I enjoyed this Q&A with artist Karen Neale, who traveled around the world sketching UNESCO World Heritage sites:
“Q. How did this idea emerge? A. My passion is sketching and painting the world around me. Since leaving school, I have kept a sketchbook with me, all through my training, qualifying and working as an architect. Then, in 2000, while working as an architect in London, I realised I wanted to do more with my passion for drawing in my sketchbooks and if possible do some good along the way….
Q. What were some of the learnings and unlearnings along the way?
A. This truly was a journey of a lifetime. My sketchbook was my passport to people and places. When standing or if lucky, sitting somewhere for several hours, simply drawing with just a black BIC biro, I became a part of that place for a time. Sketching erodes cultural and linguistic barriers, as a picture and the process to create it can be universally understood. Everywhere, people were friendly, informative, and inquisitive and offered me great hospitality.”
It’s hard to imagine a world without David Bowie… I can’t say I’d really thought of him in connection to notebooks at all, but I was happy to find this, from a 2014 review of a David Bowie exhibition in Berlin:
“But the real treasure is the stash of original pages of his modest spiral notebooks. In them, he composed lyrics and how they might be put to music, performed, and turned into video, all simultaneously. His handwritten script changes not just over the years but from page to page. The writings are often surrounded by surreal drawings: night scenes of empty cities, colored in multiple impressionistic shades with markers. The drawings are beautiful — cinematic descriptions, like a director’s notes for a film.”
This week’s addict blogs about pens, paper and more at The Finer Point. Jenny has accumulated a prodigious collection of Field Notes and other brands of small staple-bound notebooks, both used and unused. I love the way all the used ones look in the first photo– so much color variation but such nice, neat bundles of all the same sized notebooks!
These ones are unused:
“My issue seems to be really prevalent with pocket notebooks. Initially this was in part fuelled by the crazy collectable, and in part, competitive nature that exists around Field Notes. You don’t really have to search very far to see people desperate to have all the new releases and buying up large quantities of limited editions. Many people will have a problem of hoarding notebooks so I am not alone, and my stack is probably much much smaller than most, but to get a real idea on how bad it was I decided to write a post on the number of used and un-used notebooks I own.”
I love hearing about new brands of notebooks– this latest discovery comes via The Gadgeteer (one of my favorite websites back in my days of Palm Pilot obsession, so it’s cool to see her reviewing notebooks too!) Colonel Littleton is a Tennessee based company specializing in leather goods, and these notebook covers look yummy:
They hold commonly available notebooks such as Field Notes or Moleskine Cahiers, or you can use Colonel Littleton’s own refills, though it’s unclear what their paper is like. The packaging is cool too– they come with a rather elegant box that can be used to archive the filled inserts.
New year, new notebook? New planner? New diary? Or just resolutions about how you’ll use your notebook, journal, or sketchbook in the new year? Tell us your 2016 plans in the comments!
Best wishes to everyone for a safe and happy New Year!
 “The 22-year-olds met at Sunway University where one was studying design while the other did corporate communications. Anni Tai and Rachel Chew then decided — right after graduation — to take some time off to explore their creativity. And Pebble Paper Design was born.”
Helston Museum’s new World War One exhibition will throw light on the lives of women carrying out war work with the display of two rarely seen artefacts belonging to local women.As part of the new Women in the First World War exhibition, the Helston WWI Heritage Project will show the public an autograph book which belonged to a local Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, Olive May Bowden of Porthleven, and which she took with her while nursing during the First World War.
These beautiful notebooks have covers made of vintage papers from around the world– things like old exercise books or bookbinding papers. Each is sold in a limited edition– sometimes a few hundred notebooks, sometimes less. You can read more about them and order the notebooks at Notes Limited’s website.
“Notes Limited is a worldwide vintage hunter. He find vintage paper (often from the 50’s) and from this material, he creates very beautiful notebooks of 24 pages with graphic and abstract covers.”
too, but this one goes a step further!
