Explosion

This project has exploded. I am at 85 sketchbook ideas. I like them all. Organizing them is going to be the hard part. I think I have about 60 sketchbooks on my living room floor right now. I love going searching for sketchbooks to go with my idea. Sometimes a new idea arises when I see a sketchbook. Today I found a cool art sketchbook with a caption on the cover. So I added the caption sketchbook. Each artists draws one character with one caption saying something. The rules are what will make these books good, I think.

There are close to 10 sketchbooks I will have to make. I will also be learning to do that thanks to this project. Roma is going to teach Charles and I about the book binding business. Awesome! Thank You.

I will start to post each sketchbook with details, this will help everyone understand the project a little better. I am pretty close to getting the order in order. I'm sure things will shift around a little, but that is expected. A lot of these sketchbooks will need this project to really grow in order for it to work. So please get the word out. I need artists!!

The Project

It is a few days later and now I am up to close to 60 sketchbooks, I knew that would happen.

The project sends sketchbooks with different themes and ideas to different artists all over Taiwan and the world. The purpose is to create a community of artists and inspire creativity.

When I first got the idea, I bought five sketchbooks at the art supply store. They were pretty nice custom made sketchbooks for illustrators. Then the thought process began. I started making a list of ideas. My wife and daughter stayed at her parents house in Taipei so I had 2 days alone to plan. I basically spent the whole time placing sketchbooks in order on the floor and putting sticky notes on them with their topic.

The list really grew when I went to my studio and my office and grabbed all the sketchbooks I could find. I didn't realize I had so many, over 30. A lot of the sketchbooks were close to empty, I started them for a reason and stuck them on a shelf. So I went through them all, ripped out some pages and made a pile of the ones I could use. At the end of the day my idea list was up to 30. Now I needed more sketchbooks, I went to a few bookstores and bought about ten more.

The next day I was up to 50 ideas and I was off to more bookstores and art supply stores. The ideas just kept coming. I even found a few other things around the house like an erotica novel and a book with random words.

I will try to properly describe each sketchbook under their own topic.

It's hard to explain how much work actually went into the planning. I counted all the pages in every book and measured the size. I decided on how many artists would draw in each book and how many pages they would get. I wrote a description about each idea. I started a list cataloging all the books. I try to make each sketchbook have different rules and requirements. I specialize in variety. As a designer I would sometimes come up with more than 50 ways to represent a logo. For this project , I will try a variety of artists, pages, time, size, medium, location and themes.

I have problems documenting my ideas because they move so fast. It is much easier to talk to someone in person and explain my thoughts. I will do my best. I hope i am accurately portraying my idea for this project.

Currently I have 56 sketchbooks confirmed, and about 6 other ideas floating around. Some ideas I'm not sure will work. I will let some time pass and see if they get selected. One idea is "inventions", but I'm not sure if I could get enough to fill a book, and how good it would be, some inventors don't like to share their ideas. Another idea is to go to the fine art's museum and fine artists roaming around to sketch in the book, that might be difficult.

There are about 8 ideas that I don't have the sketchbook for yet. For the fish book I want a a long sketchbook, I might have to make it. I will have to make the transparency sketchbook, I have never heard of that. I am not sure what size I want for zodiac battle, newspaper and poker. I need to find the right book for the little afro children's book, I don't want a ring binding and I don't want it to be too big.

The project continues....

Birth

This is my very first blog. The project I am creating is so exciting I have to make a blog about it. I will try to document the rapid growth of yet another project conceived in the sea of imagination that exists in my abnormally large head.

A few weeks ago I was surfing through painting websites to see what's out there. I am a painter/designer and I am trying to figure out how to show and promote my work on the web. I stumbled upon the site www.lookatbook.com. I really liked the concept of a traveling book. It also linked artist's together, similar to an art magazine called "discontinued" 'I ran in Taiwan over 5 years ago. It was started to give a group of artists I knew a chance to publish and share their work. It lasted a couple years (8 issues) and then became what it was named. I almost brought the magazine back a few times, but time and money got in the way.

A few days before I saw the book website I received a letter in the mail from Jessica, she is the sister of my best friend, who passed away a few years ago (I miss you Tony). Jessica sent me a sticker that said "it's hackin' awesome!". She said it reminded her of me. I was happy all day after getting that in the mail. We forget how special something in the mail can be. Thank You.

So that, with the addition of the sketchbook website began the birth of the sketchbook project.

The sketchbook project is basically sending out sketchbooks all over Taiwan and the world with different ideas and rules for artists to complete. Once a sketchbook is finished it will scanned and posted on the site. The end result for me now, will be a book about the whole process. This is the main reason for this blog. I finally have a reason to blog, yeah. I have worked solidly on the project for the past 5 days. A week ago it was just going to be 8 sketchbooks, Now I have more than 30, and in a few days it will probably be close to 50. That is me, I just keep going when I have an idea really believe in, I am definitely an extremist.

I need to go back to the sketchbooks now.

In my next post I will try explain the project in more detail and catch up to my current thoughts.

hack