Keep a sketchbook journal and explore your world, preserve your thoughts and celebrate life! More than a diary of written words, a sketchbook journal allows you to indulge your imagination and exercise your artistic creativity. It is a personal, private place where you have unlimited freedom to express yourself, experiment, discover, dream and document your world. The possibilities are endless. In How to Keep a Sketchbook Journal, Claudia Nice shows you samples from her own journals and provides you with advice and encouragement for keeping your own. She reviews types of journals, from theme and garden journals to travel journals and fantasy sketchbooks, as well as the basic techniques for using pencils, pens, brushes, inks and watercolors to capture your thoughts and impressions. Exactly what goes in your journal is up to you. Sketch quickly to capture a thought or image before it vanishes. Draw or paint with care, to render an idea or vision as realistically as possible. Write about what you see. The choice is yours--and the memories you'll preserve will last a lifetime.

For every commercial work released by an artist, countless doodles and sketches remain in sketchbooks, unseen by all but a select few. It is a rare treat to see an artists looser, more playful experiments. These early drafts and creative diversions can reveal new facets of the artists process, and often constitute a body of work just as valuable as what the artist deems worthy of the public eye. The Art of the Sketchbook cracks opens the covers of more than thirty private sketchbooks and reveals the personal work of artists in their leisure. Travel diaries, life studies, and wildly imaginative cartoons are just a few of the styles represented here, and the materials and subjects are just as varied. Double-page presentations show the sketchbooks in their raw form, and artist interviews provide both context for the images and glimpses into the role sketching plays in each artists larger body of work.

Reproduction of the original: From Sketch-Book and Diary by Elizabeth Butler

Elizabeth Butler (née Thompson, 1846-1933) and her sister, the poet Alice Meynell, were educated at home by their wealthy father, and much of their childhood was spent in Italy. Elizabeth began to train as an artist at the Female School of Art, South Kensington, in 1866, and became famous for her work in the genre (unusual for a woman) of military art. In this illustrated work of 1909, dedicated to her sister, she recalls time spent in Ireland, Egypt, and the Cape of Good Hope. On some of these travels she was accompanying her soldier husband, while others were taken for pleasure. Her final reminiscences are of Italy, from both her childhood and her later artistic career. Her diary, and letters to her mother, provide much of the text, but the colour illustrations (which can be viewed at www.cambridge.org/9781108081306, under 'Resources') are an equally important feature of the book.

This blank sketchbook has 100 pages. You can use this book to sketch, write and draw. Great gift for artists of all ages.

Doodling and sketching and journaling through life's realities and histories.