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| The really big books. |
In my thinking of what to do with this whole new artsy year 2013 I have also been thinking about my collection, my stash, my stack of blank books. I have them in different sizes, different papers, different bindings. I buy them, I make them and very nice people give them to me as gifts which always makes me very happy. Aren't we all happy with yet another beautiful journal or sketchbook? Can we ever really have enough?
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| The medium sized books. |
I always thought I should use one book at a time, or at least not too many. So far I have always one journal at a time and a couple of sketchbooks in different places. And the other books would just have to wait until it was their turn. Poor books and poor me. Do I not always crave variation? Don't those books crave being used?
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| I actually found a Dutch retailer for the Strathmore journals. |
And then a few months ago I came upon the blog of Michelle Reuss (go check it out, she makes marvelous stuff) and she confessed to having almost 30 sketchbooks/journals going on at once! I couldn't believe it, but she had the pictures to prove it. This really got me thinking.
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| My faithful square Seawhite of Brighton sketchbooks/journals. |
I had all those beautiful books sitting on shelves gathering dust. Some had been started, but most were still completely empty. Why was I not just using them? If this very talented woman was allowed to have a truck load of books going at once, why couldn't I? And I couldn't think of one reason why I could not.
So I've been going through my closets and drawers and shelves and have simply taken out every book I would love to work in right now. In this post you can see them. My idea for the coming year is to use all of these books!
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| The small books. |
Now I know that there's no way I can fill all those books within a year, but that's so not the point. The point is variation. Variation in size, in shape, in paper, in background, in binding. I have no idea yet how or even if I'm going to assign themes to these books. I know I will want to name them just to separate them from each other, but maybe they will all be holdalls for my art. I'm not sure.
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| The whole stash! I'm counting 20! |
Some of the books in the pictures are already in use and do have a specific purpose. My journal for instance, my regular sketch and ideabooks, an inspiration journal and a photo-album I once adopted for using with L.K. Ludwigs book 'True Vision'. But most of these books are new to me and my art.
I'm hoping that in the coming year I will find a purpose for all these books and put them to good use. I will share pages from them as I go along. I'm also hoping to find names for all of them and I will introduce them as soon as they tell me what they are called.
So that is yet another challenge for the coming year: getting my books out of the closet!
Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy Wednesday!
PS: In case you were wondering: NO, those are not all the books I have! ;-)