On keeping a shared sketchbook
A year ago, my partner and I bought a sketchbook with the simple intention of drawing together. Most of our relationship has included this kind of collaborative artistic play— whether it be drawing, painting, making cyanotypes, taking film photos or Polaroids, or experimenting with Polaroid transfers. For the most part, these kinds of projects came naturally to us— meaning that we didn't think much about where the art was going, if it was informing our individual practices, or whether it could be categorized as "serious" art. To put it simply, we did it because it was fun.
I believe we bought the shared sketchbook with the same intention. But over the course of the year, new intentions formed as we contributed to it together. We learned a lot about ourselves and each other through the process of sharing the object and the vision for what it would become.
The beginning was explosive. We captured everything. We kept scores of the games we played together, made collages with wrappers from our favorite candy, drew scenes from movies we loved and hated, pasted in concert tickets and plane tickets, filled pages with stickers we collected along our adventures, and much more.
What became most noticeable to me at a certain point wasn't what was going in the book but when we were choosing to add to it. Sometimes we drew together, sometimes solo (but near each other), and other times we drew privately.
Drawing Together
I loved the slow morning ritual of opening the sketchbook and drawing together while we ate breakfast. Sometimes we'd sit silently listening to music, quietly sketching. Other times we'd be joking around and laughing at whatever we were creating. The pages that have one drawing upside-down and another right-side-up on the opposite page are some of my favorites. They're evidence of time spent together.
Drawing Solo (But Near Each Other)
These moments offered a different kind of intimacy. They were the nights where one person might be cooking dinner while the other sat at the table drawing, or when one person read a book aloud while the other listened and drew. I appreciate this quiet way of connecting— two different activities happening in parallel but deeply connected.
One of my favorite pages is from when we were in Ireland. My partner was reading The Salt Grows Heavy, by Cassandra Khaw aloud while I drew my own interpretation of the book's cover. I look at that drawing and I'm transported back to that bed and breakfast in the Irish countryside, listening to his voice after a few long travel days. This is one of the many memories I'm grateful our sketchbook holds.
Drawing Privately
These pages have an element of surprise inherent in them— an intentional way of communicating. I noticed that whenever we drew something without the other person knowing, we'd almost never tell each other. We'd wait for them to discover it on their own.
I also found it interesting how we negotiated time with the sketchbook. Sometimes one of us would say, "Hey, I've had the sketchbook for a while, you should keep it for a bit." That meant the person handing it over would soon have new sweet, loving, silly, stupid drawings waiting to be discovered. I love making that unspoken promise to each other.
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The biggest thread I see when I look through our book is a passion for capturing the memories of our relationship. At some point, we both acknowledged the importance of making sure certain events were documented. There was no rigidity in how they were depicted, but we both felt inspired to make sure they were in there somewhere.
I'm not going to prescribe this intention as something that needs to be done to keep a shared sketchbook, but it's one I appreciate. There's something special about a year of our relationship captured in such a fun, lighthearted, handmade, and intimate way. It's something we do together, for each other.
A selection of our sketchbook pages are shown below:
