Whoops, I forgot to celebrate the 15th anniversary of this blog yesterday! 9/12/2008 was my first post. 15 years and 2,373 posts later, I’m still here, still posting (if not as frequently), still buying notebooks (maybe a little less frequently), and still writing in lots of notebooks (even more frequently). And I love that people are still reading my posts, and following on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest too. Thank you for all your support over the years!
My biggest goals for the future of this blog are to get back on a more regular schedule of posting, and do more video content on YouTube. (I’ve done a few in the past, but so infrequently that I keep losing access to the channels I’ve started and can’t figure out how to get them back!) If there is anything else you’d like to see more of on this site, please leave a comment!
I’m spending this 15th anniversary on a short vacation at the beach, so I’ll leave you with a photo of all the notebooks I have brought with me! Plus two new ones I just bought during my trip, to be reviewed soon. Stay tuned!
The Virtuo Journal is something I bought on eBay as part of a lot with other notebooks I actually wanted. I was curious about it anyway, because it was a brand I’d never seen before. Evidently Virtuo is a proprietary brand sold at OfficeMax… or I guess I should say “was,” as I can’t find any Virtuo products currently listed on their website. So let’s review this notebook that you won’t be able to buy unless another one shows up on eBay!
The Virtuo Journal reminds me a little bit of the C.R. Gibson Markings notebook, in that it’s a kind of crappy fake leather notebook with stitching around the edges. But I don’t think the Markings cover got all flaky and cracked like the Virtuo has.
The outside is pretty standard other than the stitching– black cover, totally plain. There isn’t even any logo stamped on the back. It measures about 9×14 cm or 3.5 x 5.5″. There’s no elastic closure but there’s a ribbon marker and a pocket in the back. A removable paper band has all the brand info. Photos below show it next to a squared Moleskine pocket size notebook for comparison.
Inside the front cover is where it gets a little different. The pinstripe design that’s on the paper band is also featured on the endpapers. I guess someone thought this should look “business-y” so they decided to use a pattern that would recall a grey flannel suit. They liked this motif so much, they even carried it onto the pages, running it up the outer edge of every single page. Odd. Other than that, the pages are lined in a pretty common way, with the lines not going all the way across.
The paper performed better than I expected given the low-quality feel of the cover. Fountain pens worked pretty well, without too much bleedthrough, at least with fine points.
But otherwise, there’s not that much else to say about the Virtuo Journal. I guess there’s a reason this brand has gone bye-bye! I’ll file this one in the part of my collection I think of as the graveyard of notebook mediocrity.
As noted recently, I’ve been revisiting some of my old Filofaxes, which feel like time capsules from the late 1990s. One of my favorites from that time was the Filofax Pocket Chelsea. I liked it so much, I bought two!
They are actually slightly different, though no distinction was made in the model name. Both say “Pocket Chelsea/Calf Leather/Made in England” inside. But one has large rings (inner diameter about 17mm), and one has small rings (11mm). I don’t remember which one I bought first, but I suspect it was the one with the larger rings. There is nothing inside it that gives any date reference, but it looks a bit more broken in, though that may have just been because I used it more.
I had this Filofax set up as a kind of general list-keeper, reference, and catchall notebook. I tucked some clippings and other odds and ends into plastic pockets in the front and back, and had some customized tabs to organize notes relating to several topics: Work, Books, Lists, To-Do, and Phone #s. (Most of my Filofax inserts were pre-punched to fit both 4- and 6-ring binders, or in some cases only 6-ring, but you can see that I had to re-punch the older 4-hole tabs myself to get them to fit 6 rings.) On a clear plastic page, I stuck the label that came with a padlock I used on my gym locker, in case I forgot the combination.
I jotted various notes and quotes from books– at some point there would have been more notes, but as pages filled up, I tended to move them into bundles of archived Filofax pages along with that year’s calendar when it was finished. I still have all those pages in one of my many notebook boxes.
I was particularly pleased to find the page below, a list of the Modern Library’s top 100 books, which I’d photocopied from the New York Times at a reduced size so I could keep it in my notebook. I had been using it as a checklist, ticking off all the books I had already read. I just re-copied the list and put it in a current (2023) notebook, brought up to date with the additional books I’ve read in the past 20+ years!
I had quite a few maps in this notebook, including a central London A-Z map with its extensive street index– an indispensable tool in the era when no one had smartphones with Google Maps! I also liked the pad of perforated post-it notes specially sized and punched for a pocket Filofax.
