The Sketchbook Project . . .

Thank you, Christina at Down and Out Chic for introducing me to this (if you don't already read her blog, you should!)

I know this blog tends to focus mostly on the headpieces and costumes I make, and it's easy for me to forget that before I worked with a sewing machine, I was at home with pencil and paper. It's been more than a year since I painted or drew anything; not so much because I didn't feel inspired, but I suppose just from plain, old-fashioned laziness. I look at the three blank canvases laying around my house, or the blank sketchpads, and I just sigh and shuffle them somewhere else. In my mind I see landscapes of vibrant colors or muted watercolors of purple and grey, but they stay there, in my head. But, any gift should be used, and I have let this stay dormant too long.

I was inspired and excited then to discover The Sketchbook Project. Art House Co-op in conjunction with the Brooklyn Library will be collecting moleskine sketchbooks from now until January of 2011, and for $25 they will send you a blank book with just one instruction: fill it up. There are a list of themes to choose from, or else you can let them randomly choose one for you, and the themes are brilliantly open: "In Flight", "The view from up here", "Capture the Flag", "Dirigibles and Submersibles", "it will be fun, I swear". There are 24 themes and each one is inspiring and evocative in some way. Which did I choose? "Nighttime Stories" of course. I can already see the pictures forming in my head and cannot wait to get started; a blank sketchbook is like a box without a label, full of the possibility of being.

Some previous sketchbooks

What's even cooler is that the sketchbooks will go on tour in March of 2011, and after that will be available to be checked out from the Brooklyn Library. Each book comes with a barcode label so that you can track your book and even see how many times it gets checked out! The tour is heading to cities like San Francisco, Atlanta, Portland, Austin, and even Chicago (my book will be there even if I'm not!). As the site says, it's like a concert tour, but for sketchbooks;) I'm breaking out my pencils and pens and paints right now . . .

Check out the Sketchbook Project and sign up; I'd love to see some of the things my readers do, and i'll try to post some scans of my entries as well.