notebookism

My sketchbooks

I bought different sketchbooks over the past year to try them and find which one is my favorite for sketching. The Fabriano Classic Artist's Journal was my first one and I did like the different colors of paper in it. But since the paper was a bit to thin for watercolor, I bought the "Carnet de voyage", with 400g/mp² thick paper. It is great for watercolor and Ink. I used it in different size for a couple of months and then heard about the Moleskine. Bought my first one in February and I'm sticking with it since then because it perfect for pen and ink. I  also got the Moleskine watercolor two weeks ago, and I really like it.

The Clairefontaine journal I bought for my trip to Montreal, but forgot it home. So I'm keeping it for a futur trip :-) What I like about this one ? The little window in the cover, showing us part of the first page drawing.

I'm still not sure which one I prefer, even if the Moleskine is staying in my bag these days :-)

"My Sketchbooks" by Shandara

Notebookism/FLICKR
© All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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 Have a great weekend everyone. Get out, have a life - and write about it! See you on Monday.

Inspiration: Black Art and Secret Postcards

A treasure of hand printed masterpieces. Smell the ink!

Thanks Cyril!

"Do you dream of owning a one-off work of art by Grayson Perry? Perhaps you yearn for an original Tracey Emin. Or maybe you have a hankering for your very own Paula Rego sketch? Whatever your secret passion, your dream may come true for just £35 with RCA Secret, the annual postcard exhibition and fundraising sale at the Royal College of Art.

The show has received 2,700 postcards by over 1,000 artists. Postcards include work by Damien Hirst, Paula Rego, David Bailey, Julian Opie, Grayson Perry, Milton Glaser, Tracey Emin, Lawrence Weiner, Olafur Eliasson, Quentin Blake, Hussein Chalayan, Susan Hiller, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nan Goldin, David Shrigley, Christo & Jeanne Claude to name a few..."

Secret Postcards

Image link

Scribble, scribble, scribble...on notebooks

"My, aren’t notebooks all the rage. The New York Times Magazine excerpts Susan Sontag’s journals, and for its cover photographs one of the open notebooks from which the excerpts have been taken. The Paris Review under Philip Gourevitch reproduces pages from the notebooks of Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams, Woody Guthrie, and Robert Frost. Princeton Architectural Press publishes a book of paintings from Kate T. Williamson’s notebooks, A Year in Japan, and Drawing From Life: The Journal As Art, containing 200 full-color plates taken from the notebooks of Mike Figgis, David Byrne, and more...

...Central to this interest (and commerce, notebooks having become a brisk trade for bookstores and stationers) is the enduring belief in the talisman—creativity springs from the right tools. Lay down a dozen bucks for a facsimile of the notebook carried by Bruce Chatwin, and you too will wield the prose of In Patagonia and The Songlines. Examine the crabbed handwriting and doodles of some notable poet or novelist and you’ll find what made it all work: How She Did It...

 

The problem is, how she did it will not show up in a notebook...."

Dale Keiger
Visit his blog.

"Guys are different"

"Yesterday, my husband and I went sketchcrawlin'...This picture tells about what I took along and what my wonderful purist husband took along. Guess who carried what :).."

a.n.
"Guys are different" @ Notebookism/FLICKR
© All rights reserved. Used with permission

Fix Your Fitness With Pen, Paper

Thousands of Web sites offer to help you lose weight by tracking your eating. But you can accomplish the same thing with a notebook and a Bic. Experts say it can be one of the most effective, easiest diet tools -- just writing down every calorie that passes your lips and everything you burn off through exercise.

 

"A lot of times, people don't want to know," said exercise science instructor Jennifer Yee of Creighton University.

 

Yee teaches a course that requires students to use journaling. As a freshman rower and future personal trainer, Egan took the class.

 

Egan said that it was immediately clear what was missing in her diet.

 

"I knew I didn't take in enough calories, and I wasn't eating that healthy. I had been on the Atkins diet. Pretty much all I'd been eating was salads and egg whites. I hadn't been gaining muscle," Egan said. "Being a rower, you burn so many calories and I wasn't getting enough calories to be efficient at practice."

 

Three weeks of journaling for Yee's class got Egan over her carb-free lifestyle and showed her why she needed carbohydrates to make it through practice and perform well at competitions.

 

"I lost 3 percent body fat and gained 15 pounds of muscle that year," Egan said.

Fix Your Fitness With Pen, Paper
By Shiloh Woolman
NBC13 AL

Holbein's pen-and-ink drawing returns Thomas More to London

"Holbein’s drawing of Sir Thomas More and his family receives its first public display in London since the late 1520s this week. The pen-and-ink image, which dates from about 1526, is a study for the lost life-size group portrait of the Chancellor, who was beheaded for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.

