Saying Goodbye to Old Sketchpads
- Pants
- Jan 23, 2023
- 11 min read
My journey into my past by way of old doodles.
At some point during childhood, I think around Junior High maybe, I started keeping consistent sketchpads. I plowed through 75-100 pages of Strathmore sketchbooks in the span of 1-2 months at a time. I kept up regularly with sketchbooks all the way through high school and the first couple of years into college. Over time, my parents and I held onto these. Mom would always say:
“One day you’ll be able to look back at these and see where you came from.” - Sebrina Erskine
As of writing this entry, Jay and I are in the process of moving back to Kentucky from Oregon (something that I’ll likely explore in a different post) and wanted to try and downsize as much as we can before we headed back east. Over the years, we had two stupidly-heavy totes full of sketchbooks and keepsakes that we kept taking with us any time we moved. The memories I took with me had literal weight. And while some memories are worth carrying with us through the years, others can and should be let go. So in the interest of releasing myself from the literal and figurative weight of old memories, I decided that it was finally time to go through the totes.
I was lucky to have Jay with me every step of the way. He did an amazing job at being patient with me while also gently questioning why I wanted to keep something, and making sure that the things I did want to keep were because I wanted them. For me, and not because I felt an obligation to keep them “for the family”. I went through each and every photograph, school drawing, keepsake, and sketchpad. I got to talk about each one and reflect on the memory I held of it, and then made the decision on whether or not to keep it.
At one point early on in the process, when I finished the box of photos and keepsakes and had moved onto the tote of sketchbooks, Jay started saying “thank you for your service” to my sketchpads we had begun to discard. I followed her lead and began doing the same. And I found that with each time I practiced this small bit of love toward my sketchbooks, it became easier and easier to let them go. At one point, I began to flip faster and faster through the books, making judgment calls on which to keep and which to toss at a more confident and quick pace. Eventually, we’d gone through every single sketchbook, labeled the keep ones with the years (if we could pin-point them) and what was in them (things like “Variants” or “High School” so I could quickly go back and find specific things should I look through them in the future).
The whole process took roughly 6 to 7 hours.
I only have one real regret about the process. About 85% of the way in, I had the thought “I should grab the blank pages from the sketchbooks and then make them into a new sketchbook!”. But, alas, it was too late at that point. I didn’t really feel like dumpster diving. And as someone who has a tendency to hold onto things indefinitely “for art projects”, it might’ve been a blessing in disguise that I didn’t get a chance to grab the blank pages.
So how did all of this make me feel?
Initially, I struggled a lot with the idea of letting things go. I come from parents who are clean and tidy but sure do love their cluttercore. And like, I do too. I love having random objects, decorating bookshelves, and filling up my walls with art and decorations! But we Erskines do tend to struggle with letting things go. I had this fear early on in the process that throwing away some of the keepsake items would land me in trouble. That perhaps one day someone in the family would find out that I had thrown away the empty, torn, letterhead envelope with a now-closed family business logo on it and that I’d get in trouble for trashing a family heirloom. As I held the envelope in my hand, debating whether or not to trash it, Jay said something that really stuck with me:
“It’s not your job to hold onto memories for your family.” - Jay Erskine
And that was that. I felt a sudden release from that burden. I was not, and am not, responsible for holding onto memories for the entire Erskine clan. I can be responsible for holding onto the memories that I want to hold onto, and others can be responsible for the ones that they want to hold onto. And if anyone gets upset about that, well, that’s on them.
So once I’d come to the conclusion that it was okay to let things go, I still had to deal with the emotional waves that hit me as I flipped through the pages of my past in each and every sketchbook I’d kept since 2004ish.
High School - 2003 to 2007
In a lot of the High School books, there were quite a few experimental drawings that I can best describe as “just weird”, but also a lot of art that still lines up with what I draw today. Tons of beefy characters, a lot of furries that I denied for years were furry characters, some cartooney comics, and fantasy drawings. Realizing just how long I'd been drawing the same subject matter, I felt this strong feeling of love toward myself. I still love drawing those things as much now as I did back then. I felt a strong and loyal connection to Young Pants. It was really nice. But it was also sad, as Jay pointed out the numerous times I had written mean comments about my own art in the margins of the pages. Things like “FAIL”, “this sucks”, or “AWFUL” when something didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. Seeing these made me realize how long I have been mean to myself, and how much I wish I could pull Young Pants into a big hug today.
