My new, handmade sketchbook, and some other sketchbooks too.

I love books. I love their smell, their promise of adventure into a new world, and how they feel, weighted in my hand. I especially love notebooks and especially, especially sketchbooks. They have thick white pages that beg to be marked.

I am currently sketching in a Strathmore Art Journal, 400 series. It has 48 pages of watercolour paper. I love holding it. I love the sound of the pens across its paper. It takes watercolour washes well, as it should. I am still coming to terms with the rectangular format. It makes me plan my pages. Otherwise they end up looking a little higgledy piggledy, and I don’t like that. And it fits nicely into my bag.

This page was unsatisfying. (Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015)

I really like the way this spreads across the page. It was a conscious composition.(Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015)

Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

An earlier sketchbook was one of those visual art diaries. It travelled overseas with me. I doodled in it, practised Celtic braids and Art Nouveau patterns in it, stuck wrapping paper in it and doodled from there and recorded small events while we travelled in Alice the Caravan. Higgledy piggledy was fine and encouraged. But the paper was only cartridge, and went funny when I tried to use watercolour on it. I loved the freedom of that sketchbook. Somehow my current one, the Strathmore, doesn’t allow doodling.

Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

For much of last year I worked in a Hand.Book (That’s the brand name.) I really enjoyed its square format. If I wanted to I could divide each page up further and do little drawings. Only occasionally did I work across both pages. It has heavier paper that took watercolour so well but ordinary pencil smudged easily. That was okay, as it made me use pen. Pen doesn’t allow rubbing out, so I had to be sure of the lines I put down. It developed my confidence in my hand/eye co-ordination.

I didn’t feel the need to compose across the pages ~ quite happy to have them different (Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015)

Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

I enjoyed being able to divide the page up further.( Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015)

Photo and image copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

I decided that this sketchbook needed a fancy cover, so I glued on a piece of freeform knitting a crocheting I had lying around. I also included a handkerchief ~ clean, of course! ~ that had a special meaning for me.

The textured front cover (Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015)

Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

So that’s where I have been and where I am. I have other sketchbooks that I use in other ways, and I will tell you about them some other time. My next sketchbook will be different.

I have been quite envious of sketchers like Roz Stendhal who speak about making their own sketchbooks and journals. One of my Pinterest boards is a collection of bookbinding ideas and sites. Making my own sketchbook was up there on my list of projects. Then I had this brain wave. I could make a sketchbook using papers of drawings and paintings I had rejected  ~ and there were quite a few of them! The backs of them were usable, and the painting might only have been a little mushroom or a colour swatch. I was so carried away that I was up at 2 o’clock the other morning punching holes in the paper! This is the result ~ and I have plenty more paper to make more, maybe bigger ones!

Front cover of my first handmade sketchbook
(Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015)

Check out that fancy Coptic binding! (Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015)

Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

If you look carefully you can see the genuine blood from my pricked finger! (Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015)

Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

The back cover is from a bark painting I did on heavy duty, 600 gsm watercolour paper.(Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015)

I like the idea of some pages already having something on them. I can sketch and doodle around them or even over them without having to fret about stuffing up a precious new page of “good” paper.

It didn’t take much ~ odds and ends of paper and a few sheets of new paper from a sketch book, thread that I have miles of, a thick sewing needle and the needle from the sewing machine. This was sharp enough to pierce the paper to make the original holes.

Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

Photo copyright: Anne Lawson, 2015

Now the fun begins in using it. I have a plan for its first outing. Wait and see.