making sketchbooks

Using Jane Davies' instructions found here I spent this weekend making my first home-made sketchbook.

 It's a brilliant way to use up random pieces of paper and gets you over the hurdle of not wanting to ruin a beautiful new art-shop sketchbook.

I used cartridge paper as the basis for each signature, cut to roughly A4 size

and then had a lovely time digging out maps, glassine, overhead transparencies, lokta, onion skin and fabric in various shapes and sizes.

I used mat-board for the covers and a strip of heavy lokta for the spine. The lovely green and red on the covers is Japanese paper from the stash.

The signatures are stitched to the cover with waxed linen thread: one of the reasons I chose this method was not needing to glue the signatures. Jane's tutorial is very straightforward and easy to follow: I already have the papers cut for my next sketchbook.

If you decide to give it a go I would really encourage you to have a proper bone folder and an awl, and be really careful in measuring and double checking everything, before you cut, glue, or bore holes. And using paper clips to hold the signature folios together while you're stitching, especially if your folios are not a uniform size.

reclaiming the studio

I went back into the studio this afternoon and splashed paint around for the first time in a month. I needed to exorcise the malign influence of our ex-cleaner who had ignored our explicit instructions and cleaned my studio.

Although it was worse than that - sure, the floor was clean but she had moved my indigo vat onto the floor; jammed paintbrushes upside-down into random containers and work on paper was piled up on the bench and work table with porcelain 3D pieces and damp and dirty cleaning cloths. Some things were ruined and had to be thrown away, and my creative space felt dead.

So on Friday I sage-smudged the room and this afternoon I went in determined to start work again.  It didn't matter what, as long I was did something and made it my space again.

And I got my hands dirty

and splashed paint. And felt very much better.