Lessons from an Art Notebook

For as long as I can remember, I've been an avid, voracious user of notebooks. I use them to make copious notes and prefer the blank, Moleskine-style hardcover ones to write ideas and related things I use for work and various pursuits.

Years ago, I realized there are many lessons to be had from popular people, especially titans of industry, that are either sounding ordinary but very noteworthy when applied, to those that sound counter-intuitive but made a lot of sense, especially from the mouths of those who have proven those words to be true by the metric of their success.

Many times, successful people think very differently from regular folks. Not just because of a cynical point-of-view about their inequitable treatment of taxes or labor, but by the very essence that brought them success.

Over their lifetimes, these people say a lot of things, and entire books are written about them. So much so that it is easy to forget the insights in the deluge of articles, interviews, features and books.

When I think of these people, I can recall choice stories about them or words they uttered, or strategies they employed that made for good stories. But many times, you'd wish you could somehow distill their wise words and actions into something pithy and memorable.

The kind that happy quotes do on social media these days, or funny notes on T-shirts. Or the various inspirational posters. Or a host of other media.

I elected to go that route, but instead of photos or quotes, I'd put my own notes or their quotes onto a page in my notebooks, and combine it with my love for art, in the form of watercolor portraits, by having their likeness set on my notebook pages, with a story, quote or brief note about an aspect of the person's wisdom or action that reverberated over time.

Some, like Steve Jobs, have a litany of quotes attributed to him, mostly legitimate, even if others may not be, inasmuch as he is caricatured as a one-dimensional antagonist for his abrasive ways or the genius marketer able to persuade almost anyone who comes near him and enters his reality-distortion field.

Yet he was much more nuanced than that, a man of many shades of grey instead of either black or white. He said a lot of sage and memorable things that-- useful or not-- still get overused to this day not just because of the popularity of the products the company he founded builds, but because they ring true, and as such are used by countless articles, sites and media to this day.

This is not a post about Steve, but it is one of a similar vein about the best friend of his (arch?) frenemy, Bill Gates: Warren Buffet.

I would also have a quick sketch and note about Bill Gates in these pages. (I realize the lesson/note here isn't a particularly good one, and this was made more for the itch to paint, but worth the note regardless, as one among many.)

But in today's world, it is interesting how Buffet's wisdom and philosophies hold true. I wanted to capture but one of them, and set paint to paper, with ink beside it.

It was my form of art that I painstakingly made but wasn't meant to be immediately hung on a wall or displayed in a fancy place in my home or someone else's. It was meant as a "mere" page (or two in the case of the spreads like in this example).

Friends and my girlfriend would chastise me (while providing the backhanded compliment) for wasting such artwork and effort onto a page or two of a notebook that has many pages to fill, instead of each one displayed on a wall somewhere.

But this is one of those cases where it was a private appreciation of art and the lessons therein, and the people from whom such lessons emanated.

I never needed the validation or enjoyment of putting it for others to see. It was for my own private notes, which I imparted so much value on, that for me, they deserved the time and work required for the essence they conveyed.

Some people scribble through their notes, others sketch on them. I do the same. It's just that in one of these little notebooks, I'd spend a bit more time on the notes than usual.

Buffet's words are especially interesting because although stocks, bonds and financial securities are the medium of choice for his genius and the case in this quote, its fundamental lesson holds true in today's world of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrencies.

And how today, you don't buy into ICOs or crypto that doesn't have their fundamentals down pat-- the way more than a thousand altcoins do that will burn out or fade away like those before them, to the tears of many a crypto trader despite being in a relative bull market.

No, You get into the cryptocurrency for your own reasons (and hopefully a fair amount of consensus behind them), ideally after a good amount of research, and especially into those with a good organization, people or story behind it.

As well, far from purely selfish reasons, I was intending to have a different set of art for public display, but time, life and a lack of practice prevented me from this until now.

So it is in this spirit that I share this old sketch/painting I made from a couple pages of this notebook, as my first post on Steemit. I previously shared it on Flickr many years before and it seemed appropriate to now bring it here. I hope you like it and find interest in it, as much as I still recall the pleasure of having painted it.

Almost ironically, for something intended for private notes, it is a joy to share now, even if only to be able to share the story above, that in the current context of this artwork, turns out that I'll be showing it to more people after all.