Sketchbooksor Sketch padswhichever name you assign them, are one of the most important tools in an artist's tool kit! The journey of personal discovery and progress, that can be taken in a sketchbook, can take a lifetime for one artist, whilst another can fill a sketchbook in an hour! There are no definitive time lines with a sketchbook, you choose your time, place and pace...
Finding the right sketchbook for you is important so these adventures become personal and meaningful journeys. In this first blog we will look at famous sketchbooks and what they were used for. In the second blog we will help you choose the right one for your style, medium and purpose.
There are some that would even go so far as to call them an artist’s best companion, they travel with you mentally and physically and never leave your side. Many artists rely on their sketchbook for the many facets of their creative process and for developing their creativity.
What are Sketchbooks used for?
Artists use sketchbooks and sketch pads as an essential tool for monitoring their progress, pushing ideas forward, and developing themes. They are used for capturing thoughts and testing out ideas, used to test and foster new narratives, to push and develop designs, they are used as visual diaries and for note taking, working through propositions, practising textures and details and colour palettes, and testing out new media or mixed media … sketchbooks and sketch pads have always been part of the creative process and will always be kept by artists to chronologically record their timeline and to see how far they have travelled stylistically, spiritually, skilfully, etc...
Famous Sketchbooks;
Leonardo de Vinci, George Robert Lewis, JWM Turner, Frida Kahlo, Vincent van Gogh, to name but a few…
Historical sketchbooks have given us the privilege to look back at some of the initial stages and beginnings of the most iconic work the Art World has ever seen.
Leonardo de Vinci (1452 - 1519)
https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/leonardo-da-vincis-notebooks
Leonardo de Vinci was the most diversely talented Italian Renaissance artist that ever lived; architect, musician, inventor, engineer, sculptor and painter known globally for his work.
Some of the most prolific studies of Leonardo Da Vinci can be viewed at the Victoria and Albert Museum; it is believed that Da Vinci created 50 different notebooks, between 20,000 to 28,000 pages of notes and sketches!
Image courtesy of V&A museum The Three Volumes of Codex Forster, Leonardo da Vinci, late 15th – early 16th century, Italy. Museum no. MSL/1876/Forster/141. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Not just an artist, Da Vinci was an architect, designer, inventor, engineer and a scientist. His acute attention for detail and thirst for knowledge is captured and written or sketched down on multiples of paper to later become a collection of sketchbooks and visual journals.
Some of the prolific studies of Leonardo Da Vinci can be viewed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, it is believed that da Vinci created 50 different notebooks, between 20,000 to 28,000 pages of notes and sketches!
‘A study for ‘The Last Supper from Leonardo’s notebooks shows twelve apostles, nine of which are identified by names written above their heads. Judas sits on the opposite side of the table, as in earlier depictions of the scene’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)
George Robert Lewis (1782–1871)
Another Beautiful sketchbook collection from the V&A museum and an interesting and beautiful blog written by Sarah Bettie Fifty shades of hay: the sketchbook of George Robert Lewis. George Robert Lewis was a versatile English painter of landscapes and portraits.
This sketchbook was possibly made around 1815 in the fields at Haywood, Herefordshire, where he illustrated the process of haymaking. He focused on figure drawing, observing each of the labourers movements, and body language, some of the pages are full of little pencil drawings, quick on the spot observations, then further on in the sketchbook he drew them again in pen and ink, tone with wash within more of a landscape composition. Much the same as Van Gogh did with his rural scenes of workers.
The younger brother of Frederick Christian Lewis and of Charles Lewis the bookbinder, he was born in London on 27 March 1782. He studied under Henry Fuseli in the schools of the Royal Academy, and worked on both nature and antiquities.
