Ever since I started drawing, I have been fascinated by books of blank white pages, i.e. Sketchbooks. A book devoid of all content, just waiting to be filled with anything. Throughout highschool I carried a sketchbook with me at all times after a friend of mine was doing the same. Granted, he drew more than I did and filled many books over the span of highschool, I only managed to filled mine half way. When I went to art school, I of course had to go to the school’s book store to get all of my books, not knowing that the same store was also the art supply store. Against one wall was stack after stack of empty, black, hardbound sketchbooks of all sizes and types. I was in heaven. This was way better than the art store back home. My stint there was short and after coming back home I stopped drawing. I kept trying to force myself to but never kept with it.
I remember sitting in the theater watching “Stranger Than Fiction” and seeing Will Farrel’s character taking all of his notes in a black Moleskine with a Parker clic pen and thinking “that’s a neat, professional, idea”. Not that taking notes in a book is anything new, but the image of a little black book and clic pen stuck in my mind along with the little Grail diary Henry Jones Sr. kept in “Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade”. Then one day I came across the Moleskine display in a bookstore and the idea came back to me, so I grabbed one and found an old Parker pen I had and started using it. I kept this with me for about a year in my coat pocket and took various notes in it off and on. I used it quite a bit at first but come summer, I had no where to keep it and didn’t use it as much. The following fall is when I noticed the other types of Moleskines coming out and picked up a fascination with the little black books and the need to collect them.
It’s only been a couple years but now I have about 12 different Moleskine type books (not including my older, bigger, sketchbooks, of which there are now many). I’ve become a fan of the ruled and blanks, and only recently started getting the squared versions. I’ve tried other various “journals” and notebooks, i.e. Piccadilly’s, but I keep coming back to the Moles’. I know they aren’t the best, don’t have the most respected “commercialized” background, but they have become the golden standard all others are compared to. Not to mention the most variety to date. I’ve never “liked” the hardcover version, but lived with it since that’s all there was. But since they’ve started making softcover versions of all of their notebooks, I’ve totally fallen in love with them. I think the softcovers are all I will buy from now on.
I have quite the stack of Moleskines now. In the background is my newest purchase, a Dr. Ion pen case I got along with some neat pens from JetPens. I’ll write about those later.
Here is most of the collection of Moleskine type notebooks. Not pictured is my Piccadilly which I keep at work for meeting notes and such. I got it a while ago before Moleskine came out with a similar large, softcover, notebook. The soft on top I keep in my coat with a Uni Power Tank Space pen, and the newer Large soft on the bottom I keep in my laptop bag along with two medium sized softs. I also like to keep one of the hardbacks next to my bed for those crazy dreams I want to remember. What’s also included in this picture is a generic, squared, notebook (third from bottom), and a brown “Rite in the Rain” 980T field-book I got to try out (it’s water-proof). Also not featured is a new Moleskine Passions Recipe Journal I recently got for the misses to keep all of her recipes in. I will write about that soon as well.
The one problem I have is not using them enough. I have a lot of ideas and sketch ideas but I never get to the point of actually putting them on paper. I almost don’t want to desecrate the books with bad sketches or ideas. Stupid, I know, it’s just one of those things I will have to force myself to get over. Another problem is that I am a techy geek so between my iPhone, MacbookPro, tablet, and Desktops, I have plenty of tools to keep notes and such, mainly Evernote and Dropbox. Forcing myself to use something Analog takes some getting used to. And if Microsoft ever comes out with their Courier tablet, that may be the end of notebooks…