notebookism

Featured Artist: Elizabeth Perry

View her works on FLICKR

Visit her website, "woolgathering"

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Discover and join our communities on FLICKR and GoogleGroups.
Have a nice weekend everyone! See you on Monday.

Featured Artist: Ellis Nadler

I always carry a sketchbook...I feel undressed without it. I have 3 sketchbooks running concurrently; a large, medium and pocketsize. I’ve just started using Moleskines and have fallen in love with that brand. My all-time favourite sketchbooks have Fabriano paper in a traditional leather binding. I bought them from a tiny shop in Venice where the owner binds them on the premises. Not to be confused with most Venetian products, which are now made in Taiwan. Years ago I used to make my own books, but I guess I became lazy.

I use my sketchbooks to generate ideas for larger works and I find the mere act of opening a sketchbook with pen in hand causes a change in brain chemistry such that ideas begin to flow. I also love drawing people, but I'm a bit inhibited drawing strangers. Despite my best efforts I do tend to caricature. I mix up drawing with random notes and jottings, copies of paintings in museums or even shopping lists. I have only one rule- I only draw on one side of the paper.

Ellis Nadler

Check out http://ellisnadler.blogspot.com

See more of my art at http://www.ellisnadler.com

See my illustrations at http://www.nadler.co.uk

On  FLICKR

© EN All rights reserved

Pile o' Sketchbooks

"Different sizes I used to have delusions of grandeur, the bigger the sketchbook the older they are.."

Mattias Adolfsson
Image links 1 2

View his sketchbook photoset on FLICKR

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Featured Artist: Fernanda Fonseca

I'm a Brazilian designer, from Rio de Janeiro.

Paper, colors and shapes have always being part of my life since I can remember. It has been 2 years since I started making my own sketchbooks so I can choose the kind of paper I want.

To fill the pages I use any kind of material: crayons, watercolor, pens, acrylic, colorful papers and plastics for the collages. 

My sketches are a form to store visual ideas and references throughout the years.

Fernanda Fonseca

View her works on FLICKR
Visit her website.

Copyright © 2006 FF

[via Paris Breakfasts]

Featured Artist: Massimo Nota

The Notebooks of Massimo Nota
Visit his website.

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.

Featured Artist: Andrea Dezsö

Dezsö's books are pocket-sized, introspective works with finely detailed sketches drawn in rich colors on dark shades of handmade paper. In them, mystical and ethereal serpents, mermaids, fish and constellations intermingle with images of everyday life, such as street signs, Laundromats, and storefronts. Throughout the books are texts handwritten in tiny letters, recording her stream-of-consciousness thoughts in English and Hungarian (sometimes is Romanian and French). These lushly textrured pages often embellished with tiny leaves, metallic inks, and even snippets of photos expose the emotional tapestry of a woman in transition through relationships, motherhood, career change, and immigration. "They are very seductive," says collector Mickey Cartin, who was attracted to Dezsö's works for their mystery. "It is her way of revealing secrets."

Excerpt from "A Page in the Life" by Joyce Rutter Kaye Andrea Dezsö, featured in Print Magazine

Andrea Dezsö
Visit her website

[Thanks Joy!]

You are invited to discover and join the Notebookism communities on  FLICKR and GoogleGroups.

Have a great weekend everyone. Get out, have a life - and write about it! See you on Monday.

Featured Artist: Chenhui Su

My first Moleskine was a gift from my boyfriend Doug  . I started doing my artwork since then. When I do collages I work intuitively- they are sort of my exercises of color, composition and ways to express the atmosphere. I do my drawing in a Moleskine with my everyday writing pen. I was inspired by an illustrator (I can’t remember his name), whose work I saw in a design book. I also love Mucha’s work a lot. They both present beautiful lines in their work.

 

In the beginning, I tried to imitate other people’s work that I saw in a Moleskine group in Flickr, like filling the pages with color and collages. However, I think I like simple and easy design. My following work will be collages combined with drawings. I am excited about it- my artwork is just starting!

Chenhui Su

 

See my sketchbook in Flickr
See my blog in Blogger

Featured Artist: Ying-Chieh Liu

"I bound my first book by stapler when I was five years old. In my school days, I always felt comfortable when I
drew on any kind of book form: diary, notebook, sketchbook, or even text book.

I have started to carry a hard cover book wherever I go since 2002. I have tried to bind several books by myself,
but I still like to buy and use the book made by professional people.

Currently, I use a beautiful hand made book made by 'IL PAPIRO' from Italy. When it comes to pen and ink, I prefer Rotring, Faber-Castell, and a kind of silver pen made by Pentel, and sometimes I use water color pencil.

I like to visit some amazing place, I also like to draw immediately when I have the strong desire to move the nib."

Ying-Chieh Liu
View her works on FLICKR
Visit her blog.

Featured Artist: Suzette Vida

Drawing for me is sort of an indulgence. I don't do it for a living, so every chance I get to doodle in my moleskine or actually sit for an extended amount of time and work on a painting is a real treat. I tend to draw with micron pens a lot because I like the way pen and ink looks. . .very clean, but I also dabble in watercolors and the occassional acrylic painting every now and then.

My husband gave me a moleskine sketch book about a year ago. I never really understood his whole addiction to them (he has about ten stored away) until I started making an effort to use just this sketchbook for all my sketches.

For the first time, I could see how my drawings and style were progressing. I carry this notebook with me everywhere I go now, and I try to draw as often as possible. I draw while I'm drinking coffee in the morning, during my lunch break, even in bed sometimes (my husband probably regrets giving me the notebook now).

Since my recent discovery of Flickr, moleskinerie.com and other such websites, though, I feel like I'm inevitably going to end up at some sort of Notebook Lovers Anonymous group confessing that I have a problem.

 

My name is Suzette Vida and I'm a notebookaholic.
View her works on FLICKR