Hasta La Ideas

Midway through Richard Brereton’s Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators and Creatives, commercial artist and graphic designer Ed Fella confides, “in 1976 an artist friend gave me a sketchbook, saying ‘Even though you’re a designer, you think like an artist and should keep a sketchbook.'” Well, even if you happen to be a designer and you don’t think like an artist, we at Core77 still think you should carry a sketchbook. Whether it’s a modest moleskine with battered corners stuck in your back pocket or a fancy leather tome, sketchbooks can serve as practice pages, ways to fill time, as a finished products, or even what graphic designer Pep Carrio beautifully describes as “warehouses of memory.”

Historically, artists have often self-edited their sketchbooks by tearing out pages or censoring their output. While it’s hard to discern exactly what editorial oversight Richard Brereton performed when he chose which particular plates would make it into his compilation of sketchbooks by design professionals, he clearly did not limit his search to classically drawn figures. Instead Sketchbooks presents a diverse range of styles, subject matter, and even artistic skills, and that’s a good thing. Anyone who has perused a collection of portfolios or taken a drawing class intuitively understands that being “loose” is high praise. When an artist gains the confidence to draw with brio, sketches gain vibrancy and pop off of the page. For most of us, the state of mind that allows lines to be drawn with snap seems like the exclusive provenance of artists with this thing called “talent,” or perhaps a lucky few who’ve practiced for lifetimes. Fortunately, Brereton’s collection proves otherwise. While some of the graphic artists contained within have produced work that could be described as “fine art,” and many others seem childlike or crude, virtually all of them draw like no one is looking; and perhaps that’s precisely the essence to which a sketchbook should aspire.

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