I recently came across this 2016 Huffington Post article about the auction sale of a Salvador Dali notebook via Pinterest, and thought “How on earth did I miss this?!?” This is one of my favorite glimpses of an artist’s notebook!

Here’s A Rare Glimpse Inside Salvador Dali’s Unpublished Diaries

Salvador Dali­, the great Surrealist painter and bombastic lover of ocelots, is widely known for his nightmarish depictions of melting timepieces, nesting tigers and spindly-legged elephants. He’s less revered for his ability to meticulously monitor his daily expenses.

Thanks to a recent auction at Sotheby’s in Paris, the mustachioed master’s humdrum knack for documenting his spending, listing each and every transaction amidst a flurry of horse head illustrations and erotic doodles, has finally come to light. Not only did the artist hide original drawings, arbitrary criticisms and spontaneous thoughts inside his journal, he kept his endless charts of numbers — a peseta here, a few hundred pesetas there — locked away too.

I just love the dense textures and layers of writing and patterns in different colored inks. It looks like the notebook was originally wire-bound but the pages were detached and re-mounted into some sort of cover. There are more images in the original post. I like the Salvador Dali notebook better than his paintings!