One of the strangest things about this sketchbook was that it never worked in a linear manner.
Last year I tried to experiment with having multiple books - one large in a backpack/ on a table/ when I know I will have a chance to paint or draw. And small one - for the spur of the moment drawing. But I wanted to keep some sort of the record as to what was the order of these books - and ended up with six small books between two larger ones. Meaning I have book number 15, and number 16 - but I also have 15 1/4 and 15 1/2 and 15 5/6 and so on ;)
It's hard to find anything there ;)
So this year when winter came and I realized that my bag starts to weigh too much (even though it's warm here in California it might get cold-er rapidly plus I usually carry things for myself and my little guy plus I recently got some really nice large watercolors... anyways:). I decided to introduce an alternative - a few pages in my waist bag - they are small, light and always there - and I will find a way to place them in the large book - I want to keep things in one place to see the flow. And - if I feel like drawing whatever that nice watercolor paper will not look at me badly as I will use whatever is under my hand at the moment - and if I like/need it - scotch tape comes in :)
And so it started - almost every day since the beginning of this book something would prompt me to draw on other papers. I started to use scotch tape and whatever tape I could find to place things and soon my book got FAT ;) And by the end time I reached the last page - already in 2009 it was bulging.
Here you will see a few spreads illustrating my attempts to keep it all together. How do you solve these problems? Keep several books at the same time? Glue things right on the page? Share! ;)
I have a bunch of FAT spreads to post in the next few days ;)
I suffer from the Too Many Different Sketchbooks Syndrome, too. Your loose leaf solution looks like it works OK, although I'd be wary of tipping in sheets with scotch tape - it's likely to go yellow and ruin your page :)
ReplyDeleteYou seem to have it all pulled together nicely... Great stuff!
ReplyDeleteYou know, I usually carelessly have 3-4 going at the same time. My solution to staying sane is to write stuff I like to go back to (like to do's, phone numbers) only in one of the books, the rest are strictly for sketching. Then I do Andy-Warhol-time-capsule kind of record keeping, i.e. put away together "sometime in 2008 sketchbooks"... :-))
Well Roz Stendahl says she cuts out pages in her book to allow for glue-ins :)
ReplyDeleteI have two or three books going- small one to carry in my handbag, large one I keep at home. Not REALLY large, just bigger than the one in my handbag :)
I make my own, so the paper is mixed- although the smaller ones I buy.
thanks for your comments!
ReplyDeleteHarrybell;
thank you for the note about scotch tape. The reason why I use it instead of gluing on top of the existing page is because I have notes on the back of my sketch sometimes and also - I do not waste a good watercolor page I had in the book ;)
NB;
It seems to be rather important for me to keep things in chronological order - sketchbooks are replacing my usual daily planner in a way (though it still exists ;) and I need to go back quite often for different reasons :)
Spinetetta;
thanks for mentioning Roz - I am digging through her blog to see how she solves the problem!
Thank you all for stopping by and leaving your comments!