I've made 265 drawings this year as of today

I'm not really the sketchbook type. I start a sketchbook with the intention that, this time, I'm going to really take it seriously, really use it as a place to record ideas, develop motifs, think and track my development. But I go a few pages, set it aside, and then typically don't get back to it. I have lots of half-full sketchbooks going back years. I'm just not that organized, I guess.

I really admire, and envy, artists that work out their ideas in sketchbooks of notebooks. Some just record impressions, jot down titles, or keep their hand limber by constantly drawing. Some track their work, or work through and iterate ideas in an almost academic way. I recently visited an artist who actively uses a notebook in a way that it becomes almost a visual and written record of his inner life as a painter. Recently, I've been reading Pia Gottschaller Palermo: Inside His Images, and she examines some sketchbooks Blinky used to develop the series of paintings on aluminum, the final large body of work he was working on in the last couple of years of his life. They are impressive.

I was in Mauai a couple of weeks back for a few days, and I took a sketchbook with me and three pens- black, blue, and red. Late at night I scrawled a bunch of drawings continuing the motif I'd been using for the Bojagi and Ornette paintings, and I did a bunch more on the flight home. I keep meaning to get back to these, but since I've been home I haven't used the sketchbook except to scan all of the drawings and post two a day on my weblog.

I have posted on my weblog everyday since around 2002 (I think I missed five days in 2005, and have a perfect record so far in 2006). The weblog is my real sketchbook and notebook, the place where I record things that I don't mind being public. It is the only thing like a sketchbook that I have used consistently in my entire life, and it's something I find easy to do. I like the archive aspect of it, and that it's searchable, and the fact that it is public holds me accountable, at least to myself and my policy of posting something everyday. I have known for a very long time how integral my weblog is to my art life, or really, to my life life.

If I set for myself the project of posting not only an HTML drawing but a scanned drawing to my weblog I'm sure I would use a sketchbook religiously. Scanning and uploading an image takes more time, and I suppose that's why I haven't committed myself to that project, yet, but it is something I'm thinking about. I had thought recently that 2006 has not be a very productive year for me in terms of art, but then I counted in my head and realized I've made seventeen paintings, and two of those consisted of four panels each. Not bad, really. But I have not completed any works on paper- finished drawings- this year, which surprises me since so much of what I made during 2005 were drawings. Perhaps I need that drawing-a-day project. I respond to the project model.

I have lamented out loud a few times that I am not getting much work done. One friends reminds me, well, but what about the HTML drawings- you're making a drawing everyday. And I realize, yeah, that's right, why am I not counting those? Today, October 22, 2006, is day 265 of this year. That means I've made 265 drawings this year as of today. That's pretty good.