The burden of starting a nice new sketchbook is almost overwhelming – like an artist starting a painting with an empty canvas or a writer beginning a novel with a blank Word document.

But the sketchbook is many pages of pressure and expectation. One or two or ten pages of the filled-in sketchbook may be great, but it doesn’t let up: every page has to be good.

The nicer, and more expensive the sketchbook, the more intimidating it is. There’s an unspoken responsibility to fill it all up with amazing artwork. Perhaps there’s one eye on posterity too.

A notebook is usually less prestigious than a sketchbook; the paper quality may be cheap and flimsy, and it should have cost less. As it says, it’s for notes, such as lists, appointments, ideas and thoughts. If there’s nothing else to hand, I will draw in a notebook and feel no pressure at all.

I’ve been filling in and keeping sketchbooks and notebooks ever since I was an art student, aged 18, so that’s thirty years worth. And annoyingly, my best drawings are done with a biro in cheap notebooks.

Even when I attempt to copy a drawing or doodle over from a notebook (only if I’m not going to keep the notebook, which I might not always, unless it’s a Moleskine, of course) into a sketchbook (which I sometimes do, thinking I’ll work the doodle up into a proper drawing), it’s never as good as the original drawing in the notebook; it always lacks the spontaneity of the original, and looks forced.

(It’s all semantics and marketing anyway. I’m pretty happy with a notebook and a diary, but it’s all about bullet journals nowadays, apparently.)

Previously on Barnflakes
Notes on Rhodia notebooks
Plyons in the snow (only for the €18 notebook)
Great Western Beach, Newquay, vs Fisherman’s Cove, Gwithian
Fisherman’s Friends vs Bait
The cult of personality vs saving the planet
Womb vs world
Kim vs Kim
Chips vs French Fries
Kim Bauer vs Dana Brody
Baths vs showers
Cigarettes vs smartphones
Sex and the City 2 vs Greenberg
Music vs Film and CDs vs DVDs
Banksy vs Bristol Museum
Blogs vs diaries