hardcover sketchbooks

You know those canvas, hard covered sketchbooks that Borders is always selling two for ten? They're actually pretty handy things to have. They paper grain is tolerable, the pages are sewn in, and you don't have to worry about losing the random keeper sketch you'll churn out from time to time.

I wouldn't use them for the longest time. I owned them but I never dared to use them for the longest time. They were too permanent. In a regular sketchbook you can scratch out a terrible mess, rip it out and have the pleasure of balling it up and making a 3 pointer from across the room into the trash can. Not so with the hardcover ones. You draw something poopy, it's there. For good.

There's also the small matter of leaving sketches for what they were meant to be - sketches. Sometimes I want to take every little blip that I draw and turn it into a full blown digital painting that has a ten paragraph backstory. It's hard for me to not make a big, finished project out of everything. It's probably just me chasing some sense of accomplishment.

To make a long story short, I'm getting better at just leaving things alone as the meaningless blips they were meant to be. And I keep them in bound sketchbooks. And sometimes I can go back into those books and find some mildly helpful stuff. Like this fast study I did on different anime-style eyes. You can play name-that-anime if you want. Sorry if this isn't making any sense at all. I'm watching TV while rambling.