About a week ago, Notebook Stories posted a photo on Instagram of a delicious collection of books about sketchbooks. I threw down the gauntlet and insisted a more in-depth post about the books shown. It only seemed fair to return the favor. So, here are a few of my favorite sketchbook books:
Jason Brooks, James Gulliver Hancock and Sara Midda are all travel-related sketchbooks which let me virtually travel these days. Jason Brooks has a New York edition out and James Gulliver Hancock has books from several other cities so I could definitely stand to expand my collection. Rex Ray’s book is more of a reflection on his career but I think of it as a sketchbook because it shows the earlier, collage days of his work and then his later paintings.
Mark Hearld’s book shows some of his process as well as his whimsical collage creations. It’s so unique and wonderful.
The last two books are both from the comic book world. One is a larger overview of comic book artists’ sketchbooks curated by the legendary design writer, Steven Heller and the last book is a tome about Jaime Hernandez, one of my all-time favorite comic book artist. He and his brothers and their Love & Rockets series was so influential in my formative years for aesthetics, storytelling and perspective.
I put all these books into an Amazon List
I swear I have more sketchbook books but they are scattered all over the house. Our filing system is a little odd so I may have a follow-up post in a few days. We organize by sub-sub-genre so if there’s a sketchbook book by an illustrator who specialized in space or sci-fi, it would be filed in our sci-fi section, not sketchbooks. You can see the challenge…
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Xaime got me started physically on my comic creating journey. showing me tools and how he works. I was just dipping my toes in the comics world and he gave me the push to get em rolling.. He and his brothers are amazing artists!
He and his brother Gilbert came to the comic book store where I worked and I got to hang out with them for the afternoon. They were so incredibly gracious and kind.
That’s an inspiring stack! OK, I’m going to dig through my shelves, too… I have NO system at all! A huge mess! So it might be a while.