I’ve always sketched on my notebooks. Ever since I can remember. It actually helped me, when I was on classes, to remember what they gave in class even if I didn’t take any notes.
When at work however It takes an interesting form. I start gradually taking shots at the paper sometimes one line at a time or one detail at a time. Eventually some of the “random” shapes start taking interesting aspects.
It occurred to me some time ago to actually keep all the notebooks from my previous works in case I came upon some creative block so that I could channel or re-visit the creativity encased in those “random” sketches.
As a result I have amassed several notebooks with tons of sketches and doodles trapped between the notes and textual content of whatever I was doing that day.
Some of the sketches got pretty creative. I have one doodle that was stained by coffee and I decided to finish the job and color the drawing with the coffee and do some line work on it. Note most of these drawings are not measured or planned works of art. Just some overworked randomness.
Here are some of the sketches I managed to “rescue” for future consideration:
After writing part of this article I actually checked some online articles with similar theme:
- I found this interesting article 10 ways Drawing can relieve stress and inspire wonder.
- And this one about relieving stress trough drawing.
There are many other articles dealing with this trough the internet just search for art therapy or stress and art and/or drawing.
It is my personal belief that sketching inside and around your notes will help relieve stress and in my case it has the added benefit of helping me remember the actual notes I took… I’m guessing it has to do with memory somewhere too so try and apply it to your work and see what you can gain from it. You may be surprised of the end results either way.
Juan C. Peña Martínez 