Since I was a teenager, I have always kept notebooks and sketchbooks. In these I kept all the ideas I had - for paintings or songs or stories or whatever I was into at the time.
A notebook is absolutely essential for a creative person - as you forget things! There’s no point in being fortunate enough to have (what you think is) a great idea, if you forget it two weeks later. Ideas need to be respected…and recorded. So I have many, many books full of awful ideas (that seemed super at the time), bad lyrics, poor sketches and also good things that developed into finished pieces.
All my picture books begin in these sketchbooks. The idea or the title usually comes first and that is immediately written down. Then I begin trying to work out what the characters will look like by drawing them again and again… until I know how they look and can draw them with any expression and in any position.
Then it’s working out the text and page layouts… all this is interspersed with important ‘To Do’ notes to myself… ‘change bank account’, ‘buy dog food’, ‘go to pharmacy’… A sketchbook is a unique window into the life of an artist.