The leather cover is really nice– just the right balance of structure and flexibility, so it broke in nicely. This is one of the rare Filofax models that came without a snap closure, which made it perfect for me! And the shape was more like later Filofax models sold as “slim,” so I found it more appealing than the usual wider pocket Filofax shape. (See this post for an earlier Filofax that I’d had cut down to achieve this kind of shape!) And I really like the arrangement of the pockets, which made it very usable as a wallet. I’m pretty sure I did use it that way for a while, but I don’t remember exactly.
At some point, I must have loved my first pocket Chelsea enough that I wanted to have another! So I also bought this second one. But looking at it now makes me wonder if I realized before I bought it that it had different rings. The leather covers are pretty much identical, though this one may be a smidgen taller, and the texture of the leather may be slightly softer on the previous notebook. However, the change in ring size means that the closed cover ends up being wider in the small-ringed version. This obviously didn’t make me happy, as I made a set of cardboard spacers to widen the spine, making the closed notebook narrower and thicker. I colored the cardboard with black magic marker to make it blend in more. It’s a bit of a kludgy solution but the end result worked pretty well, and allowed room for keeping lots of cards in the pockets without making the cover bulge.
In this Filofax, I had a 1999 weekly calendar, some notes pages, and plastic pockets for miscellaneous clippings. I think 1999, or maybe even 1998 was the first year I owned a Palm Pilot, so this notebook was the last time I really used a Filofax calendar. I had notes in it all through 1999, but I may have been jotting things down just as a backup in case my Palm Pilot lost its data– a not uncommon occurrence back then if you let the battery die. If you hadn’t synced it to a computer recently enough, you were out of luck! Interestingly enough, one of the pieces of paper tucked into this notebook has a drawing I’d made for a Palm Pilot case… I was definitely moving on.
I still wonder why Filofax changed the ring size on the pocket Chelsea model. But I also wonder whether Filofax changed the ring size… or did I change the ring size? On all my old Filofaxes, the rings seemed to be held in only by a little tab of metal that clipped onto each end. I seem to recall playing with these metal tabs a little at times, if a set of rings was on a bit crooked, or perhaps for some other reason. On the Chelsea with the larger rings, one of the metal tabs looks a bit scratched. So I am kind of wondering if I somehow bent the tab out enough to remove a set of small rings and replace it with a set of larger rings from a different Filofax, in order to get the fatter/narrower shape I wanted? It does seem possible… and I remember worrying about whether that little tab could break (which according to Steve at Philofaxy, it could). But it’s all so long ago now that I have no memory of actually doing it, or what other Filofax I would have taken the rings from. Philofaxy’s archived Filofax catalogs from the late 1990s only show one pocket Chelsea model, and there’s no specification on the ring size.
I really enjoyed flipping through these old notebooks and feeling transported back to my 25-years-younger self! I love how well-used they were, with corners fraying on the tabs. And I love the mysterious little notes whose significance I no longer remember. The Filofax Pocket Chelsea seems like the end of a golden era of notebooking for me, when I was such a passionate fan of Filofaxes and similar refillable notebooks. I was then distracted by Palm Pilots for a while, before re-emerging into full-on notebook fandom when I fell in love with Moleskines. I haven’t been using a Filofax as part of my daily arsenal for quite a while, but the love is still strong!
Watercolors are a great companion for many notebooks. If you like to draw or just decorate your pages, adding a splash of color is easy with a pocket size watercolor set. Lately I’ve become a bit of a collector of different watercolor boxes, some of which I’ve mentioned in previous posts where I’ve reviewed watercolor sketchbooks. But today I’ll give you a rundown on my full collection! (Since I’ve added a few new items since I last wrote about them in 2016.)
I’m going to go mostly in chronological order of when I originally acquired these sets, but the first watercolor set I’ll talk about actually only came back into my possession recently. This little Winsor and Newton set was amongst some things my mother had stored for me, so I don’t think I’d seen it in at least 40 years. It is still in its original packaging and doesn’t look like it was used much. I was glad it still had its color chart inside. The packaging says these sets are intended for “beginners or serious amateurs” so the paints are presumably not artist grade.
