David Hockney sketchbook 📕

 

I started looking at my old sketchbooks…

After watching David Hockney’s sketchbook ✍️ 

I love that he worked on a checked oilcloth tablecloth,

I didn’t paint these cherries 🍒 on my tablecloth…I just imagined it. 

From an exhibit at the Royal Academy, 2012

I  guess we’re all thinking about David Hockney this week…he seemed invincible. 

A man who deeply loved ❤️  color.

And such a mark-maker ✍️

I was smitten with the way he painted  🎨 grass 💚

We were lucky 🍀 to have such a bright, joyous creative spirit in our lifetimes.

Anyhoo,

It’s fun to go back 

And visit 

Old sketchbook 

Obsessions like TROUVILLE-sur-mer.

I love copying ✏️ Toulouse-Lautrec drawings ✍️ 

Lautrec had the most fluid of lines. A master draftsman.

Most artists I know like to use fancy-brand sketchbooks. Moleskine used to be super hot. Now Stillman and Birn is the hot brand. Whenever I try these I get fed up and throw or give them away. 

The superb artist, Ian Sidaway, still uses Moleskine. I’ve given him a few castoffs in frustration and he methodically fills them up with exquisite drawings and watercolors. You can follow him on Instagram.

Another fabulous artist, Lis Watkins (also on Instagram) loves❤️ 

Stillman and Birn (another I threw away in annoyance).

Meanwhile I am addicted to scrappy, little children’s cheep scribble, school  books 📚 of no distinction, mostly made by CLAIREFONTAINE. 

Go figure 🤷‍♀️ 

I have, on occasion, made my own sketchbooks with decorative cheese label stickers…

Pretty crudely thrown together, but very user-friendly.

Both Liz and Ian have beautiful collections of orderly sketchbooks, annotating year by year what they have done and where they have been 👏👏👏

Watch Lis’s collection here.

I would love ❤️ to have such a collection. 

Being ADHD & dyslexic does not lend itself to orderliness.

Though I am in the process of organizing piles of watercolor scraps and paintings 🙏 🤞 I will soon show a updated picture 🔜 

Some of us thrive in the midst of mayhem…

And This month’s PARIS LETTER 💌 will be going out 📮 this week!

Seen in the