Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Sketchbook: Botswana

Here's a drawing from a safari trip in Botswana. Watercolor and brush-tip marker in a HandBook pocket sketchbook.



This was the view from our campfire area-- as the sun set, the meadow took on twilight shades, and the tall plants in the foreground were silhouetted. The trip was amazing-- I'll put some of the animal sketches in future posts.

Monday, August 25, 2008

And so it begins...

I've owned hundreds of notebooks, perhaps thousands. There have also been the various cigar tins, electronic devices, wallets, food packages, and even a block of wood. A block of wood with a name. Clever child that I was, I called it Redwood.

All of these things shared that same shape, approximately 3 by 5 inches, the Golden Rectangle, more or less. I've made my own notebooks, begged my mother to help me sew little covers for them. I've even taken a perfectly good Filofax to a cobbler's shop to have him make it about a quarter of an inch narrower, because it wasn't quite the right shape. I've spent thousands of dollars in pursuit of the perfect Palm Pilot in my preferred size. I've got a way bigger iPod than I really need because the 80GB Classic was the right shape and the squarish Nano wasn't.

I am definitely obsessed.

Within my reach as I write this:
  • Treo PDA (a bit small but the right shape)
  • A Chimes Ginger Chews tin (again too small but a nice shape)
  • 4 old notebooks I'm not actively using
  • 2 Moleskines: a sketchbook I use as a journal, and a softcover one with graph paper pages where I jot other random notes and to-do lists.
I'll be using this blog to tell stories, share artwork, review products, and provide a forum for the celebration of the world's most wonderful size and shape: 3x5.