I have another set that is basically identical. I know I’ve had this one since at least the late 1990s, but I can’t remember if it was another one from my childhood, or if I bought it as a college student or young adult. As of 2013, it was the watercolor set I used most often– which wasn’t really all that often. I liked the tiny size, but I may have found using this set rather frustrating. When I tried it again recently, I found it very hard to re-wet the pans enough to get much vibrancy in the colors– most of them looked very washed out. I’ve seen one of these for sale on eBay for $60.00– not sure if it’s really that valuable but maybe these older paints are made of pigments that are no longer used today?
As of 2013, I also owned another Winsor and Newton set. I have no memory of when or how I bought it or if it was given to me. This is the Cotman Compact Box. (W&N offers various sets with names that are very similar, and that have changed over the years, so it can be confusing to figure out which one is which just by the names.) The Compact Box is light years beyond those first tiny boxes– it holds 14 half pans, and has lots of mixing space due to a slide-out extra palette. There’s a little cup that can sit in the middle or be mounted on the side, for water or extra mixing space. (It’s very shallow, so I don’t think it’s really that great for holding water.) You can hook your thumb through the opening in the middle so it’s easy to hold. The Cotman colors are so vibrant compared to my old set, it’s amazing. And it’s a bargain– list price $43.99 but often discounted to $20-25. Cotman is W&N’s student grade paint line, so amount of pigment is lower and colors may not be as saturated or permanent as professional grade paints, but they are a great value if you are still learning or want to just knock around and have fun with color. There really isn’t much not to like about this set, but I have a weird preference for certain shapes and sizes, and the tapered, square-ish shape of this box doesn’t really appeal to me, so I recently gave it to my partner to use. I had not been using it for many years, since I got interested in using professional artist grade paints and bought the next set.
This is yet another Winsor and Newton set, the one I’ve used the most. It’s now discontinued, but I just love this metal box. It’s a cute size and shape, but with the fold-out mixing space, it gives you plenty of room to work. The tray that holds the pans is removable, so I suppose you could use the bottom of the box for even more mixing space if you had a place to set the palette tray down. But it’s really meant for painting on the go, with the tin in your hand and your thumb hooked into the hinged ring on the bottom. This set came with 12 half pans but the design of the box makes it easy to add several more, as I have done, transferring some pans from the Cotman set. I don’t remember how much this set cost, but the colors are gorgeous and intense, and the box is so much more pleasing, I’ve never regretted buying it. There is no currently available W&N set that is quite equivalent to this one– there is a 14-pan artist grade set in the same case as the Compact Box above, or a 12-pan “Field Box” that is an odd chunky shape with fold-out mixing panels and a built-in water bottle.
Though Winsor and Newton doesn’t sell sets in these tins anymore, you can buy an empty tin that’s almost identical and fill it with any other half pans, or buy empty half and/or full pans and fill them with W&N tube paint and allow it to dry. I tried doing this with some gouache but it didn’t work well– I think gouache is best used right out of the tube.
My next watercolor set purchase was this lovely little Daler Rowney set of 18 quarter pans, which I believe I first heard about from a commenter on this site. I came across it in an art store in Paris, and fell in love. This is the slimmest watercolor set I’ve ever seen: 1-15/16 wide by 4-7/8 long and about half an inch thick if you count the thumb ring on the bottom. There may be some other pre-filled sets that are technically tinier in terms of total volume but those are sets with maybe 8 half pans at most. I’ve never seen any other set that has quarter pans. These are artist grade paints, and the colors are great. I think this is a really nice color selection– it might have more shades of red/pink than I probably need, but it lacks nothing, as far as I’m concerned. (There is no white, but I don’t find that essential.) But the pans are so tiny, and there’s not a ton of mixing space, so it’s not as practical to use as my W&N metal tin. I also wondered how I would refill it if I used up some of the colors– there are no plastic pans to swap in and out, just blocks of paint that sit in little metal wells. The wells aren’t totally sealed off from each other, so adding tube paint might end up in a mess. But apparently people cut half pans in half somehow to refill quarter pans. I think you’d have to trim them even more than that to make them fit, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it!
Next we have yet another Winsor and Newton set. Maybe after feeling a little cramped with the quarter pans I decided I need to stretch out, because this is the first set I’ve owned that has full pans. These are Cotman paints again, and what I really love about this set is the shape of the box. It’s the same size as my favorite notebooks! There’s a decent amount of mixing space divided into 6 wells. The paints are held in place– sort of– by removable plastic dividers. The dividers aren’t held in very tightly so everything can go flying pretty easily if you’re not careful, and it sounds like a lot of people remedy that by sticking the pans down with rubber cement or some other non-permanent adhesive. But the nice thing is that this box can also be configured to hold half pans, or a combination of full and half pans. I think this full pan set has been discontinued, but there is a similar, larger box that has 24 full pans, and there’s another version of this same box that we’ll get to in a minute!
