A month or so ago, I went back to using the simple Moleskine notebook and have tons of creative fun on its thin, low-quality, ink-bleeding pages. This sudden reunion after years of scornful antagonism was caused by two impulses.

The first one was rewatching, together with our son, the “Never-Ending Man” documentary about Hayao Miyazaki – looking closely, I realised that the “himitsu techou” (secret notebook) he used for developing ideas was just a regular, hard-cover, Moleskine notebook. Not caring at all that the ink of his fountain pen made blobby line ends and bled all the way through the pages, he just took memos or drew thumbnails of ideas, treating the whole notebook as something disposable.

Almost at the same time came the second bit of Miyazaki inspiration – while looking online for better pictures of the sketches that he did for a hostel/cafe project in Tomo-no-Ura (the fishing town that inspired “Ponyo”), I found THIS picture:

Used with permission from this Ameblo blog,
go there for more good quality photos of the sketchbook!

On a page from the sketchbook of concept arts for the crew restoring an old Japanese “minka” wooden house, Miyazaki (probably absent-mindedly) drew the thing he was at that time developing in his head – very early versions of the characters for “Ponyo”. Here, the main character is still called Shigeru after the picture book by Rieko Nakagawa, and the heroine – Ponyo – rather than a cute mermaid-like creature, starts out as a frog! I remembered at once that Miyazaki, in the “Ponyo” documentary, mentioned wanting to borrow the “いあいあえん” (“Iyaiyaen“) title from Nakagawa’s book and testing a frog for the main character – both ideas abandoned in the end.

So this was how his secret notebook pages for movie projects probably look! Just throwing around ideas, testing stuff freely, and seeing what sticks! When the NHK documentary about making “Ponyo” starts, and we see him drawing the first pencil-and-watercolor sketches for the main characters, the truth is that he had already been developing them for months. Here is the magic that allows Miyazaki to sit down and draw concept art that looks so close to the final product. To some extent, in the back of my mind, I knew this must be the case, but seeing this page filled with test doodles felt a bit like being allowed a backstage peek at a magician’s performance. I still feel fortunate to have found this photo.

These two things somehow made me realize that I’m still way too precious about my secret sketchbook I wrote about earlier. I used good paper and safe tools (like pencils) and focused on making nice pictures (practicing drawing people from movies or Pinterest photos, etc.), but avoided dreaming up and developing my unique ideas. As a result, I often had no pre-prepared concepts to work on when the time came to sit down and draw or paint. At such times, I would usually turn to using straight photo references from my library. But the thing is that I want to be more imaginatively creative than just paint what I find on my walks or online. Lately, I can feel a strong pull towards Miyazaki’s, Tamura Shigeru’s, or Inoue Naohisa’s more inventive pieces rather than towards Makoto Shinkai-like beautifying (or anime-fying) of existing places.

This was why, for the first time in years, I bought a Moleskine thin-paper notebook and (hearing the advice of artists like Laura Heikala) also chose to use an ink pen (a COPIC SP). This way, I cannot be too precious with each drawing – no fixing, no fiddling – just straight creative output and experimenting while keeping things as simple and shorthand-like as I can. Yes, the paper is still as bad as I remembered it, but I keep telling myself that I’m not making pictures, I’m taking notes for myself that just often happen to be simple visuals.

I doodle, write bullet points, or memorize interesting things from photobooks at the library, do thumbnails while watching documentaries, or while waiting for my turn at the dentist. This is work – the ideas I’m currently developing will probably end up as paintings or maybe a short animation – but it’s also a surprisingly fun and free exercise for my imagination.

So far, I stumbled on many more ideas here than by sitting at my desk for hours, saving pictures on Pinterest I will never use again. I’m happy that I can vividly remember all the ideas that piqued my interest while I was doodling in my Moleskine – I feel the urge to use them in some way. What’s more, after such thinking and finishing a few ink-stained pages, my mental attitude towards my art and work improved as well, and this is something I try to aim for.

I’m currently halfway through my first notebook, and I’m already looking forward to numbering it, putting it on my shelf, and starting a new one. Now, to realize all the ideas I found on the pages!