May sound kind of weird but Moleskine actually reconnected me with an artistic portion of my soul, lost to a management role and it’s responsibilities: department planning, staffing, resource management, pitching, presenting, and directing. My CD role simply didn’t require my drawing skills. I no longer needed to create comps or storyboards. I didn’t need to supplement my designs with hand-drawn elements. so I just stopped drawing pictures. Instead I produced hundreds of doodles. Completely disposable doodles.
After encountering a ton of Moleskine sketchbooks online, I decided to centralize my doodles on a Moleskine book that my sister gave me a while back. I finished my first page over the course of two weeks (see below). 20 minutes here, 5 minutes there. I started it with absolutely no objective, no specific vision, no preconceived notion of what to draw next, just a commitment to filling out a page. The greatest thing happened; my doodles became a drawing. I felt artistic again. I felt creative. I felt inspired.
As a brand marketer, I realized that I had made a contribution (albeit small and derivative) to one of the greatest user built brands in the world. But it didn’t matter. I was a part of something bigger, a community of artists that inspired me. And that felt great so I felt grateful.
See some of the work I found below.
It’s pretty obvious this guy inspired my drawing, huh?
