The site has also organized an Urban Sketchers Symposium, to be held in Portland, OR, on July 29-31, 2010, with a custom Moleskine to commemorate the event.

Read more at Keeping a Field Notebook, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

This particular notebook wouldn’t necessarily work for everyone– the “steps” in the spine and the unusual paper could be a problem, and I worried that the loops of the bookmarks sticking out could snag on something if you tried to carry it in a bag. But I still think it’s a great concept and a beautiful prototype. (Love that grey flannel look to the cover.)

You can see other versions of the notebook at his website: Konstantin Schmölzer | Gedankensprung (see the different “editions” via the tabs). I hope he is soon able to produce a version of these notebooks for sale! Thanks again to Konstantin for letting us all have a sneak peek of his work in progress.

Here’s just a taste:

Since the appearance of his debut novel, “Ghostwritten,” in 1999 — a fifth, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,” is being published this week — Mitchell’s writing has been compared with that of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Twain, Sterne, Joyce, Nabokov, Pynchon, Salinger, Chandler, DeLillo, Murakami, William Gibson and Ursula K. LeGuin — a baker’s dozen that begins to suggest both the heights of hyperbole scaled by Mitchell’s admirers and the Hydra-headed nature of his novelistic output. Mitchell’s novels have featured a global and historical sweep unusual for writers of his generation.They are set everywhere from contemporary Japan and London to the 19th-century South Seas to California in the 1970s to dystopic distant futures — sometimes all in the same novel.

I definitely want to check out his books now (especially The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which just got a great review from Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times), but what I’d really like to see are his notebooks, from which these images are taken:

From the product description:

The design of this set of three notebooks is adapted from works by the German artist Marcel Odenbach (b. 1953). The notebooks are packaged in a stylish slipcase, each notebook has a different cover and contains either 64 blank, lined or graphed pages.

They’re 6″ h x 4.25″bw x 1″d, $18.95 or $17.05 if you’re a member. More details at MoMA Store – Odenbach Set of Three Notebooks.

I love what she wrote about using her notebooks:

I carry my moleskine almost everywhere I go — it’s my calandar, it’s my reference book, it’s my crossword-puzzle-holder, it’s my playground,it’s my portfolio, it’s my storybook, it’s my notebook, it’s my refuge, it’s my science lab, it’s my hospital, it’s my diary. I’m not sure what I did before my discovery of these sketchbooks, and I can never see myself without one. They’re beyond just sketchbooks to me, they’re complete extensions of myself, where I can be un-selfconcious and immediate and unreserved. Some magic happens in these books that I never quite expected — and as I unwrapped the fourth moleskine I’ve ever owned, the transformation that these books go through becomes strikingly obvious. The white edges of the pages collect finger grease, city grime, or purse detritus – the book swells and the covers bend to accommodate. The front has been carved into, the back was used as a gouache palette once. Compared with the pristine new book, the one I’m shelving truly does look worse for wear. It has acquired a lot of miles in this past year and I’m proud it shows.

I also like her artwork:

Read more at Hunter/Gatherer › Old and new..

What Is International Fake Journal Month?
Basically it’s a free pass to put anything in a journal that you might not otherwise put in. At least that’s one way to see it. From April first to April 30, you are encouraged to keep a fake journal different from and outside of your regular visual journal. (Writers are welcome to participate as well, just keep a separate journal for the purpose.)

Take on a new persona, alter ego, or be the same person you are now, except in an alternate universe. Maybe you are a cat person and always draw cats, well for April you’ll start a fake journal and just draw birds, with a passion, as if they were the most important animal on the planet. (You can of course continue drawing cats in your real journal, if it suits you.)

The only catch is that you need to date your entries in present time, as you complete them, i.e., April 1, 2009, 8 p.m., April 3, 2009, 4 a.m., and so on. Oh, and it has to be a self-contained journal, not your regular journal (that’s two catches).

Maybe you want to live somewhere else? Well make a daily journal as if you are already there. It may mean that you’ll need to draw from your imagination a lot because things won’t be in front of you, but there are ways around that. Go to an antiques store or thrift shop and draw those items incorporated in a new reality. Or draw them as your daily drawing activity and make up stories about them.

Perhaps you are always working in pencil. Now is the time to become that artist who always works in pen, just go for it. Or if you are always image heavy in your journal, spend some time writing, pages and pages.

Why? because it’s fun, that’s why. And how often in life to you get a free, no guilt, no shame, just go for it pass on making things up (after the age of 3 of course)?

What a great creative exercise! So many of us keep journals but have those times when you just worry it’s a bit boring– but with a fake journal, you can make it as interesting and action-packed as you want!

For some interesting thoughts from one fake-journaler, Melinda Bilecki, about the whole process, check out this post. A few sample pages from fake journals are below.

Above: The final image from Melinda Bilecki’s 2010 fake journal. ©2010 Melinda Bilecki.

Above: an image from Spy Girl’s 2010 fake journal. Image ©2010 Anne M. Bray.

This is such a wonderful idea, mark your calendar to participate next April!

.