Drawn to Art
This is the opening post of the LCAC blog. We hope to bring you many guest contributors and a wide range of topics over the coming months. I’m writing about sketchbooks because keeping one is a great way to dive into art or enhance your art practice, and it is a grand time of year to get outside to observe and record your world.
Art sketchbooks range from pocket size to large format books that require a roomy tote. You may find you want several sizes.
A travel journal can hold memories and provide inspiration for studio art later.
Fall is the perfect season to pick up a sketch book (or canvas, oils, and French easel) and head outdoors. The summer heat has calmed down and the world waits to inspire you. The sketchbook experience can be meaningful and joyful for any artist from flat out beginner to the most experienced.
Let me focus on the sketchbook and its possibilities here. Visit any art supply store and they will tempt you with so many choices. There are carefully handcrafted pages, there are hardbound books, spiral books, tiny pocket-sized books, square, portrait and landscape shapes, and covers that charm you before you even check the pages. Do check the pages though. For pencil you will want smooth sheets or ones with just a little tooth, and the paper can be thin. For inks you will look for smooth paper that is substantial enough not to have the ink seep through to the next page. If you are going to add water media, look for watercolor papers.
What winds up on the pages once the sketchbook is in the hands of the artist will vary wildly, with as many possibilities as there is variety in human personalities. Here are a few routes you may take:
The Basic Sketchbook
The Basic Sketchbook is kept handy just for love of art making and may be neat and well organized or may wind up with all sorts of odd bits. Where others might pull out a phone when waiting for a friend or a dental appointment, this artist will draw. On other days they might notice the interest curve of the cat’s posture and do a quick sketch. Still other times they will make art outings and spend hours capturing its details. Next time the subject may be a lineup of cartoon faces or an elegant rendering of a rose.
The Travel Journal
The Travel Journal is devoted to a single journey or to a series of visits to different places on short trips. One way to get inspired is to look at the travel journals of other artists. An Illustrated Journey by Danny Gregory contains samples from the travel journals from a number of artists and their comments on their practices. It’s available on Amazon, including Amazon Unlimited, and other major book sellers. Like the basic sketchbook, a travel journal is a good place to start making art regularly. Drawing something, at whatever skill level, forces you to really slow down and look closely at things. You will see more and remember more from your travel experience.
The Themed Sketchbook
The Themed Sketchbook focuses on a single subject, creating a series of related drawings and/or paintings. It could be people on the bus, flowers in the garden through the year, horses, dogs, cars, antiques, people playing sports, buildings in the community; whatever strikes you as a subject you want to revisit often.
The Artist Journal
The Artist Journal is distinguished by its intentional role in growth as an artist. For some it is testing out ideas before committing to a larger format. For some it is skills practice, as when I filled a sketch book first with exercises from Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and then with a daily practice session of 30 minutes drawing. For others it is notes on where their work is going, analysis, and self-encouragement, as well as trying out different art ideas. The world’s most famous Art Journals are doubtless those of Leonardo Da Vinci.
The Life Journal
The Life Journal is more of a personal diary, but because you are an artist, it mixes your personal record with art. It uses art and text to build an ongoing picture and memory of events in your life. A travel journal of mine suddenly veered off into the Life Journal mode when it became a grief journal after my husband’s death in 2013. More typically a life journal will include the joyful, the sad, the challenging, and the mundane.
