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| Eleven years to finish this sketchbook. |
Only a few pages remained in this old Stillman & Birn
Beta sketchbook, which I began 11 years ago. I just finished filling
them with my doomscrolling prevention program and other recent sketches
made from photos at home.
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| The first several pages has sketches from Chandler O'Leary's workshop. |
Thumbing through it before finally putting the book away on my completed sketchbook shelves, I felt a wave of nostalgia, poignancy and even sadness. The very first sketches in the book were those I made in an urban sketching workshop with Chandler O’Leary. They’re dated June 27, 2015. On a very hot day, we looked for compositions and made thumbnails at Lake Union Park. My memories, embedded in the pages, are bittersweet now because Chandler died in 2023 at the age of 41.
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| Lots of still lives |
That workshop must have been where I realized I don’t like working around a cumbersome wire binding when I’m on location, as those are the only urban sketches in the book. Among the squashes, pencil sharpener and other still lives is my beloved “Stefano” portfolio. Sadly, I had decided that the beautiful, custom-made sketchbook cover, which had traveled with me to five countries, was no longer meeting my needs.
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| Exercises from Gal Cohen's online workshop |
I also see some color swatches and media testing. After a long gap in time, I see assignments and exercises from Gal Cohen’s online workshop in 2024. The last dozen or so pages are some wacky palette experiments and other recent sketches.
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| Testing various water-soluble techniques |
For many years now, my goal has been to minimize the number of sketchbooks I have in progress because I prefer to work through each one chronologically as much as possible. (That might be the goal, but I’m sure I still have a dozen going on concurrently.) I don’t like wide gaps of time within a book, and I certainly don’t want to take 11 years to fill one! Still, looking through this old Beta gave me a time capsule effect that I don’t get from looking at a sketchbook that I’ve filled in a few months. It’s precious in a different way.
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| Drippy acrylic inks? |
I would have loved to do a workshop with Chandler O’Leary. I never met her but her death was so sad and shocking to me after following her work online.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know her well, but I still feel the loss. She was so young. I am ever grateful that I had the opportunity to learn from her.
DeleteIn some ways it is productive to have so many years of sketches in one book. It is like traveling back in time and remembering the workshops and assignments. You can check what ideas you've kept and what fell by the wayside.
ReplyDeleteThat's true -- it's an interesting review of work I'd done. And it's also fun to see how my style and skills have changed over time.
DeleteI finished a sketchbook last October that I realized I probably started using twenty years ago. I didn't know about different paper back then and so many other things about sketching (this paper was notoriously difficult to remove pencil lines from) and after working on copying various images, doing a bit of doodling and once introduced to zentangling, adding some of those too, I sort of set it aside now that I knew I had better options. Still, I started turning to it for INKtober and that is how I finished it, with my 2025 Inktober offerings. As I closed it once done, it occurred to me that it might very well be the first sketchbook I've actually filled completely and it is an interesting page-through for sure. I do have a couple of sketchbooks that I used for Sketchbook Revival lessons that still have a few pages in the back I could add to before calling them full, so probably should do something about that! Otherwise, I think I have at least 4 very different sketchbooks I work in fairly often, and none feel close to being completed. Many blank ones I've made waiting on the shelf.
ReplyDeleteIn my ongoing interest in downsizing and using what I have, my goal this year is keep completing partially used sketchbooks, even if they are not ideal, because there's probably some media that are fine in them (as you've found with your Inktober book). Regardless of content, it's satisfying to complete a book, isn't it?
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