Sketchy Habits

When I was an art major the process of keeping a sketchbook, a mandatory habit of the 'true' artist, was a bit of a chore. Maybe I thought I was supposed to be another Toulouse-Lautrec, hanging in bars and drawing the demi-monde of Lubbock. Guess I wasn't that decadent yet. I did something similar. I sketched my dance friends, sometimes in the dim light of the old Tower of Pizza on Main Street, sometimes in late night coffee slurps at Sambo's (10 cents for all you can drink all night!) after rehearsals, sometimes in each others' apartments on lazy Saturdays with nothing to do.
The drawings look crude and awkward to me now, smudged and overly serious, with pretty bad technique. They also bring back memories of college angst and a tendency to be overly dramatic. If anything I am now the complete reverse and could be guilty of being underly dramatic. "Oh look, my socks are on fire...." (true story).
For many years I dropped the sketchbook habit because my drawings and doodles just irritated me, displeased me, caused me to feel I was making NO progress as an artist whatsoever. So cut to the present. Now I doodle, draw, sketch, stamp, paste, scribble, and dabble almost every day. In at least five sketchbooks. Sometimes I come back and add more, paste more, blob paint down, gesso over, or even run the page under my sewing machine. I have freed myself from thinking my sketches have to look like mini works of art ready for framing, or that they have to be dutiful still lifes (lives?) of fruit, or empty wine glasses. Now they are just my practice pages, my venting, my art journaling, my need to 'do something creative' yet not knowing what I want to do. I engage in the process without judging (well, a bit of judginess, but I'm allowed to rip out a page here and there).
So here are some latest daily recordings, these from my Moleskine sketchbook, just because it looks cool to carry one around.