My husband picked up this book after a sparked interest in sketchnotes. After hearing him talk about it, along with several blog posts on the subject, I thought this method might be of some use to me. I will admit, I did not read the entire book, but only part one; part two consists of using the method in specific work situations and examples, which didn't apply to my needs. As I went through The Back of the Napkin I was reminded of my mom. From my recollection, she incorporated sketching into many of her notes and always when writing things for us kids. I always thought she was such a great artist! I can remember her drawing faces into every little swirly doodle :)
My main reason for thinking to apply sketchnotes was for my daily Bible reading. I have started a daily schedule to read through Acts and the epistles in 90 days. In the beginning, the program has me reading one chapter from Acts and one from Romans each day. After day 3, I felt a little bewildered in keeping track of the flow of events in each book, so I thought I'd jot down the highlights of each chapter and glance over those before the daily readings. Here is what I came up with for the first chapters:
Acts 1: Jesus ascends up to heaven and the apostles replace Judas with Matthias by casting lots.
Romans 1: Paul desires to go to Rome and God hands people over to their sinful desires.
What I have discovered so far (I'm only at chapter 6 in each book) is that sketching Acts is much easier than sketching Romans! The Acts is an historical account of people, places and things while Romans speaks of ideas, convictions and beliefs. I'm challenged in visualizing these concepts. Despite that, I think taking the time to visualize and sketch these chapters is helping me order and remember them.
I'm not sure how well I'd do taking sketchnotes in real time, like during a lecture, but I'm going to try it on Sunday morning's sermon. The book gives very practical steps in visualizing and sketching using six x six rules of what we see and what we show. I believe with practice this would be a great note-taking method.
These are great! Keep at it.
ReplyDeleteHere is a post that talks about Sketchbooking: http://www.core77.com/blog/sketchnotes/sketchnotes_101_the_basics_of_visual_note-taking_19678.asp
and here are some examples: http://www.dachisgroup.com/2011/12/the-sketchnote-revolution/