Here’s the other Winsor and Newton set in that same plastic box, which I couldn’t resist. Even though I haven’t really been using my full-pan set much, I really liked the idea of using the box and customizing it. Maybe even having two of these boxes, with some paints in one and pencils in the other. I was looking on eBay to see if I could get another full pan set and just re-use the extra box, but then I discovered that this half-pan Cotman Complete Pocket Set is available. It comes with a pencil and a kneaded eraser (an unneeded kneaded eraser) in addition to the usual mini-brush. (It also came with 16 half pans, but I transferred some of them to other sets, hence the scrappy selection below.) The price isn’t too bad, so I snapped one up. The box is slightly different than my other one, with a smoother texture on the outside– I prefer the older version. But I’m going to play around with what might fit inside. Many pens are a little too long, but my Pentel refillable brush pen and Pigma Micron pens fit! As does my favorite Sakura Koi waterbrush. So I might set up one box with watercolors, and one with a waterbrush, pen, pencil and a folded-up paper towel, which always comes in handy for brush cleaning.
This Sennelier paint set was a recent purchase. It’s in a very similar box to the W&N set, though the box is actually deeper. The extra space, and the fact that the paint chunks aren’t stuck down, led to the paints all falling out of their pans, so I was confronted with a big jumble when I first opened the set. Luckily I was able to get everything back in order with the handy plastic color guide. I say “handy” because I like how it shows each color, but I’m not sure the way it flaps over the paints is actually convenient: you have to hold it out of the way while you’re painting, or just remove it. But it does do a good job separating the paints from the mixing wells, in case you have to close up the box in a hurry before everything’s dry. (Not that that is a good idea: I’ve never had this happen but some watercolor paints can get moldy if they don’t dry properly, and I’ve read that since Sennelier’s paints contain honey, they can be susceptible to that.) These are artist grade paints in Sennelier’s L’Aquarelle line, so they weren’t super cheap at $53– but I snapped that up since I had previously seen prices around $60-75. Annoyingly, I later saw them priced even lower at $47.34 on Amazon, but that price may no longer be valid by the time you read this. All these prices are a lot better than the list price of $132! (Sennelier also has a cheaper student grade line called Le Petite Aquarelle, but they don’t come in this exact tin.) I haven’t used this set very much yet, but the paints seem great in terms of being very vibrant. However, I found the selection of colors a little disappointing– to me, it’s odd not to have both a warm and cool yellow, as they can mix very differently with other colors. I’d want to add a cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, maybe a raw ochre and an ivory black. This should be easy to do as they sell half pans individually, but you only have to buy 4 or 5 individual colors before it costs as much as the whole set! I may not bother, as I don’t think these are different enough from W&N to need a whole separate set of the same colors. I may end up mixing and matching brands as I run out of certain colors.
I recently fell victim to one more infatuation: the Art Toolkit. I had been seeing lots of online buzz about them but for some reason I had only ever noticed the tiny business-card size watercolor pallets, which weren’t interesting to me. But then I saw that they were now offering the larger “Folio” size. It measures 5-5/16″ x 3-3/8″ x 1/4″– just a smidgen smaller than my favorite notebook size. How could I not fall in love? And I find this size more practical too, allowing a bit more room for swishing a brush into the paints and mixing colors. I went a bit bonkers and decided to order a whole kit including the palette, a few extra pans, a carrying case and a couple of accessories. It’s a really nice kit– I love the design and slimness of the palette, the magnetic base that holds the pans down, and how you can customize the layout and pan size for your various colors. And it’s nice to have a case that has lots and pockets to hold everything, with enough room left over to tuck in a pocket size sketchbook too. I put the colors I use most in larger pans, and added some extra mixing pans. I currently have 13 colors but could see myself maybe expanding to something closer to the Daler Rowney palette. I can’t wait to play with this more!
