Dear Everyone ~
I did a lot of sketching at the end of December and
the start of January, enjoying four-day mini-vacations
two weeks in a row. I never go very long without sketching,
and my recent “sketching holidays” were inspiring and rewarding.
I want to try to express how these extended interludes with
my current sketchbook made me feel. Please know that I am sharing
these pages not to showcase my sketches,
but rather to illustrate my great pleasure in sketching.
As I muse, I hope to inspire you to sketch with joie.
As you know, I love desk accessories, correspondence supplies,
and notebooks in general. For me, sketchbooks
are in a category of their own. A sketchbook is a blank slate
for visual musings, for capturing the world around me,
for letting my hand and eye do the thinking.
It is blank when it’s new, of course…
and it remains blank every time I turn the page.
My sketchbook allows me, maybe even encourages me,
to achieve a flow, a focus—which might sound like
two different states of creative being, and maybe they are.
I feel that I can immerse myself in my sketchbook.
It absorbs me wholeheartedly.
I also love to revisit my sketchbooks, some more
than others, and I get to track my progress
on what I like to draw. Each sketch becomes a thing unto itself.
A new sketchbook can be an object of visual and tactile beauty.
(I can’t resist adding: especially if you’ve made it yourself.)
But it is much less precious when it’s empty than when
you have used it freely and filled it.
Carrying it around, using it, filling it, revisiting it …
is what will make your sketchbook “yours.”
I’ve come to realize that I love to draw
nearly as much as I love to make books.
Using a sketchbook makes drawing more accessible
with less trepidation. The drawings don’t have to be precious,
or successful, but together, as a collectivity, they become a something.
Because of their bound and portable format,
they become a set, a progression … and when you look back,
you may see things you hadn’t seen earlier.
I enjoyed drawing the same eucalyptus stem over
and over, with micron, fountain pen, brush pen, watercolour,
until I found my flow.
Sketchbooks need to feel right, they need to resonate.
I tried something different over the holidays,
and am delighted to have discovered that I really love
the landscape format. And the “feel” of the ink on the
Kunst & Papier pages is lovvvvvely!
I so often find myself waiting for, or trying to plan,
the “perfect moment” to sit & draw. I’m now realizing
that my favourite drawings come from the impromptu,
the spontaneous, the less-thought-into-the-better …
and the happier I am with the outcome.
I hope I have made an enticing case for
sketching Reckless Abandon!
Kunst & Papier Watercolour Notebooks
Kyo-no-to inks
Sumi-e ink
Yours on paper,
Bari