Forgotten Sketches

7/4/12 Copic Multiliner SP pen, Moleskine sketchbook

The Friday sketchers are preceding our usual sketch gathering tomorrow with a Gab ‘n’ Grab: We’re going to talk about our favorite art materials and sketch kits, and then we’re trading supplies and books we no longer want. (I’ll let you know later if I score big!)

I started putting together a bag of stuff to haul to the grab, including some products that appear on last year’s Bottom 10 list. As I was going through a stash of sketchbooks I no longer use, I found a pocket-size Moleskine that at first looked unused. I was about to throw it into the grab bag when I thought I should thumb through it, and it turned out I had taken it with me on a trip to Boston in July 2012. Most of the sketches from that trip were of statues made in a larger sketchbook, so this little sketchbook apparently had been put aside, unscanned and forgotten.

7/4/12 Copic Multiliner SP pen, Moleskine sketchbook

As soon as I saw the two small sketches in it, I remembered. One sketch was made in our hotel lobby. The other was made in a University of Massachusetts building where hundreds of 4^th of July would-be revelers on the Charles River were told to take refuge due to the imminent danger of an electrical storm. None of us wanted to leave without seeing the fireworks we had come for, but the show was on hold until the storm passed. After a half-hour or so, we were allowed to go back outdoors. Shortly thereafter, the best fireworks show I had ever seen in my life commenced – as well as a deluge that left us all drenched.

The sketches themselves don’t show much, but somehow memories get embedded with them, like tiny time capsules.