The only tube watercolors I own are a set I got for an absurdly low price at a Jerry’s Artarama store, student-grade Lukas Studio Aquarell. I hadn’t even tried them yet, but used them to fill the Art Toolkit palette, and then decided to add an additional shade of green, which I purchased as a standalone tube of Winsor & Newton professional grade Hooker’s Green. Considering that I only paid something like $20 for the whole Lukas set (on sale), their quality seems pretty decent, though I haven’t tested them much yet. But it’s interesting to see how differently the W&N paint dried in its pan– totally smooth with no cracks or bubbles. Not sure if that’s significant, but it certainly looks more pleasing. If I find myself using this palette a lot, I will probably upgrade the paints in it to professional grade ones.
That is my entire watercolor arsenal– for now. Hopefully forever! I don’t feel the need to keep buying more and more sets– in a way I’m curious to try other brands like Schmincke and Daniel Smith, but given my level of art practice, I don’t think I need to be that much of a connoisseur. I know I like to have certain colors in my palette, a certain size/shape of palette, and good quality paints with vibrant, highly pigmented colors. But beyond that, I haven’t found a reason to prefer one brand over another. For now I have plenty of options to play with– I can keep a watercolor set in every room of the house, and in my car, in case the mood to paint suddenly strikes me!
I forget how I came across this very poignant notebook. It is a diary belonging to Peter Feigl, a 13-year old Austrian Jewish refugee in Vichy France.
…Peter wrote about the traumatic events he had just experienced in his diary. His parents were first taken to an internment camp at Le Vernet, and the diary that Peter started keeping was written and addressed to his parents. Peter saw the diary as a way to maintain ties with his family, tragically separated by the cruel events of the summer. Peter documented his daily life—as well as his fears and his despair at the disappearance of his parents.
For all that I’m an unrepentant notebook addict, with way more notebooks than I could ever use in my lifetime, I sometimes actually find myself looking at someone else’s collection and feeling a little judge-y. This happens mainly on Instagram where I’ve seen various people displaying shelves full of 5 or 10 or 20 Travelers Notebooks, each of them stuffed full and blinged-out with lots of charms and clips and pen holders and whatever. I find myself thinking “it’s a refillable notebook, you’re supposed to keep using it, not just start a new one when it’s full.”
And yet…
There are a few reasons why I kind of get it.
Travelers Notebooks come in lots of colors and they’re always releasing new limited editions and I can see why someone might want to collect them all. I personally have never quite caught the Travelers Notebooks bug, so I don’t have that desire. But if there was some other refillable notebook that was always releasing interesting new versions, I could see that I might be tempted.
Filofaxes were my thing back in the 1990s, but there was no online culture feeding the need back then. They released new models on a regular basis, but there wasn’t the same kind of hype about limited editions dropping. That didn’t stop me from buying several. Mostly this was just a search for perfection– I loved my first one, but I found myself wanting something a little different. I tried other versions, seeking a certain shape, thickness, leather texture, ring size– some je ne sais quoi that kept me trying more. There were times when I was using two Filofaxes simultaneously– one as a sort of wallet and planner, and one as just a notebook, or various permutations along those lines.
Then I stopped using my Filofaxes and stored them all away in a box. I’d still buy a cute little looseleaf binder once in a while, just because I still loved them, or to review on this blog, but I had completely switched to filling one Moleskine after another, as well as other similar brands of hard or softcover bound notebooks.
But recently I was having another moment where I wanted to start using a refillable looseleaf notebook, and I looked through my box of old ones (see my “shoebox tour”) to see if I could revive something that I hadn’t used in a while. But I realized I had to start afresh with a Filofax I’d never used before. The old Filofaxes that I’d abandoned now seemed like little time capsules. They were each different, with odd snippets of notes or clippings tucked in pockets. They brought memories back, and prompted curiosity about things I could no longer remember. I couldn’t just clear out all those old contents and start those notebooks over again now.
So I’m making peace with the idea of having too many refillable notebooks. Leather Filofax notebooks like these are at their best when they’ve been used and worn in and loved, but I think it’s ok to let them become “finished,” and move on. It’s not just the contents that you might want to archive, sometimes, but rather the whole bundle, the whole object. Revisiting these old notebooks is a lot of fun, and I’ll share more photos of them soon!
Cloth covers aren’t that unusual for notebooks, but how about a notebook made entirely of cloth and needlework– even the writing in it!?!
[Candace Hicks’s] primary art practice includes recreating classic composition notebooks in cloth form, embroidering text into their fabric pages. The text is mostly composed of collected snippets that she finds recurring in the different books she’s reading. This poignant series entitled “Common Threads” has been an ongoing project of Hicks’ for nearly 20 years.
Papersmiths is a stationery shop with branches in London and Brighton, UK, and online. I have been following them online for a while, and actually ordered some Bindewerk notebooks from them a few years ago, when I was having trouble finding them in the US. It was lovely to hear from the team at Papersmiths recently, with an offer of a sample of their new Papersmiths-branded notebooks for me to review. Let’s take a look!
This line of notebooks has been designed by Papersmiths themselves, and is produced for them at a bindery in the UK. They come in a range of nine beautiful colors. I received one in Azurite blue.
The first impression is that this is a really sharp notebook. The corners are square and everything seems very precisely cut and assembled. The card stock cover has a texture to it which is aligned perfectly straight with the edges of the notebook. The notebook is described as A5 size, and measures 147 x 208mm, with a thickness of about 15mm. The cover is scored along the edge by the spine so it can fold back more easily when you open it.
At the right side, there is a stamped Papersmiths logo. (I’m curious about the significance of the logo– I guess it’s just a squiggle but I kept wondering if it represented a cursive letter or something…) The back cover has the Papersmiths name subtly stamped.
The spine is quite flexible but the notebook won’t open quite 100% flat. It’s heavy enough that when you are near the very middle of the notebook, it will lie open without being held down, but closer to the beginning or end, it will flop closed.
Inside, the first page of the notebook is blank except for a space to write your contact information. Then there’s a two-page spread set up to be a table of contents. And then you have 236 numbered pages of dot grid paper, stitched in signatures. (Lined and plain versions are also available.)
My absolute favorite thing about this notebook is the page numbering– as you flip through the pages, the color of the numbers subtly shifts through a pastel rainbow of colors. It’s such a tiny detail but makes me really happy! The dot grid pages and numbers are also very precisely aligned.
The 100 gsm paper is a bright white, and nicely smooth. It is described as being fountain pen friendly and does deliver on this claim. I saw a couple of tiny specks of bleed-through with some wetter inks where lines overlapped, but it was pretty minor. All my fountain pen inks looked vibrant and sharp, with no feathering. Show-through is about average. Some markers like the Super Sharpie and Accu-Liner bled through, but less than on many other papers I’ve tested. There really isn’t anything not to like about this paper for journaling, note-taking, and everyday use– it’s really a pleasure to write on.
This is a lovely notebook with an attention to detail that makes it feel special. As usual, my only wish would be for them to also offer a pocket-sized option! The price for this A5 notebook is £22, which is about US$27.95 right now (the exchange rate is pretty good). The price is a bit steep compared to a similarly sized Moleskine or Leuchtturm notebook but pretty in line with a Stalogy notebook, which I think is a better comparison in terms of quality.
I had to return to the topic after seeing a wonderful reel of sketchbook images on the Instagram page of EK100.org, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Ellsworth Kelly’s birth. A couple of screen grabs below:
Apparently he kept lots of sketchbooks, drawing and capturing ideas of colors and shapes when he was out and about, and also using notebooks to document technical details about his paintings. From an ArtNews article about various Ellsworth Kelly exhibitions for the centenary:
One of these exhibitions is a show of 25 of Kelly’s sketchbooks at the Museum of Modern Art, which Shear recently gifted to the museum, on view through June 11. Working out compositions on paper first was a regular, if unseen, part of the artist’s practice.
“His sketchbooks reveal the particularities of his unique process—the persistent experimentation and investigation—as well as the real-world references that often inspired his seemingly nonobjective compositions,” notes Christophe Cherix, MoMA’s chief curator of drawings and prints. Kelly’s creations, constellations of hard-edged abstract shapes in dazzling color, disguise any hint that they’re based in observation of something real. “Both eminently private and practical, these sketchbooks extend a unique behind-the-scenes invitation,” Cherix adds.
Kelly took sketchbooks with him everywhere, but mostly kept them to himself, moving onto the next sketchbook as soon as one was full. “Kelly’s sketchbooks are both the treasure and the treasure map,” says Cherix, “leading us into a secret world where art is lived and breathed.”
In remembrance of her many talents, here’s an image from one of her travel sketchbooks, reproduced in facsimile in a limited edition set of books published by Tachen, which I posted about back when she was a mere youngster of 96!
