Re: A Notebook From 1998.
It was an odd transitional time for me. Half ugly artschool/artschool-reaction leftover styles, half the general nonsense that i now consider busydoodling(and which is the only drawing or anything, that i ever do anymore).
It is funny because between 1997 and 1999 there are piles and piles of shit, and most of everything i did was on unlined/"art" paper. Starting sometime in 1999, it sort of transitions into lined notebook paper, where most of the stuff that came out of that time was written(terrible dramatic 23-year-old shit mostly) with just very randomly made pictars.
The period of brown paper sketchbook was probably about the worst for both. Terrible pictures, and terrible words, with a set of ridiculous handwriting affectations that make me want to punch the younger me in the gut. That would have been right about 1997, or just after leaving school. I scanned some of it, just because it was there, but really, kind of embarrassing for me to flip through that one.
The yellow notebooks were similarly, but more like half-embarrassing. Generally better than the brown one, but in some cases merely a matter of degrees.
Only three of these things actually date back as far as school. the straightjacket one, chickensuit, and the one right after them. My school sketchbooks are fucking awful.
I enjoy seeing the fashion in which i have always hated anatomy, and battled against drawing it correctly. Though i note and recognize as valid, my one time interest in the structure of hands and gloves, which is probably the only actual work i have ever sat down to do in drawing.
I also enjoy the red gas pump watercolor, and the pen studies of the triangle fire bystanders, more-or-less-real, and imagined.
I was a little surprised to see the busy check work style that i currently tend to doodle in, show up as early as 1999. I thought it was later. But i was also surprised to find that of the notebooks i have here, after 1999, up to like 2009, there are pretty much no drawings whatsoever, not even shitty half doodles, except for technical things for cutting wood for amps and cabs and stuff. Lots and lots of words, no pictures.
Other than that, it kind of serves to act as a good reminder to me(not that i really required one) of why i was never going to do very well in the school i chose. Youngdood hubris is a funny blinding thing. I couldn't draw for shit.