Viva!

It's time for a new sketchbook- YAY! This is the opening page of mine, that is always the first thing I do. Decorate the front and back insides, then make my calenders, budget list, phone numbers. Then I'm ready to begin working- the outside comes when it wants to.

For me, my sketchbook is like a portable brain. It has everything in it- notes for school and work, home, my auction drawings (which act as a kind of time-line. I can look at my sketchbooks and tell you when I started going to the auction, when the Christmas auctions were, when Melissa came along, when Charles and I began dating, when I was sick and left early, when he moved in...etc.) sketchbook assignments, projects, collections of photographs, papers, notes from mother... it's a lifeline. This one is number 39. Yep, 39.

I have sketchbooks (and horribly embarrassing and boring diaries) dating back to when I was a little kid. I started keeping this type of sketchbook for art school in 92, some of the early ones are not finished... it was an evolving process. Back then I kept one per class, so had multiples going at a time, and they eventually drifted off to blank pages when the class was over. When I started teaching in 96 I kept to one sketchbook. Now I've worked up to the point where I complete about 3 a year (Fall semester, spring semester and summer)... at over 200 pages a go that is quite a bit of art.

I take them everywhere, they are a constant sort of entertainment- I can draw in them, read them (or the articles I have stored in them) and other people like to look at them. I don't mind, even though it's like sharing a bit of your soul with a stranger.... my students love them- I keep about 8 or so in my room at school, when they have down time they like to look at them, ask me about things.... it's amusing.