It will be displayed at Tate Britain as part of an exhibition on Hans Holbein the Younger, the King’s court painter, that runs until January 7 next year. Holbein in England, the largest gathering of his works for more than half a century, opens on Thursday.

A reference to the drawing appears in a letter of 1529 from Erasmus, the Humanist scholar, to More. In an age when such drawings were the equivalent of photographs, Erasmus commented on how well the More family looked..."

The Times Online

LINK

Blank Page # 010

"I do a great deal of writing. My journals reach up to fifteen letter-sized pages a day. I feel that as a writer, it is necessary for me to keep a journal not only to keep track of ideas but also to try to make sense of the things i see and read and hear and come across every day.

So the Moleskine is really too small for me, although I carry pocket squared one everyday to note down various ephemera.

What I do now is print lines on letter-sized heavy stationery paper and wire-bind them with the Carl wire-binding set I bought originally for my reports and drafts, and just fashion a nice cover for every volume. For the covers, sometimes I use plain boards in rich dark colors, while sometimes I use the floral print boards.

This new journal is a new thing. I used to just write on bond paper that I carry around in a beaten-up envelope. Sometimes I use onion skin. Since I always need to carry my journal wherever I go, and since I also forget to bring it from time to time, when that happens I just buy some letter-sized paper from a nearby store and write my journal entry on that. For years I wrote on various loose leaf pages, and when I have accumulated diary entries two inches thick I have them hard-bound and covered in good stylish paper, with a ribbon closure. I now have ten volumes, written over the years.

Perhaps I will take out my new journals from their wire bindings eventually, when I want to bind them into a 2-inch volume to match the set. But for now, as I finish a notebook (which usually has from 60 to 70 leaves each, depending on the thickness of the inside papers), I just stash it inside my diary cabinet, and start on a new one. The beauty of this system is that it can stand alone, but i can also incorporate them eventually into the larger main set if I feel like it, and because of the size of the paper, they will really belong.

Plus, they look so good to carry around that I have never forgotten to bring my journal since."

MaryAnne Moll @ Blank Page #009 

Have your say!
Blank Page, an Open Thread.
Discussion # 010

Every Wednesday at Notebookism we open a "Blank Page" -  your chance to ask, answer and discuss anything notebook-related.  Keep it nice, keep it relevant.

Every Wednesday at Notebookism we open a "Blank Page" -  your chance to ask, answer and discuss anything notebook-related.  Keep it nice, keep it relevant.

My Book

I like Arches Hot Press paper, but all the company makes in sketchbooks is cold press. I've tried buying other books that claim to be hot press, but still have to much "tooth" for my pleasure.

I found 22 X 30" Arches Hot Press on sale for $2.98 a sheet. I bought all I could afford at the time (enough to make two twenty sheet books.) I took the sheets to my favorite hang-out (coffee-shop) and sat folding the paper. I used a burnisher to flatten the folds they gently tore the sheets leaving a semi-sort of deckle edge. Final size of sheets is 11 1/4 X 7 1/2 ". Bought a piece of acid free mat board and had the store cut it to 11 1/2 X 7 3/4 inches. I rubber cemented two of the boards together for the front and two for the back to make a stiff binding for sketching and painting plein aire. A local print shop does spiral binding but because of the deckle edge I only had them punch the holes for binding, they gave me the spiral and I wound it in myself to maintain the illusion of the deckle edge.

It has performed very well for me and I love having my Hot Press paper.

GrannyKass at Notebookism/ FLICKR
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Featured Artist: Andrea Martinez

My doodles are a form of meditation for me.  They keep me sane.   If I am stressed I doodle to calm myself down.  If I am angry I take my frustration out on the page with wild abandon.  If I am sad I pour myself into a doodle and usually feel much better upon completion of a page.   Sometimes I have a concept in mind when I begin a page, other times I just know I want to use a certain combination of pens together. My technique for doodling is varied and depends a great deal on my mood.   If I am in a good mood I'll get out a stencil and start out by composing a design.  If I am stressed or worrisome I just start somewhere on the page and fill it up with whatever comes into my head.

I use any and all type of pen that I can get my hands on.  I buy them like they are going out of style and have hordes of them.   I may even be guilty of coveting my pens.  My friends like to tease me because I am always carrying an absurd number of pens in my pockets.   Today there are 8.

Same goes for notebooks, I have recently bought a Moleskine sketchbook, but nothing from that has been featured on my blog yet because I have been posting in chronological order, from my first sketchbook forward.   I wanted to try the Moleskine because of the great community of artists who use it.  Prior to buying the Moleskine, I have always used spiral bound sketchbooks.   I like being able to fold them open to the page I am working on.  I have bought a number of Canson sketchbooks due to the weight of their paper.   They are able to absorb even the wettest of pens.  I also use Cachet and Bienfang regularly.  I usually have anywhere from 5 to 10 books going at a time, all different shapes and sizes.

Andrea Martinez
Visit her website.