The sketchbook as journal

Danny Gregory An Illustrated LifeECA library has recently acquired a fantastic new book about artists’ sketchbooks:
An illustrated life : drawing inspiration from the private sketchbooks of artists, illustrators and designers, by Danny Gregory.
As Danny Gregory describes on his blog “this book led me to fulfill my dream of gathering the work of all the artists I admire most, people like Robert Crumb and Chris Ware and James Jean and many others, and then sitting down for a chat about my favorite subject, recording one’s life with drawings in a book. It was an amazing experience and I like to think the book reflects it.”
The library has several other similar books on the theme of sketchbooks as journals:
Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art, by Jennifer New.
Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators & Creatives, by Richard Brereton.
Inspiring Writing in Art and Design: Taking a Line for a Write, by Pat Francis.
We hope these will inspire you!

Quote of the Week

The artist’s role is to discover the art which is unique to him [or her] and then purge that art of all effects that do not serve its ends.

 

(Carl Andre, catalogue of Whitechapel Art Gallery retrospective).

Connecting lines: artists talking about drawing

Photograph courtesy of Chris John Beckett at Flickr.
Photograph courtesy of Chris John Beckett at Flickr.
This project celebrates twenty years of the “Artists’ Lives” project at the British Library, in association with The Tate. The recordings of artists selected for this online resource reflect the changing attitudes to drawing within British art education in the 20th and 21st centuries and provide a commentary on the role of drawing, and the practice of working artists.
Access to the recordings is available free online, and requires Quicktime/WMP.

Quote of the Week

It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.  

 

(Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road in Leaves of Grass)

 

Quote of the Week

Sense, the tortoise, usually overtakes nonsense, the hare, even in this not quite perfect world.

(Clement Greenberg in Modernism with a Vengeance, p140)

Quote of the week

The Ecole des Beaux-Arts seduced the weak with school triumphs and popular successes, and destroyed them in the end, while it identified, repelled, and strengthened the vigorous by forcing them to struggle with reality and to find their own way. 

 (Lorenz Eitner, in An Outline of 19th Century European Painting)

 

Type – a visual history of typefaces and graphic styles

Recently added to the Library are two amazing books about typography, published by Taschen. These beautiful volumes are a collection of type specimens, initial letters, decorative lettering, engravings, borders and ornaments. Volume 1 covers 1628 – 1900 and Volume 2 explores 1901 – 1938.
When you borrow the book you also gain online access to over 2000 high resolution, downloadable images , which are great for building up your own archive of reference material. An ID and password are required and these will be given to you when you borrow the book.

Quote of the Week

 

The other – the others!

Millions of them are left to sink.  They are asphixiated, starved, tortured, reduced to silence.  Yet, at great risk, a few men and women refuse to bow down in front of hypocrisy, pseudo-truths, inflated authority.  Loud or silent, their testimony sends endless echoes around the world.

(Dominique de Menil, Statement at the first Rothko Chapel Awards for Commitment to Truth and Freedom, 1981)