I found this image on the School of Visual Arts website, as part of a feature on artists’ journals. Carl Titolo teaches at SVA and has been keeping sketchbooks for over 50 years. I love the dense pages full of patterns and details. It’s also interesting to see that at least in this case, he used a sketchbook where pens bled through to the back of the paper, adding another version of each page with a different tone and texture. There is a video in the linked article where you can see a flip-through of this entire sketchbook.

If you were to open a flat-file drawer in the Manhattan studio of Carl Titolo (G 1967), you should pull up a chair—you’re probably going to want to stay a while. The drawers are filled with layer upon layer of sketchbooks; each opens to a spread carpeted with minute, jewel-toned paintings, delicate pen drawings and jottings about art, food and architecture. Titolo calls these sketchbooks, which he has been keeping for more than 50 years, “appetizers.” For any visually minded person, they amount to a feast.

Read more about Carl Titolo and two other SVA alumni sketchbook keepers at: Bookkeeping: The Art of Artists’ Journals [Video]