How did I feel going through these? Love and compassion toward younger self.
College - 2007 to 2010
Moving onto the college sketchbooks, this is where I began to learn art in a different way. Up until college, I was largely self-taught through “How to Draw” books from Barnes & Noble (I still gush about how “Action Cartooning” and “Fantasy Cartooning” by Ben Caldwell are my all-time favorite drawing books) and then copying styles I’d seen on the internet (back when my options were DeviantArt and Myspace). But when I started my first year at Western Kentucky University in the fall of 2007, I started learning traditional drawing techniques to help me improve anatomy and life drawing. This is reflected in my sketchbooks from that time where gesture drawings, charcoal, pastel, and other college art-class assignments started popping up in the pages. I also noticed a drop in the amount of sketching I was doing. Sketchbook purchases went from a monthly expense to a quarterly one.
In 2007, I was hired onto the college newspaper right out of high school and had been doing the editorial cartoons (and my own personal comic strip) for them until I retired from the job in 2011 (having passed the torch to my good friend Darren Vogt). Looking at the college newspaper cartoons, I was reminded of how much I… actually hated doing them. It was just something I felt like I couldn’t afford not to do if I wanted to get known for my art.
It also reminded me of the time in my Sophomore year where a fellow student saw me drawing a realistic character in my sketchbook and complimented me. I thanked him and told him how I worked for the college newspaper as the cartoonist. He was happy about this, stating that the artist that had been there before was really bad. I asked who he was referring to and he replied “Well they draw these stupid manga style cartoony comics.” …It was me. He was referring to me and my art. I let him know and he didn’t speak to me again for the rest of the semester. I also found out that he wasn’t alone in his hatred of my comics. Apparently there were quite a few folx on campus that didn’t like my cartoons. It was my first real experience with heavy criticism against my work and it was a big eye opener for me that I wasn’t the best artist in my class anymore. That’s when I met my now lifelong companion, Impostor Syndrome.
How did I feel going through these? Memories of diffidence and powerlessness.
Cartoon Network Internship - 2011
In January of 2011, I started my internship with Cartoon Network. I moved to Atlanta in January and stayed as an intern there until the end of July. It was the confidence boost I needed to ignore Impostor Syndrome for a good couple of years. I spent a lot of time there learning more about digital art than I had ever learned in college (WKU at that time was still very old school and while it did have digital courses, they were all largely centered around graphic design). Thanks to one particular sketchbook, I was able to relive some of my first and earliest assignments I’d gotten while interning at CN. The art was a fun combination of graphic art and illustration. Cartoon Network characters like Finn & Jake, Bloo, Kids Next Door, and others began appearing. I remember practicing drawing them because I learned that there were people on the floor above me whose job it was to make vector illustrations of existing characters to get used for promotional purposes. I wanted that job, and it pushed me to learn how to draw in Adobe Illustrator.
I mentioned before about how getting the internship helped a lot with my impostor syndrome. More accurately, I taped its mouth shut, put on my best "I'm a confident badass" mask, and presented Career Pants to the world. I made it my mission to be up-beat, happy, and work with extreme confidence while I was in Atlanta. I wanted to impress the Cartoon Network folks enough that they might consider hiring me out of college. It worked, and they did hire me as a freelancer. I still do work for Warner Bros to this day. However, the mask I wore may have shut up the impostor syndrome for a time, but I could still see them side-eyeing me all the time. Once I returned to Kentucky, the impostor syndrome escaped its prison...
How did I feel going through these? Pride and excitement, and a smattering of heartache for my past self knowing how masked I was back then.
First Adult Job - 2011 to 2015
The years continued on. From 2012 to 2015, my sketchbook purchases went from 3-4 times a year to maybe once a year. I had gotten my first big job at a web design company in my hometown. I started as an intern doing graphic design while I wrapped up my last couple of semesters at WKU. When I graduated, I was hired full time as a designer, promoted to game artist (when they started a games division), and then finally got the position of lead game artist (when the previous one was let go and I was the only other person in the department. Impostor Syndrome waved at me in the corner of the room as I received the promotion).
