The interesting sketchbooks below were featured in an article with tips for how to get started with a daily sketchbook habit. These seem to be from the 1980s but Daler Rowney still sells Langton Watercolor books.
Read more: Why You Should Keep a Daily Sketchbook—and How to Get Started – Artsy
This notebook story brought tears to my eyes:
On his 54th birthday, TV animation director Gary Andrews started a Doodle Diary. This still-ongoing project is simple, but it has proved powerful over the past year; he chronicles his day in a sketch. When he first began the endeavor, Andrews often depicted his life as a happily married man, enjoying the world with his wife Joy and their two young kids. But now, it’s a different story. Joy suddenly passed away on October 27, 2017, from multi-organ failure caused by sepsis. Andrews was on a business trip at the time and was unable to say goodbye to his wife before she died.
With Joy’s passing, the Doodle Diary changed overnight. Although Andrews missed drawing on the date his wife died, he was back to sketching the next day. He used the notebook as an outlet to channel his feelings and poured his emotions onto paper. “I was crying so hard it was difficult to focus on the page,†Andrews recalls. “I was drawing through tears.â€
Read more:Â Animator’s Poignant Doodle Diary Keeps His Wife’s Memory Alive
Thanks to a tip from reader Raymond, here’s another World War I diary story. What a treasure for a family to have.
“The old cloth-covered book hardly shows its age — at 100, it betrays only the most modest of frayed edges. But to the family of the 24-year-old soldier who recorded history with a pencil as he marched across France, the little red volume is a priceless heirloom.
Because on its small lined pages, Joe Rodier, dead now a long time, lives again.”
Joe Rodier was a 24-year-old Massachusetts soldier who served in the US Army during World War I, and recorded his experiences in a journal and letters home.
Read more: A Worcester soldier’s diary brings WWI home – The Boston Globe
Japanese manga artist Haruka Komowata discovered that her mother was also a talented illustrator when these 50 year old sketchbooks turned up!
Professional manga artist learns that talent runs in the family.
What’s your planner pick for 2019? Here’s a few that caught my eye…
The Hobonichi Techo 2019 is $37.00 at Amazon and JenPens.
Moleskine has a slew of options, including themed diaries with Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, Peanuts, and Le Petit Prince. (2020 Moleskine planners are already showing up on Amazon for preorder too, including some Star Wars designs, and Dr. Seuss.)
Rhodia makes a nice desk diary, in orange or black. The spread has a week on one side and a gridded page facing it for freeform notes, which I really like:
Alas, my favorite Nolty diaries don’t show up on Amazon, though they do sell some wall calendars by Nolty. For some reason, when you search for “Nolty 2019” on Amazon, this t-shirt also comes up!
If you actually want a Nolty pocket diary, try Rakuten or Kinokuniya. In addition to the Nolty Gold, I bought a couple others to try! I have to say that the smaller size that fits in a passport-size Travelers Notebook is really cute!
Here’s a totally random planner find: I stumbled across this on Etsy and liked the look of the cover. I’ve never heard of DubuDomo, but I’ll have to find out more.
If you are interested in an undated planner that you can start anytime, here are a couple of options:
Rite in the Rain Weatherproof Side-spiral Calendar
I can’t believe 2018 is almost over… but new year, new diary is always fun!
I first saw images of Jean Fick’s notebook on Pinterest and was fascinated. Such beautiful colors and patterns, accompanied by rather odd writings, densely filling a tiny notebook. It is mysterious in many ways– all I’ve been able to find out is that the notebook was part of an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum earlier this year, and that pretty much nothing is known about the artist.
Jean Fick, “AMBASADEUR MONDIEU N.23. A+L†(circa 1941-46), journal, 90 pages, ink, pencil, and watercolor on paper, 4 3/4 x 2 3/8 inches, collection abcd/Bruno Decharme (photo courtesy of Collection abcd)
As with much other outsider art, there seems to be a religious influence given his title on the cover of “Ambasadeur Mondieu.” But I wonder if he created these pages deliberately as art, or whether it was a diary in code, with colored symbols noting what Fick did each day, or what happened around him. One page with text seems to have notes about the moon, rain, broken trees and a garden. Another seems to note biographical events, such as his birth, dates of his service in WWI, his marriage, and birth dates of his children:
« FICK JEAN NEE 23.11.1876 — HOPITAL — SOLDAT. 13.10.1898 — 13.9.1900 — RM 57 — WESE GUERRE 9.14 — 4.8.1.4.1917.7. SANTE BLESSE – INVALIDE FICK J MARIAGE DELESSE MARI. MODES 29.4.1902 HOPITAL NEE 8.9.1874. FICK ALISE 24.2.1903. MARIE. A. 1.2.1904. JEAN. K. 22.05. MAGU. 11.6.10 »
It’s frustrating that the links about the notebook don’t mention where it was found or any other background, but it is a beautiful and intriguing item.
Read more at: FICK jeans – abcd Art Brut
A fitting way to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I: an English soldier’s diary of his time as a prisoner of war in 1918. One of the photos below shows that the diary was re-written in 1920. I wonder if the original writings were in a diary similar to this one…
Gateshead-born Captain Henry Wilkinson, of the Durham Light Infantry, kept a written record of his experiences as a prisoner of war in Stralsund in Germany in 1918.The diary gives a valuable insight into what everyday life was like for the prisoners, with Henry describing the frequent sports he played and the 86 books he read.
