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Lots and lots of mixed feelings about this sketchbook. I loved the binding; it completely opens up flat. It's softcover which I don't like as well as hardcover, but then it was thick enough that that mostly didn't matter. I have this weird tactile aversion to the paper; it felt like a thick newsprint to me and it just annoyed me. I mostly only worked on one side of the page because there was a lot of bleed through on the pages (not just from obvious things like alcohol markers, but also other pens). Wet media wrinkled the pages somewhat, but not as bad as some paper does and some of the watercolor pages ended up being my favorite. The brand was Picadilly and it's pretty cheap so I can't say anything too bad about it. Final verdict: Worked well with pen, ink, and watercolor. Okay for pencil. Sucked the life out of markers. The open-flat binding was fantastic.
This sketchbook also spans all of 2020, which was a bit of a rollercoaster. I donated a lot of money I could NOT (edited to add the "not") afford to political causes and bought a lot of political stickers. (I hate feeling that voting with your dollars has more impact than voting with your actual VOTE, but I suspect it's true.) So I covered up a lot of the back-sides of pages with bleed-through by putting bumper stickers on them.
You can see more of the political stickers in this video, but fair warning that it will give you motion sickness because I'm terrible at trying to take video. If anyone does struggle through the video and want a better picture of something that I didn't include, just let me know.
(Some of these were posted on my old account and I spent a bit more time editing them back then. The ones I photographed recently, I just don't have the patience to edit the photos some some pictures might look a bit wonky.)
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digital edits of Venom fanart:
For a story about Venom sampling a variety of human food...
For a story about Venom eating a drug-dealer who if I remember correctly had drugs in his pocket...
miscellaneous babble about art
#03: I kept the Elizabeth Warren sticker in this shot, because I amused myself by placing "Breaking Up Big Tech" next to the woman with the wrench. I saw Elizabeth Warren speak twice in 2019 and it feels like a million years ago. For one event, I signed up for a free bus ride to Iowa with a progressive group and shared a hotel room with a complete stranger (not even a friend-of-a-friend to vouch for her, just random person who also signed up for the bus trip to Iowa) and got to see four different presidential candidates give their speeches. Then a few months later, Elizabeth Warren came to town, so I went with a friend to what ended up being a standing-room-only event. (I was originally seated near my friend who had reserved a spot for her wheelchair, but the event ended up being so packed that I gave up my seat for someone who needed to sit down.) Even at the time, I was a little uncomfortable with how packed the event was, but in a post-pandemic world? Yikes. No way.
#04: This is neither the first nor last rage-scribble page in this sketchbook. I just thought I'd share one of them as an example of how I cope when the art just won't flow.
#08: This was either the last day I worked in person or the first day I was out of a job for a couple of weeks. (Boss originally insisted that work-from-home was not an option, but literally just after I filed for unemployment, corporate changed their policy to allow work-from-home.)
#12 & #13: These are two of my favorites looking back so I don't know why I didn't do more with this style. Too whimsical?
#21: Cookies and candy canes are favorite drawings at Christmas time. I'm especially proud of the thumbprint in the gingerbread and the burnt tips on the star cookie. (Yeah, I'm admitting too much about my baking skills, aren't I?)
#22: The signpost from M*A*S*H. I can't remember why I decided to draw this. I have the vague notion that there was an art prompt involved? But usually I write that down if that was the case. At any rate I posted this to my main journal at the time:
I really need to weed these sketchbook re-caps down to a like a top-ten list or something. I always feel like I'm including unnecessary crap, but sometimes even the mediocre drawings have stories I want to tell (i.e. M*A*S*H signpost).
This sketchbook also spans all of 2020, which was a bit of a rollercoaster. I donated a lot of money I could NOT (edited to add the "not") afford to political causes and bought a lot of political stickers. (I hate feeling that voting with your dollars has more impact than voting with your actual VOTE, but I suspect it's true.) So I covered up a lot of the back-sides of pages with bleed-through by putting bumper stickers on them.
