If there’s one thing I love more than a notebook, it’s a facsimile notebook! I have been building up a small collection of books that reproduce artists’ notebooks or sketchbooks and they are among my favorite art books to flip through for inspiration.

I’ve already reviewed a few of them:

Lynda Barry’s Syllabus (buy here)

Diana Balmori Notebooks (buy here)

Brice Marden’s Notebooks (buy here)

Basquiat Notebooks (buy here)

My latest obsession is this gorgeous little volume, which I couldn’t resist buying when I came across it at the Rizzoli Bookstore in Manhattan:

Franz Marc was a painter associated with the German Expressionist movement and the Blue Rider group. He fought on the Western Front in World War I, and made these drawings in a sketchbook during the year before he was killed. The drawings look like very fully worked-out studies for his paintings. A few of them have words or titles written in the margins, but they don’t feel sketchy or tentative at all– each one feels like a perfect little work unto itself, with nothing missing except the bright colors of Marc’s paintings. The book is beautifully produced– about 4.5 x 6.5″, fully cloth bound, with 36 drawings and a text at the back.  I love the way it captures the intimacy of a pocket sketchbook, and there is something very poignant about the idea of him having this sketchbook at hand and creating these beautiful works during horrific months at war.

I paid the cover price of $30 at Rizzoli, but as of this writing you can get it for more than half off at Amazon: Franz Marc Sketchbook from the Battlefield