Here is another video flip-through of the sketchbook I recently completed. One of the things I love about the Stillman and Birn Softcover 8 x 10 is that it takes me 7 weeks to complete, meaning that if I start one at the beginning of a sabbatical, the book contains a complete ‘work block’.

As I mentioned in my last article, the last 2 months have been rough going, and yet again I don’t feel as if I have been sketching much. However, when I see the book as a whole I am struck by how accurate a record it is of my life over this period. I really should get over thinking ‘I’m not sketching much!’ shouldn’t I?

A few notes:

• This sketchbook contains quite a lot of workshop pages – both prep pages and also sketches that I did during workshops. These include, my two 10×10 USK workshops, some colour charts of student grade kits for the general sketching workshops I have been teaching at BVN architecture, and prep sketches for Palladian Odyssey
• I was running out of pages during the last week so I added a few extra pages, and then didn’t end up finishing the last spread in the book.
• Once again there are lots of coffee sketches, but there is a huge variety in how I treat the blue cup and saucer every day.
• Getting back into the discipline of nightly sketches has been great – I wrote more about it here.
• This is #100 of my daily sketchbooks. I have many more (over 70?) travel and teaching sketchbooks that are not numbered sequentially like my daily books.

I really love the way this particular sized softcover sketchbook suits my approach to keeping a daily sketchbook. There are a lot of quick rough ‘working’ sketches but there is enough space on each spread for me to design the composition.

My big takeaway from flipping through this sketchbook is that just doing what I can each day really does create an amazing record of my life. I know I mentioned this before, but it is worth repeating.

Note to self: Don’t worry so much about what you are sketching, just do it!

Finally – thanks so very much to everyone who has left a comment or send me a personal email in regard to my current challenges! It’s hard to find adequate words to express how much it means to be supported like that – thank you!