Sketchbook 01 - 2015

I've been keeping a sketchbook since highschool, and I've saved most of them. Early on, the sketchbook was a place to doodle while listening to lectures, or something to pull out of my bag whenever I needed something to distract me from my social anxiety. I sketched all the time and would fill up multiple sketchbooks each year.

For the past couple of years, I've been feeling a little disconnected from my sketchbook. I don't feel as loose as I once was. I often have to pull up reference images to get started because if I just doodle from nothing, it ends up looking like a zentangle or something, and I prefer to make imagery that tells a story. I'm hoping that by reviewing old sketchbooks and sharing them, it might spark a feeling that once again makes me feel at home in my sketchbook.

The first sketchbook that I'm sharing is from 2015. It's tiny - about three inches by three inches. I used exclusively blue gel pens - Pilot G2s - as I did for most of college.

Most of my sketchbooks are handmade by me. I like being able to select the size and paper. It feels more 'mine' than a commercial sketchbook, though I have used those at times, too. This one has fairly thin paper, which may have been scrap from the commercial print shop I worked at during this period.

At this time, I had just graduated university and moved to Iowa City to join the Iowa City Press Co-op, the only community printmaking studio in Iowa. I would go there every week and host open studio for my volunteer hours. I was still under the impression at this time that I'd be leaving Iowa and moving somewhere in the western United States. Little did I know, I would settle in this little college town for the next ten years. It now feels like home and I am grateful I did.

Well, that's it for this one! Hope you enjoyed this little blast from the past. I plan to continue making posts like this occasionally and tagging them all so they'll be easy to find in one place. Maybe eventually I'll have the entire collection documented!