Sketchbook...some thoughts...

(front/back)

Just a thought about my current sketchbook...well, so here is my thing with sketchbooks in general.   I love'em.  But I hate them at the same time, for this reason- I want to fill the up, then I get stressed when I don't, I have an inner battle with each page...do I tear it out, do I leave it intact? But wait, I need to fill up every page first!  (taking a deep breath...)

Flashback to, I don't know- about 25+ years ago. (gulp...that was depressing)  Anyway, I loved coloring books.  I would color every page, front to back, carrying around my crayons in an old Country Crock butter tub.  So what does this have to do with my sketchbooks?  Everything.  I think from a young age I felt the satisfaction of completing something, a book of my coloring.  (and for the record I did like to stay in the lines)  It was my own book at that point.  

And since those days,  sketchbooks have come and gone.  In college I went through a phase of buying the black bound sketchbooks, somewhere deciding that it would also be good to have a separate one for each course/medium.  The result, a row of sketchbooks, lining my shelf...with only the first quarter of the book used.  In hindsight, maybe I should have merged all of my ideas into on sketchbook...

Somewhere along the way my friend Jason Basden gave me a handmade sketchbook which I loved.  I immediately filled the front cover and first page with a collage showing self-empowerment and inspiration...and then that book was stolen out of my car along with this awesome leopard bag I had just bought.  Such is life.  

Then I got into Moleskin sketch books, graduate school I think it was.  I like these, they are light weight and they have a little bit off an off-white page color.  This is what I took with me to Japan in the summer of 2009, using mostly black colored pencil and some watercolor to draw...but still not filling up the book.  Sigh.

Another one that I made not too long ago was one for a workshop I did at the Salvador Dali Museum in Spring of 2010.  Creating a sketchbook cover was a part of the workshop, we did this prior to arriving.  I really had fun creating this piece that I felt showed who I am.  I added collaged photos (my own), as well as transferred text and I painted details on top of everything with acrylic paint.  The sketchbook was originally white, I painted it to look like leopard print.  I wrote down all of my notes from the workshop and also some sketches from the Dali museum. Still have pages to fill in that one...

I may post some of the old sketchbooks, just for fun.  Will wait til I have some daylight, and also some are in my classroom.  That would be neat, for me at least.

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So now, here I sit.  More productive at this point than I think I have ever been...having the same battle with my current sketchbook.  I can't remember when I bought this newest one, maybe around January?  About the time that I started to do the Creative Every Day Challenge.  The majority of the pages that are in the book now are from just msc. figurative work I did in January, not anything to do with the shoes I was making that month.  

I have been starting my CEDs for this month in this sketchbook, then ripping them out to turn them into mixed media pieces, all the while seeing the thickness of the book slowly disappear, and not sure I want it all to go away and just be left with a spiral binding when its all said and done.

So I purchased a new sketchbook with the intent of ripping the pages out as I go and committing to not feeling bad about taking the pages out but trying to use every one.  Every page.  

As for the sparkly sketchbook that has helped me start this new year off right...I will leave the pages intact.  Unless, of course, I rip out one of those figures to gift to someone, which I do often.  But I will leave the remaining pages for jotting down notes to myself, quick sketches, quotes...anything that I need to keep me inspired. 

Ummmm...so...that is what has been on my mind about my sketchbook.  

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