I am often asked where do I get my inspiration from, and I like to answer: “Everything is -already- in my notebooks!“. I’m not that old but my generation didn’t grow up with computers, so when I was young I had to write on paper everything I wanted to remember. The huge anchor near the swimming pool, the atelier of the leather watchstraps maker, the smell of oil paintings in the basement… Then came the sketches, the drawings. I put down any ideas that came out because I knew ideas linger for a moment, then in one second, they are gone. I sadly lost many of them, but I keep writing and drawing in notebooks. When I travel, I always have a notebook in one pocket (a Moleskine), my Nintendo DS or PSP in the other one, and my Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot K800i 3G phone (a 3.2-megapixel camera with auto-focus lens and a real flash) nearby in case I have to take quick shots.
Back home, after a while, I glance through the pages of the notebook and sometimes I realize I already drew something similar years ago. Kinda counterproductive, one may say. It is like this rough sketch of a chair I made in the mid-1990s. I searched for this old notebook and finally found it, and I was right, I already made a very similar sketch of this chair… I know, computer files can be easily classified and organized, and it is easy to make a search, then I bought a Smartphone (Qtek) but a round-trip ticket after, I turned back to my pen and paper.
During all my travels, I loaded hundreds of notebooks with fashion and furniture design sketches with detailed descriptions, but also interior design and architecture sketches associated with photos. As geek as I may sound (yeah, I’m aware of that), I always use a pen and not a keyboard nor a stylus to put down ideas. My notebooks can mysteriously disappear sometimes but not as often as my computer crashes. And that is the exact moment I discover my backup store file has been corrupted… Murphy’s law.
Anyway, this post is not only an attempt to rehabilitate me as a ‘normal’ girl (I am over pretending I’m a bounty hunter named Samus Aran since I’m 13!), I also give hints about my book. I will put online some extracts soon. I also mention a chair, and this is why I am spending my last 10 days in an iron-work atelier. Stay tuned 😉
