There’s an interesting exhibition of Turner’s watercolors at the Mystic Seaport Museum in CT. Of course, browsing in the museum shop is always half the fun, and I had a chance to flip through a book of Turner Sketchbooks: Buy at Amazon Here’s my favorite page: There were no intact Turner sketchbooks exhibited at the … Continue reading J. M. W. Turner Sketchbooks
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I spotted this in the New York Times Magazine of November 17, 2019. It is one of the saddest, most infuriating, most shameful notebook pages I’ve featured, as it was drawn by a young man who was incarcerated in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, and then ended up serving in the military … Continue reading Notebook Page from a Japanese Internment Camp
Architects create some of my favorite notebook and sketchbook pages. Here’s one I just loved, from a project by Smout Allen, a landscape architecture partnership. It’s scribbly and collage-y and I love the touches of color. Just gorgeous. See the original image and more description here: http://www.smoutallen.com/neo-natures-lanzarote
This is a really cool idea that I might have to try myself! Russell Stutler has been featured here before as a notebook addict. His website is a great resource for sketching inspiration, and he has done a deep dive testing popular pocket sketchbook brands, with Moleskine and Stillman and Birn among his favorites. But … Continue reading Russell Stutler’s Sketch Binder Notebook
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while: a deep dive into the evolution of Moleskine notebook packaging over the 20 or so years they’ve been around. I went through my collection of unused notebooks and found several distinct examples of different stages of their packaging design. I can’t 100% align these to when … Continue reading The Evolution of Moleskine Notebook Packaging
Exciting times here at Notebook Stories headquarters… as I’ve mentioned in passing in a few posts, most of my notebook collection has been sitting in a storage unit for almost 2 years. It’s been quite frustrating to have all these notebooks in storage and not to be able to access them for blog posts and … Continue reading Notebooks in Storage
I recently posted about artist Betye Saar’s sketchbooks. The article linked below from Hyperallergic is a great exploration of her work, with lots of sketchbook images. The sketchbooks reveal how Saar’s practice has evolved over time, and how time itself is a major thread in her work. Read more: Betye Saar’s Never-Before-Seen Sketchbooks Offer Deep … Continue reading More on Betye Saar’s Sketchbooks
A nice glimpse of a sketchbook belonging to a 2019 high school graduate from Oregon, who is heading to art school next. Melody Mendez won McKay High School’s award for the top artist in the Class of 2019. She created a web comic, No Where Here, set in a fantasy world and has been drawing … Continue reading An Art Student’s Sketchbook
I must have missed this Brainpickings article when it was originally published in 2014, but I’m glad I discovered it via Pinterest! Artist John Vernon Lord created amazing illustrations to accompany James Joyce‘s Finnegans Wake in a collectible edition published by the Folio Society (now out of stock, alas). The illustrations are stunning, but of … Continue reading John Vernon Lord’s Notebooks