I started drawing in this book at the end of March 2017, my freshman year. I remember this because (1) I always date my sketchbooks and because (2) I used this thing to procrastinate over that finals week. Now it's June 2020: this tough guy has gone with me to eight different countries, through four years of college, daily bus commutes into NYC for 10 weeks, it's binding is starting to fall apart a bit (the bookmark ribbon already fell out), and I still have five more pages left to fill. Even so, I thought it would be fun to reflect a bit on my all time favorite sketchbook by sharing most of it's pages and highlighting some of my favorites.
I started with really simple Art Nouveau inspired pages with lots of repeating lines mixed with organic shapes. This one I specifically remember doing while procrastinating my Politics paper.
I then moved onto border designs...
This page (pictured above), still from 2017, took inspiration from Ancient Egyptian metalwork that I most likely came across on Pinterest. I scanned this guy in and have been using it as sort of a branding thing on all my process books, as a little decoration on my Resumé, Portfolio cover, etc.
Starting around my sophomore year (2017-2018), I began challenging myself to fill entire pages with border designs. I enjoyed playing with how these designs could transition between each other and how different styles would mix. My philosophy: just keep adding detail! I've found that these are really nice to look back on and sometimes pick and chose designs I can go back to and use in projects. I've used a couple of these rows in scarf designs, scanning the pages in and manipulating it on photoshop to create seamless decorative borders.
Above are examples of some sketches I did while traveling in Europe last year. I pulled inspiration from and took note of shapes on details in architecture, tiles, and pieces in museums. For example, in the first image from the left, at the bottom of the page, I sketched a tile from the Royal Alcazar in Seville, Spain, and, in the last image, I sketched different shapes and elements found on pieces at the Neues Museum in Berlin!
The last bunch of pages I want to reflect on are from last summer. I got really into filling entire pages with detail-oriented geometric patterns. It started with the decision to make a motif I saw on something I sketched in a museum into a repeating pattern (the first image from the left), and from there I'd start a pattern with a simple shape then just kept on adding details as I went (second and third images from the left). In fourth image, much like the first one, I took a motif I sketched at a museum (the knife-like one from the Neues Museum) and made a wide border design. These methods of piecing together motifs and details aided me well in my work from this past year as it let me explore different ideas ahead of my final school year.
In conclusion, this sketchbook, which I bought without thinking much of it, became an integral part of my studio practice during my time at art school. I recently bought a mini bullet sketchbook which I will use the same way I used this gridded one. (:
Also, I decided to put all of the images you see above as well as a couple others, down here too in chronological order from March 2017- June 2020 so you can look through it all at once!
Thanks for reading! In the next post, I will be discussing the different ways I collect ideas from museums, particularly the MET!
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