Not long ago, I found myself sitting in an Adirondack chair beside Hadley’s Esselon Cafe, enjoying a coffee and a chat with an artist friend.

It was a buggy evening, humid and hot. Swatting mosquitos soon become part of the ambiance. My friend, who’s quite skilled at realistic rendering, produced a pocket notebook, one of those pleasant, thick-paged sorts that feels good in the hand. He pulled out an unusual pen and drew in the book while we talked.

Maybe because he knew I spent many an hour in studio art classes as an undergrad, maybe because he wanted to see a writer squirm, he finished up his sketch and said, “Ever used a brush pen?”

He held the thing toward me, offering the little book with his other hand. As I flipped through its pages, I felt certain I’d ruin what was otherwise a nice collection of well-executed sketches, all of which possessed that brand of assured line only longtime artists obtain.

I briefly approached proficiency in figure drawing a couple of decades or so ago, but putting pen to paper in the middle of an artist’s book was a challenge I felt unprepared for. Since the time of that brief figural peak, I’ve barely drawn a thing, and I’d never tried a brush pen.

I set out to interpret the scene near me, a big tree, some smaller ones behind it, and a row of rocks. My drawing was not, it’s safe to say, Louvre-worthy. But there was something satisfying about using the brush pen, about seeing how the ink spilled out calligraphy style. Something tingled in the back of my brain—it was, to put it plainly, fun to fill the page, no matter the quality of my end product.

I was tapping into a long-forgotten pleasure, the sort of thing that drives artists to be artists in the first place. I was sketching, paying attention to the world around me in an unaccustomed, wordless way. By the time I decided my so-so rendering was finished, I was smiling.

Sketching is, for me, a meditative and entertaining thing, and thanks to trying out that brush pen, a pleasure I’m likely to take up again.

It’s apparently not just me—sketching seems to be in the zeitgeist at present. On June 25, the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center sponsored the Brattleboro Sketchcrawl: Summer Edition. Participants of all ages and levels of ability were invited to “crawl about town” (admittedly, a tough position in which to sketch) in search of things to sketch, then rendezvous at the BMAC to compare notes and enjoy refreshments.

Starting July 6, sketchbooks go big in the Northampton exhibition & In One Another. It’s certainly less common to see artists’ preliminary work than their finished work, a fact which can expand the perceived distance between artists and non-artists. A sketch seems informal, inviting, whereas a finished work, with all its well-hewn evidence of rarefied skills, can seem daunting.

This exhibition offers a wide-ranging look at what artists are up to in their sketchbooks. For this second installment of the exhibition, 65 artists received handmade sketchbooks. Every other day, via text, email, Facebook or blog posting from Northampton’s Now.For.Art, the artists received prompts. They were invited to use the prompts—things like “can’t fight this feeling,” “chair superior,” “juice rats rampage,” and “hologram canyon”—in any way they saw fit to inspire the filling of the sketchbooks. After addressing 30 such prompts over 60 days, the artists returned the books.

It’s anybody’s guess what content viewers will find there, but in broad terms it’s sure to reveal, in a comfortable and accessible way, some of what goes on in the heads of artists when they are approaching things without the concerns of large-scale, more finished works. To heighten the inviting climate, the Whoo space, say the organizers, “will be outfitted as a domestic setting to encourage gallery visitors to get comfortable in order to spend time with the artist sketchbooks.”

& In One Another: July 6-11, reception July 8, 4-8 p.m., free, Whoo Space, 11 Market St., Northampton.