Create and capture

Painting, drawing, and other forms of hand sketching bring balance to the time spent in front of a screen.

Here are a couple of spreads from my sketchbook, which ended up in the world’s largest sketchbook collection at the Brooklyn Art Library—with rather unfortunate consequences.

At first, I spent months worrying whether the book had been lost in transit. Luckily, I had taken photos of my sketches, even though they were also supposed to be archived digitally as part of the Sketchbook Project.

I couldn’t help but think of the garden gnome from Amélie, traveling the world—had my sketchbook embarked on an adventure of its own? Eventually, it did arrive safely!

Then came the plot twist that turned the story from a charming French film into a fast-paced disaster movie: during the library’s relocation, the moving truck caught fire!

Some sketchbooks were destroyed by the flames, others by the firefighting efforts. A few survived—but I never heard from mine again. In the end, the entire collection was discontinued, including the digital archive.

The moral of the story?

Document your process. Take photos of your work-in-progress and sketches. You never know when your project will take an unexpected turn!