Above: a sketch of my sketchbook drawn in my sketchbook.
This is a story that starts with a tragedy: a lost sketchbook, but I will tell you right now that there's a happy ending.
But there was also a cost.
One time I wrote about having too many sketchbooks. I sure do. This week, I was teaching a class at a middle school. I had a couple of sketchbooks with me, which I refer to for class cartooning exercises. Afterward, I went to the office, returned my visitor pass and drove home.
Forty minutes later and about a mile from home, I realized I had left one of my two sketchbooks in the classroom. I must have left it on the teacher's desk.
I called the school and my little sketchbook was found. I could pick it up any time the school was open. Hooray!
I drove back the next day, went to the school office and one of the women who work there handed me my sketchbook back.
"I hope you don't mind," she said. "I let a special needs kid look at it. I was busy and handed your sketchbook to him to keep him occupied. He was mesmerized. He just sat and was quiet. He looked at every drawing in your book. He was fascinated."
It could be worse. My sketchbook could have been lost that day. I was relieved it was found and so I nodded and said something like it was OK that this kid pored over my sketchbook.
But she should have asked me beforehand.
This begs a question.
Is your sketchbook your private property? Can anyone look through it? If someone you don't know picks up a sketchbook of yours and starts to look through it, page by page, without your permission or knowledge, what would your reaction be? Would you then be liable for anything that that person reacted to in your sketchbook?
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