Sketchbooks on a Budget

When I first started teaching, I had a pretty tight budget.  My students were supposed to keep a sketchbook, but buying them for everyone ate up a lot of the money I had.  So I asked the students to supply their own, and I bought a case of sketchbooks with my own money that I sold to the students.  This kind of worked, but I wasn't very happy with the solution.

Then one day a truck pulled up to our school loading dock full of office furniture and supplies that a government agency was donating to our school.  There was a lot of copy paper, and the school took the regular sized paper, and asked me if I would like the legal and oversized  (17 1/2" x 11") paper. Why of course I did.

The  legal size paper made a good size book when folded in half. And the larger size made a really generous book. I have always been fond of bookmaking, and it makes a nice way to start the year or the semester. Plus I am a big believer in keeping a sketchbook myself and using it on a daily basis.  I use my own sketchbook to inspire the students and create sketchbook prompts from my own examples.

Once you establish the sketchbook habit with your students, it makes for great substitute lesson plans.  I'll often leave an assortment of materials for them to use such as watercolors, stencils,  and rubber stamps  as well as some prompts which I like to mix up among drawing, doodling and writing.

These are the instructions on how to make the smaller sketchbooks:
Simple Book with a Three Hole Binding

These are for the multi-section book.
Accordion Binding Book with Five Holes

I only do wrapped covers with my eighth grade students.  If you want to paint paper to wrap around your covers, view this slide show:

 Paste Paper

Also here is a video on how to sew a three hole binding:


Here are my Golden Rules for bookmaking with students:

1. Let the paper dictate the size of the book. What I mean is, don't end up cutting hundreds of sheets of paper to make books a particular size or shape. You'll cut a lot less mat board for covers.

2. Establish a relationship with a frame shop so that you have a steady supply of mat board.

3. Use good thread. I recommend 3 ply waxed linen thread from Royal Wood, Ltd.

Have Fun!

Not a student sketchbook, but a giant lead book by Anselm Kiefer at Mass MOCA

Utopia in Miniature

The Large House for Humanity proposed for Washington, DC

a model of a monument to women

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is currently exhibiting The Utopian Projects,  a display of models of sculptures by Ilya and Emilia Kabokov.  Some of them have been built, some exist only as concepts and models.  This exhibit has not been getting much attention, because it sits in the inner ring of the museum outside of the Ai Wei Wei exhibit of Lego portraits.  The less said about that exhibit, the better.  I love scale models and found the Kabakov's show quite charming.

Themes of angels, toilets and ladders repeat throughout the exhibit, but you don't have to like any of those things to appreciate the humor and wistfulness of the art.

How can One Change Oneself? from 1998 instructs one to wear this set of angel wings for two hours of forced solitude and silence every day. Repeating this for two or three weeks will bring one closer to the person they wish to become.

Monument to Icarus

 

How to Meet an Angel directs the participant to climb an extremely high ladder projecting out into the stratosphere, placing themselves in mortal danger. They will ask for assistance, and an angel will come to their rescue. 

A piece of fallen sky

World War I Artists

Off Duty, Harvey Thomas Dunn, Oil and watercolor on paper, 1918

I have long had a minor obsession with World War I.  And being the 100th anniversary of the US entry into the war, there are a lot of exhibits about it.  I went to see Artist Soldiers: Artistic Expression in the First World War at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I had thought it would be the work of ordinary soldiers who sketched and drew in the trenches. But it was the work of a group of men who were professional artists and illustrators who were commissioned by the army to document what they saw of the war.

On the Wire by Harvey Thomas Dunn, oil on canvas, 1918

American Artillery and Machine Guns, George Mathews Harding, charcoal and crayon on paper, 1918

Two Six-Ton Tanks Climbing a Hill, Harry Everette Townsend, watercolor on pastel on paper, 1918

The Morning Washup, Neufmaison, Wallace Morgan, Charcoal on paper, 1918

The one exception is a contemporary man, Jeff Gusky, a doctor and an artist, who while in France was shown a series of caverns underneath the properties of some farmers.  They have been carefully guarding and preserving these subterranean tunnels that are full of abandoned canteens and furniture which were left behind when the war ended. Even more interesting are the carvings in the limestone walls of the tunnels. In this case, ordinary men carved anti-German caricatures, slogans, sexy woman and hometown totems. His mission was to figure out how to photograph these areas which rest in total darkness.  Mine was to photograph the photos without my reflection.  I was not that successful.