You can see more of the political stickers in this video, but fair warning that it will give you motion sickness because I'm terrible at trying to take video. If anyone does struggle through the video and want a better picture of something that I didn't include, just let me know.
(Some of these were posted on my old account and I spent a bit more time editing them back then. The ones I photographed recently, I just don't have the patience to edit the photos some some pictures might look a bit wonky.)
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24 digital edits of Venom fanart:
For a story about Venom sampling a variety of human food...
For a story about Venom eating a drug-dealer who if I remember correctly had drugs in his pocket...
miscellaneous babble about art
#03: I kept the Elizabeth Warren sticker in this shot, because I amused myself by placing "Breaking Up Big Tech" next to the woman with the wrench. I saw Elizabeth Warren speak twice in 2019 and it feels like a million years ago. For one event, I signed up for a free bus ride to Iowa with a progressive group and shared a hotel room with a complete stranger (not even a friend-of-a-friend to vouch for her, just random person who also signed up for the bus trip to Iowa) and got to see four different presidential candidates give their speeches. Then a few months later, Elizabeth Warren came to town, so I went with a friend to what ended up being a standing-room-only event. (I was originally seated near my friend who had reserved a spot for her wheelchair, but the event ended up being so packed that I gave up my seat for someone who needed to sit down.) Even at the time, I was a little uncomfortable with how packed the event was, but in a post-pandemic world? Yikes. No way.
#04: This is neither the first nor last rage-scribble page in this sketchbook. I just thought I'd share one of them as an example of how I cope when the art just won't flow.
#08: This was either the last day I worked in person or the first day I was out of a job for a couple of weeks. (Boss originally insisted that work-from-home was not an option, but literally just after I filed for unemployment, corporate changed their policy to allow work-from-home.)
#12 & #13: These are two of my favorites looking back so I don't know why I didn't do more with this style. Too whimsical?
#21: Cookies and candy canes are favorite drawings at Christmas time. I'm especially proud of the thumbprint in the gingerbread and the burnt tips on the star cookie. (Yeah, I'm admitting too much about my baking skills, aren't I?)
#22: The signpost from M*A*S*H. I can't remember why I decided to draw this. I have the vague notion that there was an art prompt involved? But usually I write that down if that was the case. At any rate I posted this to my main journal at the time:
Was there ever a canon explanation for this signpost? It's all kinds of wrong. Why is Seoul on there twice? Why are Indianapolis and Decatur pointing in different directions and noted as being thousands of miles apart? (Unclear which Decatur, but none of them would be that far from Indianapolis.)
My personal headcanon (which I'm too lazy to verify) is that the signs first went up as a joke by someone who didn't care about the accuracy of distance or direction, but then other people took it seriously and added their own signage with carefully researched numbers (I imagine the direction is still questionable as I picture the sign getting knocked about a lot). For instance, Indianapolis is just about the right distance from Seoul, but almost everything else is completely wrong. (Even Tokyo and Seoul don't seem to be the right distance apart. You would think the props department would have researched that if they were trying to convey the location the series takes place.)
Bonus headcanon: which character is most likely to not understand a joke and add a serious sign with real numbers? Frank Burns is from Fort Wayne Indiana. So I'll claim Ferret Face added the Indianapolis sign.
I'm pretty sure I'm just rationalizing the props department throwing up signs and numbers without any thought to the idea that someday people would by on the Internet asking Google how many miles it is between Tokyo and Seoul to nitpick their sign.
I really need to weed these sketchbook re-caps down to a like a top-ten list or something. I always feel like I'm including unnecessary crap, but sometimes even the mediocre drawings have stories I want to tell (i.e. M*A*S*H signpost).
no subject
Date: 2023-09-14 06:14 pm (UTC)From:I can't be doing with poor quality paper, I want my books to be multipurpose so take whatever media I want to use otherwise it gets very frustrating.
paper
Date: 2023-09-15 01:43 am (UTC)From: