A long, long time ago a friend bought me a really fancy sketchbook. I destroyed it.
There is a talk among art folks about sketchbooks. Everyone has their preferred type. I have two or three types I use for various reasons. I will ALWAYS pick up a sketchbook style I’ve never seen before. It is a common thing to be intimidated by a sketchbook. The fancier it is the more intimidating. It’s true. At the time this sketchbook came into my possession I was very scared of it. I was afraid nothing I ever did in it would be worthy or the beauty this book already was. I was content to let it sit on a shelf for almost a year. Finally I forced myself to start carrying it around and draw from life in it. It is a huge, heavy sketchbook and quickly fell to the wayside in favor of smaller ones.
I decided to combat my fear of fancy sketchbooks I would just deface it. I’ve been defacing this sketchbook for 5 years now. And I’m still not finished with it. It’s had so much random stuff pasted, painted and punctured into it, it won’t even shut anymore. Thus making it’s high class magnetic clasp useless. Originally I was going to finish the whole thing and do a post about it. Since it’s taken so long to finish I’ve change my mind on that. I will release each page of the book when I feel it is finished. There’s a lot of jumping around in it, because I simply open a page when I feel inspired. Which is another reason this project has taken such a long time. I might make a video in the end with the whole thing altogether. So here it is, the very first page of what I lovingly call the Collage Sketchbook.
There are a few rules to this book. Unlike my other sketchbooks, it is NOT used for current projects. You will find no thumbnails or sketches. It has become a therapy book for me. I only use it when I am inspired or to simply relax. The side effect to this is that a lot of the pages are topical. Ranging from current topics to sentimental ones. It is also home to random junk I have collected over the years. Sometimes when I need to blow off steam, or do something mindless, I go through my “junk” bin and start ripping and pasting. Results are pages of what appears to be random textures, images and drawings. Make no mistake, sometimes they are quite random. It has turned into one of my favorite sketchbooks. There’s no stress involved in it. Just fun.
This page was the first one I started to glue things into. I started when I was still living in New York and working at The Standard. It includes a note of encouragement from a wonderful illustrator, Laura Lee Guildridge. I had the pleasure of meeting her once at a reading of one of her graphic novels. I discovered her in a bookstore in New York. I picked up her graphic novel called Page by Paige. Which is about a young redheaded artist named Paige, who moved New York and was trying to discover herself and her art. It was too uncanny not to reach out to her. I mean seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.
This is the cover. It’s got some stickers I picked up at shows here in Baton Rouge. One sticker from Matthew Gray Gubler, because he’s awesome. And some cut outs from an old Marcy Playground album. Ya’ll remember Marcy Playground?
Fun fact: When I first moved to New York I actually went to Marcy Playground. Just to say I had been there. I called everyone I knew from the playground and told them, to which they replied “Okay?”. Because I am the only person who cares or remembers this band apparently. It’s cool.