Read more at: Soldier’s diary and sketchbook gives insight into life as a prisoner of war in 1918 | The Northern Echo
For other World War I diaries, see these posts:
IRVING GREENWALD’S WORLD WAR I DIARY
DIARY OF A WWI SOLDIER
WORLD WAR I SOLDIER’S DIARY
I keep reading about the Rocketbook Everlast, including in this recent review:
“But what if you could combine the best of old-school notebooks with modern tech? That’s the ambition behind Rocketbook’s new Everlast notebook. You use it in the normal offline way, but when you scan the pages with your phone it shoots everything automatically to your preferred cloud service and makes it, in theory, more integrated with all your data. And it is infinitely erasable and reusable. I decided to test it around town and at the local hipster café. Would it replace my trusty Moleskines?”
Rocketbook’s Everlast promises to combine modern tech with old-school pen and paper. Will it pass Steven Poole’s chicken test?
Read more at : This “smart†notebook must try harder | 1843
I am somewhat intrigued by this concept for a business setting, where it might be handy to have a lot of notes backed up to digital files. Or for list making, maybe, when you want to have things on your phone. But it just seems like a nuisance to have to photograph every page to upload it. I like the Livescribe concept better– using a special pen with the Livescribe notebook means your writings are automatically saved, without having to take a photo. Their notebooks are also nicer looking than the spiral-bound Rocketbook. Even though Rocketbook has a 3.5 x 5.5″ pocket size, I can’t see myself using one. If you’ve tried the Rocketbook or Livescribe, let us know in the comments what you think of it!
My last update was in May 2018, when I shocked everyone by not having any Moleskine notebook in my daily carry. Let’s see how things have changed since then!
I am still using the Leda Sketchbook shown in the May 2018 post. I’m almost done with it and am planning to replace it with a Bindewerk Linen journal with plain pages. The Leda was great for sketching and held up very well — I used it a lot for a couple of months when I was drawing every day, and then still kept it in my bag even when I was not drawing as much. The Bindewerk will be interesting to try for sketching. The paper is quite different and a bit more refined than what I usually use for sketching. If it doesn’t seem conducive to drawing, I may switch back to a Moleskine sketchbook and save the Bindewerk notebooks for journaling.
I am still using my beloved Nolty 2018 diary and am excited to be upgrading to the leather covered Nolty Gold for 2019. Full review to come. (I bought it via Rakuten, which had a better price than Kinokuniya’s online store. I haven’t seen 2019 Nolty diaries in the NYC store at all.)
For my journal and catch-all notebook, I went from the Bindewerk dotted notebook I was using in May back to a squared Moleskine, which I finished recently. I then did something unusual. Instead of starting a fresh notebook, I re-purposed a Moleskine with plain pages that I’d had on my desk for the last couple of years. I started it as a doodle notebook– I used to spend a lot of time on telephone calls for work and would be doodling constantly. I decided to try to channel those doodles into a single notebook rather than messing up all my work papers. I generated a few pages of dense doodles but then didn’t keep up the habit, mainly since my work changed and I wasn’t on long calls anymore. I then used some pages for handwriting practice with fountain pens, using only one side of each page since the Moleskine paper, as we know, tends to bleed. This all left me with a notebook about 1/4 used and it seemed silly to just leave it that way, so I started using it for my diary entries, lists and other jottings.
Other notebooks in regular use that aren’t daily carries:
An old Moleskine Volant used for French class notes. I’m almost done with this one and am not sure what I’ll replace it with. I’ve always used slim notebooks for my class notes, and right now, all my slim notebooks are either buried in a storage unit, or in my to-be-reviewed pile. I guess I’d better get cracking on some reviews, or I’ll have to write my French vocab elsewhere!
A Michael Roger Decomposition Book This has become my catch-all for notes and sketches relating to a home renovation project. A very complicated home renovation project. That is going to take months. And cost a ton of money. This notebook contains a lot of angst!
I also still have a couple of other notebooks that get occasional use: a Pentalic watercolor sketchbook, an old Hobonichi Techo for handwriting practice, and a white Conceptum notebook with some notes and lists relating to this past year’s move and renovation plans.
And I have so many other notebooks waiting in the wings to be used! At least two or three things in my to-be-reviewed pile seem like they could have daily usage potential, including a couple of unusual Asian brands. Stay tuned for reviews over the next couple of months!
I see so many interesting notebook stories on other blogs and yet I never get around to doing a link round-up on this site! Trying to get better about that… so here are a few things that caught my eye recently:
The Gentleman Stationer reviews a new brand of notebooks called Kunisawa:
“…a new venture launched in 2017 by Kawachiya, an older, established Japanese paper manufacturer. Kunisawa is to be marketed as a “prestigious stationery brand for business performers,†and they’ve clearly focused on making a clean, fairly minimal notebook that doesn’t look out of place in an office or a boardroom.”
Read more at Notebook Review: Kunisawa Find Notebooks
At The Pen Addict, Sarah Read reviews the Illo Sketchbook:
“I could tell as soon as I opened the packaging that the illo Sketchbook was pretty snazzy. Far too snazzy for my poor art skills. Fortunately, I live with a talented artist who was willing to put this book through thorough tests.”
Read more at Illo Sketchbook Review
The Gadgeteer reviews some starry notebooks from Levenger:
“These beautiful notebooks have celestial-themed covers, which would make them a perfect gift for the astronomer in your life.”
Read more at Levenger has some “heavenly†notebooks for journal keeping
The Well-Appointed Desk reviews a lovely pair of Elemental Notebooks:
“Back when the Elemental Notebooks Kickstarter launched, I was all in. I love me a good themed notebook, and I find anything geeky endearing. I was very impressed by all the thoughtful design features that Laurie & Greg had put into the notebooks. From the title page to the colored paper edges it looked like an excellent design.”
Read more at Notebook Review: Elemental Notebooks
A sketchbook can be much more than just a notebook for drawing. “It can be thought of as a closet, an attic, a basement or a file folder, where unedited thoughts are stored in a jumble,†explains Olivia Petrides, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “A sketchbook is a way to process raw information.â€
