ll post photos as I go.