These sketchbooks, while having significantly better art than some of the previous years’ books, reflected a time in my life where I first started feeling the weight of depression and anxiety and where Impostor Syndrome started accompanying me day-to-day. I was desperately trying to find a job back at Cartoon Network but they weren’t hiring in-person. And every other job I had applied at didn’t work out either. I felt stuck at a job I didn’t like, working for people who I didn’t trust, and in a city that hated me for being queer. Personal drawings took a back seat to work drawings as I didn’t have the creative energy to do anything else. And while there was some good personal art in these sketchbooks, there were far too many self-portraits of me with dark circles under my eyes, crying, or other more violent depictions. These books, while often containing pretty well done art, were some of the hardest sketchbooks for me to look at and remember.
Jay points out that these sketchbooks are also when I started drawing self-portraits more often than I used to. In High School and early college, it was always a fursona or superherosona. In these books, it was just me. Sad, tired, frustrated, screaming to be out of a situation I felt trapped in (the song "Downtown" from Little Shop of Horrors came to mind during this phase of my life). And with every job application I sent out getting rejected, my impostor syndrome laughed, reminding me that I wasn't actually good at what I did.
Still, the best take-away from these particular sketchbooks, specifically the ones where I was finishing up classes at WKU, was seeing all the places that Jay started showing up in the pages. From tiny doodles, to little notes back and forth, to a couple of saucy drawings I'd entirely forgotten about. Our relationship started in early 2012, and is still going strong to this day.
How did I feel going through these? Hopelessness, depression, and a heap of heartache for my past self. But also, love and nostalgia for the early days of Jay and my budding relationship.
The Last Books - 2015 to Now
In 2015, I was fired from my desk job and moved into freelance full time. At that point, so much had happened that I just stopped drawing for myself and I didn’t keep sketch pads as regularly. I was convinced that if I stopped doing client work, the world would end. My personal works, doodles and sketches, passion projects, whatever, they all had to be put on hold. My belief was that if it wasn’t making money, I was not allowed to work on it.
I still struggle with sketching for fun to this day, nearly a decade later.
How did I feel going through these? Guilty for not drawing as often as I used to and some icky gross burnout. However, I also felt pride in my abilities and how far I'd come.
How I feel about all this now!
It's weird but for the first time in a while, I am hopeful for the future. Going through these sketchbooks reminded me of a lot of things I'd forgotten. Largely that it's no wonder I'm so tired these days, I've been through a lot! Things like depression, anxiety, impostor syndrome, and trauma don’t just vanish in time or even with the help therapy. Self-love and self-care is an ongoing and forever journey. For me personally, practicing that self-love by continuing with therapy, my antidepressant medication, and having the support of friends, I feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel for the first time in a while. Mom was right. Going through these old books did remind me of where I came from, as well as provide me with clues as to where/how some of my traumas began manifesting. The good news though is that experience also gave me a lot of potential ways to combat my burnout moving forward.
Here are some other things I took away from this experience:
It is not my job to hold onto all of the memories for the Erskine clan. While it’s good to have memories to hold onto, it’s also okay to let them go.
I’ve been mean and harsh towards myself for a very long time. Really gotta work on that...
I miss drawing in a more cartoony style. I want to get back into that again!
I absolutely loved seeing any instance of Jay showing up in my sketchpads, especially if it was before we were officially out of the closet and dating in public. The earliest pic we found was from high school art class and was titled "Jay's Boyfriend" AKA a rude drawing I did of a goofy looking dude saying "Boobs!" as my way of poking fun at her. She was very shy at the time and saying naughty words made her turn red.
Capitalism really fucked up my self-worth and the ability to do art for fun.
High School Pants is calling to me, encouraging me to embrace doing art for shits and giggles again and it feels… like maybe I can make that happen.
But my biggest take away from all of this…
I think I want to get a non-art job again.
I need to give my brain a break from constant artistic output for others and instead, just do something different for a while. Maybe the change of my day job will help me rediscover my love of art, once art isn’t connected as strongly to my income.
I think it'd just be nice to draw for me again instead of for everyone else.
And when I arrive in KY come this May, I'll try my best to do just that.
Bonus Content!
Here are some more quick pics I took of various artwork from old sketchbooks! They're in no particular order or anything, just for fun.
Expand the gallery below for maximum enjoyment :D
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