Sketchbook: completed

Back at the beginning of the year, I was frantically trying to finish my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project, a collaborative effort to collect thousands and thousands of sketchbooks from willing (and paying) participants, catalog them, and then send them on a whirlwind tour across the globe. I admit, I was a total procrastinator. Back in August I kept telling myself, "I'll get started in October!" and then October rolled around and I said, "I'll work on it over Thanksgiving!" And then Thanksgiving passed and suddenly all I had left were a few meager weekends until it was due in January. Eep. Feelin' like I'm in high school all over again here.

So I altered my sketchbook from its original format - partially to save me some time, and partially because moleskine journal paper is thin and not exactly good for painting on. (I tried pencil and markers and just wasn't feeling it. Paint! I haven't painted in ages. What a perfect excuse to pick it up again.) I ripped out all the pages and rebound it with a little brown paper accordion, drastically reducing the # pages that preventing a total meltdown. Crucial move.

The theme that I chose when I signed up was "a face in the crowd," and I interpreted that as loosely as possible. My book contains faces, but it's really more about the weather and how I was completely fed up with our dismal Pacific Northwest winter at that time. Not super deep subject matter here, but it was fun and loose and got me to pick up a brush, so that's all that matters!

I'll share a few pages, but if you want to see the whole thing along with tons of other awesome work, I recommend trying to catch the traveling show if it comes to a city near you. Check out the current tour stops here. (Seattle! June 10-12, 2011!)

Here's the cover. It kept popping open so I had to make a little band for it. Hope it survives being handled...(as always, click on the images to enlarge.)

Opener.

A longer interior section. I have so much fun drawing funny little faces!

Here's a figure from side 2 of the accordion, which, I'm embarrassed to admit, is filled mostly with portraits of made-up people who look like unhappy hipsters. This girl's my favorite, though, with her pink nose and cheeks.

And here's a portion of the final spread.

Overall, I had a blast pulling this together and only wish that I had given myself some more time to relax with my sketchbook a bit. I did get a little fussy with it. But it was a good exercise and well worth it. For more info, check out Art House Co-op, the folks who run this whole huge project and then some.