My Silly Little Unemployment Sketchbook (2016)
Gallery
Info for nerds: this is a pocket size (3.5x5.5") unlined hard cover Molskine that I had monogramed by Molskine for free using a coupon code 😎. I was mainly using the Pilot G2 07 at the time and I believe all of the black, red, blue, and green linework was done using G2 07s. All of the soft color fills were done via Crayola crayon that I then thinned with an eraser so I could go over it with pen. Today I keep an A5 365 Days gridded Stalogy and exclusively use Paper Mate Flairs because I am different now :-)
Dated almost exactly 5 years ago today!
The page on the right is notes from my first week at the job I eventually got :') they paid me $300 per month and it was full time :')
If you are reading this and happen to be younger than 22—hello fellow gen-z dolls—please let me know if you think it would be cool or hack for me to bleach the two front pieces of my hair like this.
Do you remember being 22? I certainly do, because it was only 5 years ago 😘. I spent the majority of my senior year of college watching 2001: a Space Odyssey (I think my final view count was 30) and being a huge bitch to my closest friends, so it was no surprise that I graduated art school with very few career prospects. Therefore, like many losers (jk!) before me, I spent the following summer in front of my parents' TV wearing a hot sauce-stained Cavs 2016 Championship shirt and applying to jobs I wasn't qualified for. I also matched with the main goth guy from my high school and had to block him on Instagram a week later so don't think I wasn't thriving!
As a babe in the career market woods, I absorbed every job rejection as a direct reflection of my creative worth. Having to present work you very recently razed your soul to complete only to receive a single sentence email saying you didn't make the cut isn't exactly the type of thing they sing about in "Party Rock Anthem." After receiving a very kind rejection from my dream job (AKA an unpaid position at a well-known studio), I spent the night quietly sobbing while watching the women's Olympic gymnastics team because they were achieving the impossible and I was jobless in Ohio. Inspiring! All that said, the sketchbook I kept at the time, diligently scanned below, became a way of reminding myself that even if every employer in the world hated my work and thought I was too much of a freak to join their payroll, I could still draw something that I liked and feel a little bit better.
That September, as I turned 23, my luck turned around: I finally landed a job that paid an inhumane wage and left my perfect childhood bedroom to squat in a Chicago apartment that overlooked a billboard for a gentlemen's club. From then on, I ceased to have any flaws or depression or anxiety and everywhere I go people tell me that I have a perfect personality. THAT is the power of art. Please enjoy my sketchbook from 2016 when I was 22, unemployed and falling apart at the seams!
If you are reading this and happen to be younger than 22—hello fellow gen-z dolls—please let me know if you think it would be cool or hack for me to bleach the two front pieces of my hair like this.
Info for nerds: this is a pocket size (3.5x5.5") unlined hard cover Molskine that I had monogramed by Molskine for free using a coupon code 😎. I was mainly using the Pilot G2 07 at the time and I believe all of the black, red, blue, and green linework was done using G2 07s. All of the soft color fills were done via Crayola crayon that I then thinned with an eraser so I could go over it with pen. Today I keep an A5 365 Days gridded Stalogy and exclusively use Paper Mate Flairs because I am different now :-)
Dated almost exactly 5 years ago today!
Stranger Things (the first season) was SO important to me, largely because it is my deepest, darkest desire to fall through a portal to another dimension full of monsters and intrigue while everybody on the other side is worried sick about me 😇
Stranger Things (the first season) was SO important to me, largely because it is my deepest, darkest desire to fall through a portal to another dimension full of monsters and intrigue while everybody on the other side is worried sick about me 😇
The page on the right is notes from my first week at the job I eventually got :') they paid me $300 per month and it was full time :')
