LINKS to ARTISTS' SKETCHBOOKS ONLINE

La prochaine Biennale du Carnet de voyage, prévue du 14 au 16 novembre 2008, a Polydome, se prépare activement. Plus de 150 auteurs de carnets et écrivains du voyage prendront a nouveau la direction de Clermont-Ferrand.

"I don't call them sketchbooks,I don't like the word sketch. They are just "my books". I number them and I'm up to No 10. They are collections: - ideas, thoughts, quotes, photos, drawings, images, newspaper cuttings, messy and very personal." - Margaret Jackson

The sketchbook has many names... visual journal, portable laboratory, journal, notebook. Whatever you call it, the purpose also remains both elusive and most definitive. A sketchbook is a place of discovery, experimention, record-keeping, notation, and a place in which learning and growth occurs... The blank page can be both intimidating and exciting. A blank page can induce nervousness and terror, as in "I don't know what to do next!" It can also incite a feeling of new beginnings; an open slate as clean as fresh snow, just waiting for the first mark to be made. - Sara Gant - Northside High School

"This website is an ongoing, year-long project to keep an illustrated journal and species list from my wanderings in Rhode Island and New England, with a few forays to other locations. It is heavily weighted towards bird-watching, but my interests in natural history are varied, and the occasional plant/amphibiary/insect/mammal will make an appearance..."

"In 1980, as I set out on my first trip to Europe, I decided to make a book that would contain any and all physical proof that I had been there: ticket stubs, postcards, restaurant receipts, airplane and bus and railroad ephemera. On successive trips, these collections grew to include food smears, hotel keys, found litter, local news, pop tops, rocks, weather notations, leaves, bags of dirt - anything that would add information about a moment or a place, so that the viewer could make a new picture from the remnants. Objects emerged for me as 'icons' for particular cities and these objects became the material for EVIDENCE." - Candy Jernigan

"I usually carry a sketchbook and a small watercolor set with me at all times. Most of the sketchbooks are 4 inches by 6 inches in size and easily fit in my pocket. The media most often used is watercolor, ink and pencil. My typical ink instrument is a Rotring 600 fountain pen. The Rotring cartridge ink is watersoluable and I carry a Niji waterbrush to make the ink washes with the Rotring cartridge ink. I also sometimes use Walnut ink which is also watersoluable and suitable for washes. My watercolor kit is a Koi Water Colors Pocket Field Sketch Box which also easily fits into another pocket along with number 8 and 4 Daniel Smith Platinum Synthetic Travel Brushes. I carry water in a small pill container or if I need a little more water than they hold a 4 oz plastic gerber juice jar (for babies). My pockets are full, but I can walk down the street and no one can tell that I am carrying a portable art studio. The sketches were all done on location or as the French say, En Plein Air." - Jim Pollock

"I carry a sketchbook wherever I go. I'll use whatever is at hand - paper bags, hotel notepads, scraps - but usually I have a small leatherbound book, a brand which, unfortunately, is no longer made. When I heard that they were discontinuing them I bought a pile of them to tide me over... It looks like a bible more than anything else, and it fits neatly in my coat pocket. The paper inside is either antique white, or buff colored... and has a wonderful laid texture that will accept just about anything that lands on it - pen, charcoal, spit, you name it.
The books have traveled with me all over the world, kept me company in places where I was a total outsider, couldn't speak the language. But the language of line was always there, and it bridged the barriers like nothing else could..."

"I carry a sketchbook particularly as a visual diary of events on holidays and trips. I also doodle all the time at meetings or on the telephone. Doodles in particular are definitely driven by the subconcious. Absent mindedly drawing a bull parked on the toilet during a meeting says it all."

"...The story of Naomi (V Jelish) is moving, but it is a hoax, the products of the imagination of Shovlin, 25, from Leicester (UK), a graduate of the Royal College of Art, who spent three years creating the fantasy. He produced the drawings, the cuttings, the school reports et al in order, as he explained, 'to test the boundaries of ambiguity'." Naomi V Jelish is an anagram of Jamie Shovlin.

elodie studler sketching mont saint-michel

"In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing" - Vincent Van Gogh

"...The best way to draw often is to carry a sketchbook with you wherever you go. This way you will always be ready when the inspiration strikes... To maximize convenience, I recommned having several sketchbooks of varied sizes, so that depending on where you're going when you leave home, you can grab the one that's most appropriate. For small sizes, I love the Moleskine sketchbooks, and for larger sizes I use the Canson spiral-bound sketchbooks. Have fun out there, and don't forget your sunscreen!"

Sketchbook Habit by Mike Wiesmeier

"Think of a sketchbook as a souvenir of your everyday life. It can be a place to record your impressions or work out a visual difficulty, as well as a repository for ideas, notes, doodles and ticket stubs. Classes will include sketching on site from observation; landscape, portraits, and still life in the classroom, as well as working from memory. Bring your favorite art materials: pencils, pens, glue stick (for collage elements), craypas, etc., a sketchbook of any shape, color, or size and a desire to fill it up. We'll share ideas, techniques and observations. All levels welcome."

Blank is a traveling, collaborative sketchbook journal. The project started in 2005 and has amassed work from over 40 artists. If you would like to have a turn with the book drop them a line.

"The Community Sketchbook is a space where artists of all genres share their pages from their sketchbook(s). We are getting ready to begin our first real community sketchbook. It will be mailed from one artist to the next via "snail mail."

An international group of artists learning from the best teacher there is - nature!.

Urban Sketchers is a network of artists around the world who draw the cities where they live and travel to... it was started by Seattle journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario..

SCATTERGOOD WHITE POINT, N.S. SKETCHBOOK

Open publication - More sketchbook

ROBERTA PAUL'S TANZANIAN SKETCHBOOK

Open publication - Free publishing - More africa

I should recommend... keeping... a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its well-cut sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but never being without this. - John Ruskin

The Elements of Drawing, 1857
Harvard Art Museums: Under Cover

"Artists have used sketchbooks for centuries, entrusting travel sketches, figure studies, compositional ideas, and notes of every kind to their pages. Designed to be easily portable, sketchbooks are often kept in a pocket, and offer an unusually personal glimpse of the artist at work..."

Fogg Art Museum

"At all levels of the course, you are required to keep a studio journal or work journal. The work journal is a written and visual log of your progress and activities over the course and must be part of all assessments. In the journal you should document, evaluate and analyse your work. The journal should be ongoing throughout all stages of the course."

sHandke (a group admin) says: Hello fellow artists. I have been creating an online blog, entitled Community Sketchbook where I would like to post pages from all artists' sketchbooks. Eventually, I hope to create an actual sketchbook that is mailed from one artist to the next via "snail mail," and those images will then be posted on the blog. If you like this idea and would like to see your pages of your sketchbook(s) posted to the blog, please join.

Urban Sketchers is a community of artists around the world who draw the people and places of the cities where they live and travel to. This blog is an extension to the Flickr Urban Sketchers group started in November of 2007 by Seattle journalist and illustrator Gabi Campanario.

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I've always rated doodles as a method to capture or generate solutions to a creative problem. I also doodle in meetings and although refused to be intimidated into giving up, I always felt very slightly guilty. No one ever asked me to actually stop. I suspect they were caught between the belief that I wasn't paying attention and the desire to enjoy the final results. Anyway its good that some scientist thinks it helps retain information.

Why do scientists tot up the numbers and announce the result like they've discovered something new? . . . Most creatives I know are aware of the value of doodling and many have given thought to the mechanics and psychology behind it. None, that I know anyway, felt the need to publish an academic paper though.

I've also added national doodle day to my blinklist pages.