A notebook project

Mountain
Art Retreat

I wanted to make notebooks that people would want to pick up and use.

Using 300 gsm cold pressed watercolor paper, I painted hundreds of covers. I tried different papers, bindings, and sizes, making art pads for drawing, painting, notes, and whatever came next.

Handmade sketchbooks with painted covers, different bindings and varied formats arranged on a wooden table

01 / The covers

Hundreds of covers.Every notebook / art pad / sketch book with a one of a kind cover.

The covers were a big part of the project: each one started as a painting. Working through so many meant trying a lot of colors, marks, and combinations.

The repetition of painting so many iterations was a study in variation and felt meditative.

A fan of hand-painted cover papers with blue, gold, gray and violet brushwork

A close view across original painted cover papers.

Three of the cover paintings.

Select any photograph for a closer look.

Turquoise and violet sweeping brushwork across an original cover painting on paper

Red and blue horizontal brushwork on a hand-painted paper cover

Violet, black and white overlapping painted lines on a paper cover

02 / Inside the books

A place to try things.

Different paper colors and textures let me explore the same idea in different ways. Repeating shapes and marks across those surfaces brings out details I might miss on a single kind of paper.

Grey sketch paper and textured white paper facing each other across silver binding

Three narrow notebook sections side by side, with gray, white, and kraft paper

A hand holds open a handmade sketchbook with a green painted cover on the left and blank white pages on the right

A notebook, page by page.

The same notebook as I turn its separate sections. Shapes reappear, then meet a different page.

An open sketchbook filled with small drawings and watercolor studies across two white pages

An open notebook with looping drawings on kraft paper beside colorful marks on white paper

Separate notebook sections open to colorful drawings and paintings on brown and white paper

An extended sketchbook spread with colorful drawings and painted studies across brown and white papers

From white paper to dark.

Color on white paper, then drawings across kraft and black.

An open art pad with overlapping pink, blue, yellow and green loops

A used sketchbook spread with colored shapes on kraft paper and fine doodles on a dark page

Small outlined figures, shapes and objects drawn in pale colors on dark sketchbook paper

03 / Making the books

Different ways to make a notebook.

I made books with mixed papers, separate bound sections, and a range of sizes. Some open into a wide drawing surface for expansive landscape studies; others can be used to capture one small detail and then tucked away.