Yuki never left home without a notepad. Bernard always followed her with backpad in case inspiration hit big time.
Here’s how a humble notepad can end up being a greater aid to our cartooning than any sort of whizz-bang drawing tablet, iPad, or app.
Huh? How so?
Well, one of the biggest barriers to drawing cartoons is starting to draw in the first place. It doesn’t matter how much we spend on fancy hard or software if don’t actually use it.
Here’s a few reasons that notepads are neat:
they’re small and can easily fit in any pocket.
because they’re cheap, you can buy a bunch of them and put them in different places so there’s always one to hand.
you can draw on them in an instant
I don’t know about you, but I have an annoying habit of mislaying my notepad just when I need it. I’ve gotten around this by keeping several notepads around.
Personally I don’t think this is my own absentmindedness....I blame it on the Spotted Stationary Snaffling Spatchett….
It is not sure why the Spotted Stationery Snaffling Spatchett likes stationery so much. It’s behaviour is somewhat similar to a magpie being attracted to shiny things, with paper and pens catching it’s eye instead.
To ensure that you always have a notepad to hand, buy a bunch of cheap ones, and leave them in places where you can easily find them, such as:
In your coat pocket
In your jacket pocket
In your bag
In a drawer at work
By the coffee machine
Etc.
Simply having a notepad on you, acts as a prompt to try drawing something. Even better if you can the notepads in bright colours so that they stand out and catch your eye. If you keep carrying around notepads for long enough, you’ll start to associate notepad = cartooning.
“She’s a beauty! Get sketching!”
You never know when you might spot something cool to draw or when an idea might pop into your head. You might think that you can simply remember it and then write it down later, but how many times have we intended that only to end up forgetting later on?
If you get an idea, or even if you just spot something interesting, then make a note of it or do a quick doodle.
This is starting to form the habit of getting inspiration from the world around us.
The more often we note what’s around us, and the more often we note it down, then the more often we are to notice subsequent things.
It’s almost as though we are developing our own radar to notice ideas.
Dealing with the blank page of doom
Okay, but that doesn’t mean that it eliminates the dreaded blank page of doom.
Sally stared st the blank page of doom…and it stared back…
The blank page of doom is equally happy to stare at you from a $1 notepad or a $1000 tablet.
So how can we get around this?
With a notepad, you can seed it with ideas to doodle in advance.
At the top of a page, note an idea for something to doodle, such as cats.
Actually, that’s not specific enough, because then you have to think about what the cat is doing.
So come up with some more specific prompts, such as sleeping cats.
When you’re tired you don’t want to decide anything, and that can often mean you end up drawing anything at all. By seeding the notepad with prompts, it removes a barrier to stopping you from drawing.
The article in a nutshell
Notepads are good because:
You can take them anywhere
Easy to use
You can put them in convenient places
You can write drawing prompts in them.
I hope that the article was useful for you, and will encourage you to embrace the power of the humble notepad!
