Austria: A year in the life- Brooklyn Sketchbook Project submission

About a year ago I first heard mention of the Brooklyn Sketchbook Library. A project which collects sketchbooks created by a variety of international artists and catalogues them into smaller mobile collections which tour and can be viewed or even checked out. To create a homogeneous optic sketchbooks are produced by the project itself and ordered by the artists in question. This ensures that they are uniform in size and shape. The price of ordering one is surprisingly high, however the proceeds go to further the logistic functioning of the library. Digitization is available at a slightly elevated cost and offers the artist the ability to share the contents with a broader audience.

I find the idea of a sketchbook library alluring. While there must be many sketchbooks which have been hurriedly put together by beginning artists there are also a number of magnificent exemplars by humblingly skilled masters. I decided that given this great spectrum of sketchbook content I would be safe entering a book of my own. 2020 seemed a good year to participate as I was making my artistic plans back in January, and as it turns out, it was the year of all years. Nothing much happened outside my home and I had plenty of opportunity to sit with my sketchbook in front of yet another season of whatever was left on Netflix.

Given three months to complete the book and return it, I began sketching just a few weeks prior to the due date. Why does it seem that projects often take that course? I ended up working fairly diligently for quite a while.

A friend of mine inspired me with her sketchbook of culturally interesting sketches and being the overachiever that I sometimes am, I decided to emulate her with a small adjustment, I planned mine out in the form of a yearly calendar. Included in it were festivals, holidays and seasonal highlights of life here in Austria. After a few sketches I realized that the pages of the sketchbook itself were not particularly well suited to my medium of choice, watercolour, so I shifted to 300 g. bamboo paper which was later trimmed to size and added to the book with book binders glue.

Although I have already shared a flip through video on Facebook, I am sharing the individual pages here in the hope that you will either learn a bit about Austria or be inspired to create your own sketchbook to add to the library.