let's go see the sketchbook project

The entrance to Madrone Studios.

Inside: a white space and sculpted man.

First, you need a library card.
This lady ahead of me in the hat was a contributing artist.

 

Guests in line to check out books ~ before it got super busy. We just beat the crowd.

It was quite exciting to get our first books. My son wanted to check out my book first. So sweet ~ he's one of my biggest fans. :)

He turned right away to his favorite page.

I decided to start with books from my twitter friends Jeannine @Saylor_made and @Juriko. You can see Jeannine Saylor's book here.

My first checkout: Jeannine's and Juriko's books.

The first part of Jeannine's book followed a theme of "It Must Be...".
She used a really nice combination of collage and watercolor in this set.

In the rest of the book, she illustrated friends' Facebook posts.
This one made me laugh.

I love the pull-out card with the rainbow dress that she tucked in the back.
It went so well with the last pages.

Enjoying.

Juriko's book had her classic sketches of people, as I expected.
But I was also surprised by this cut-out window.

I liked the way the flowers came through to the next page's scene.

We were all sharing books. My husband read Juri's book next.

There was one page of my book that didn't get digitized.
It was good to see that it was actually still in the book.

Before we left for the show, we browsed the Arthouse site to find artists' books that we might like to see. One of them we checked out was a gal who lives in northern Italy (near to where we lived for four years) ~ Rossana Bossu'. I really loved her book!

Cover

This one especially reminded me of the cobblestones I used to walk over in the city.

One of the artists my son picked out was Pop-i-cok. He liked the cute graphics in her book. The whole thing was printed out with the pages glued in, making the book extra fat.

Her book also had a lot of stitching to add layers and texture.

I could relate to this page. I had a similar midway marker
in my book to encourage myself along.

Then it was time for Thuraya Lynn! Her Arthouse page doesn't have her book digitized (yet), but you can see some new works on her blog.

Cool cover.

I took snapshots of some of the pages that had interesting clear attachments.

I don't know how she adhered the plastic wrap, but it was very well secured
and gave a great effect.

This might have been my favorite illustration in her book.
(My answer to the question is: Yes!)

Back to the checkout line for some more great books to admire.

Left to right: Anika Starmer, Dosanko Debbie, Wendy Gault, Christina Norberg

My favorite page in Anika's book.
Her book turned out to be my son's favorite.

Spiderweb cover is perfect for the Lines and Grids theme.
(Sorry the photo is blurry.)

Debbie should print her book and sell it as a Japanese lesson book!
I wanted to take it home to study it and learn everything.

Wendy's prints = amazing.

I also liked the way she did her cover with the ribbon.

Christina makes organic drawings with pretty texture and movement.

Another brilliant Christina Norberg spread.

Only two more books to go....  are you still with me? 

This post must be my longest ever! *whew!*

We looked at Alessandra Placucci's book: In Flight. It was one that my son picked out when we were looking at the artists online.

The cover was so elegantly bound.

Her book had all kinds of attachments to open and discover new things inside.

She also had many fold-out pages that don't translate
on the digital version at Arthouse, so we took pics.

I was impressed at Alessandra's complex and detailed style
that she maintained throughout. Fun to discover her work.

The last book we looked at was one that had been featured on the Arthouse twitter feed at some point. Here's Stine Kaasa.

And the growing crowd.

I think a lot of artists were there with their friends. As I went through my books I could hear conversations around me:

"Oh, you're really good."

"I actually did the rest of the book in two weeks."

"That page was challenging!"

etc.

We would have liked to read even more books but so many people were coming in we thought it best to grab some lunch at The Crepe House and let some others have our seats.

I'm glad to be participating again for 2012. One day it would be nice to go to Brooklyn and spend an afternoon in the sketchbook library to see all the great books I missed this time, like: Rhya, Toni Rica, Dochan Essence, Brown Paper Bunny and the fur-covered book by Jessica Gowling that got lost in the mail (but which might show up by the time I make it to Brooklyn).

If there are other books I should try to check out next time, do let me know!