It’s hard to picture my grandfather without a sketchbook in his hands. He was always drawing. Gramps lived for 94 years — long enough to experience the Great Depression and the Great Recession, the birth of both television and virtual reality — and he chronicled the decades in a staggering collection of sketchbooks, each a literal chapter of his life…

There were stories of long-lost friends next to struggles at work, moments of historical significance flowing into prosaic family vignettes: kaleidoscopic portals into moments of my grandfather’s life. Dad and I ended up flipping through the pages for over an hour, and story after story rushed out.

Artist and filmmaker Colin Levy takes us on a tour of his grandfather’s memories, as told in exquisite sketches and notes created by his grandfather Byron Levy, who was also an artist. This short film, My Grandfather’s Memory Book, was featured in The New York Times in March 2018. See just a few of Byron Levy’s sketches below:

Related reading: This thread from Colin about his Gramps.