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I've been watching my fellow sketchers post end of the year recaps of their sketch books, and I decided that would be fun for me as well. I'm still new to keeping more intensive and regular sketch journals. I only started seriously in the fall of 2013, and I find that it has immensely enriched the entire spectrum of my work. I'm making prints and paintings from scenes I never would have expected to make more serious art from, but once I had a sketch I liked, the image nagged at me and demanded further attention.
I also love both the casual and narrative aspects of keeping a sketch journal. It's fun to tell more of a story than is possible in a free standing painting or print.
At right is my sketch of the sketchbooks I used in 2015. Three of them are partial, and five (the small ones) exclusively from 2015.
Here are the highlights from each of my sketchbooks for the year.
My earliest is the last Stillman and Birns that I used. I like their paper a lot, but the 6x8 size is only in spiral bound, and scanning in sketches across that gap is challenging. Their bound sketchbooks open up to a pretty square format, and I really prefer a rectangle to work in. So this was my last hurrah for their books. The first half is the second half of my 2014 Paris trip, but I kept working in it on my return, and a good third of it was 2015. A couple of my favorites were a marker sketch of Mud Island and sketches of Mr. Darcy.
My first handbook journal, January to April, hooked me on their books. They're a great size to fit in my purse, take water media nicely, and even have a small pocket in the back for museum tickets and other momentoes. This was my hands down favorite page from that one.
My April to June sketchbook saw the NYC trip with my sister in April. It was very much a theater trip for her birthday celebration.
I also got back to Shakertown in Kentucky, one of my favorite places to sketch.
My June to October sketchbook has my favorite cat in the world on my knee and one of my more successful marker sketches.
During that period I also went to Amsterdam and spent a week sketching both the city and inside the museums.
And then on to Paris for one utterly beautiful week.
My larger handbook watercolor journal is mostly trees. It has some pages from 2014, some from 2015, and I'm using it much more slowly since I don't have it in my purse all the time. Here's the page that was open in my Dixon exhibition. I did a print from this for the show.
I ended up doing a number of prints from the sketches in these books and may well do more. It's good to have the raw material.
Finally, I'm two thirds of the way through the small handbook I started in October. Sketching ground mostly to a halt during my really busy pre-Christmas season, but I got over the Dixon at the end of the holiday to sketch my show, which was the single biggest moment of my career.
I also (always) continue to sketch my beloved Mr. Darcy.
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