Sketchbooks

Ever since my first trip to the Illustration Academy, sketchbooks have been vital to my artmaking practice.  I kept sketchbooks before then, but it wasn't the same.  After seeing beautiful sketchbooks by illustrators like Sterling Hundley, and my classmates like William Godwin, I knew that they could be a place for experimentation and observation as well as a place to get your ideas out.  I decided to document some of my sketchbooks here today, some of which I have never documented at all.

 

A good number of my sketchbooks are handmade by Nicki Crock.  Her generosity in making them for me allows me to control the type (or usually types) of paper that go into them, size, thickness, and what they generally look like.  This allows for lots of fun.  I have sketchbooks covered in fur, hand-dyed fabric, and old clothes with the pockets still attached.

With these two books, we played with different kinds of closures.  The first is held closed with magnets, which are embedded in the board of the cover.  The second uses a flap with clasps.

 

Hairy sketchbooks.

 I do still buy sketchbooks once in a while.  Hand Book sketchbooks are a personal favorite.  They're Moleskine-sized but have much nicer paper that takes watercolor paint very well.

 

Sketchbooks are personal for me, like visual diaries.  I can often flip through a book and remember where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, and what made me want to draw what I was drawing.  This one is the exception.  I don't remember where I was when I looked through it.  Flipping through these pages was a pleasant surprise, and I know I have never shown this one to anybody.

Here are some links to my other sketchbook posts over the years:

One

Two

Three

Four