Insights: Note-Taking and Sketching for Woven Design
As I type this I have at least five notebooks scattered around me, each one with its own specific purpose. If you were to open one, you would find a disorganized and almost unreadable scrawl that is my handwriting, usually embedded under layers of important notes (read: scribbles) my toddler, JoJo, has decided to contribute while my back is turned.
For me, note taking is an informal process that encompasses many things:
- The jotting down of random thoughts that have suddenly evolved into new ideas
- Sketching an element that might have potential in a new project
- Visually mapping a process to clarify an outcome I want to achieve
- And of course, humble reminders and the ever-important daily to-do list.
I’ll leave you now with a few insights on note taking and sketching that I’ve collected from some of my favourite books on weaving and textile art.
“The roughest of sketches, incomprehensible to anyone except myself, done, maybe, on the spare of the moment, on the back of an envelope or the spare page of the car handbook, helps me more than a photograph, even when referred to after a lapse of years, to recreate my first response to things seen and to provide a jumping-off ground for a design. When we try to record this response in the form of a sketch, we instinctively select the salient points and omit others which have no place in our theme.”
“Notebooks are of infinite importance to the handweaver…
Such a notebook acts as an inspiring springboard for endless sources of ideas and variations…
As long as the sketch or doodle is understandable to you, that is sufficient. The very act of putting a fleeting thought down, even if you never look at that note or sketch again, seems to retain the thought far back in your mind until such a time as it is needed.”
“When we are young every image is new but often in later years we look with preconceived ideas certain that we have seen an object before, and often not really seeing it all. Drawing, painting and recording in any medium or manner trains one’s powers of observation. Having drawn an object one knows it intimately, and that knowledge will never be lost. With each successive effort one’s skill and visual knowledge increase. Nothing can replace either the act of drawing based on observation, or the discipline it requires.”
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