I’m feeling pretty pissed off this morning.

After writing previously [on a couple of occasions] about The Sketchbook Project and my mixed feelings about it, postie has just delivered my sketchbook for this year’s outing –and i’ve got to say that $25 for the tiny, sorry looking sub-school exercise book quality “sketchbook”, which tumbled out of the envelope, is a fucking joke.

I had some correspondence by email last year, with the organisers of The Sketchbook Project, with regards to their describing 2011’s sketchbooks as moleskines, when they were patently nothing but cheap knock-off copies. I’ve owned several moleskines in my time and I know how to spot a real one! [in fact ASDA do a nice line in moleskine-esque notebooks for about £1,99]. Anyway, in said email correspondence, the Sketchbook Project representative i dealt with refused to accept that what they were sending out were not genuine moleskines, even when I pointed out several features that appear on real moleskines, which were lacking in their fake ones.

So, it was with a slight feeling of reluctance that I entered this year’s Sketchbook Project. