The Sketchbook Project

A few weeks ago The Sketchbook Project's mobile library came to Steamboat. This is part of an amazing collection of 31,400 sketchbooks from 135 countries! To participate as an artist you get a blank book from them, fill it up, and send it back. The books then live at the Brooklyn Art Library in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY. They may also go on tour and be scanned to be available digitally.

 

Here is the mobile library parked at the Bud Werner Memorial Library in Steamboat Springs.



And here is a nice reading area where you can look through the sketchbooks.

At the same time, our local library was handing out single sketchbook pages for community members to illustrate what Steamboat is to them. I took a page and used some of my stamps. The library displayed the pages and people voted on their favorites. Mine was one of the winners! Here is a link to the six favorites. Now all of the pages will be bound together into a book.

As a prize I got a beautiful card, a Sketchbook Project pencil, and a rather intense chocolate bar. I couldn't handle the chocolate alone, but tonight I turned it into a couple of amazing mugs of hot cocoa. Yum! I also got my own blank sketchbook to fill that will hopefully go on tour next year.

I really need to keep this sketchbook low stress and I wanted to try something different, so Tessa and I are doing a collaboration! She is doing some drawing with pen, and then I'm doodling and turning her scribble into something using a pencil. Here is the little artist with her first drawing.

And here is how our first drawing turned out.

I'm going to be looking at some of the scanned sketchbooks online when I have free time. Let me know if you have one in the database!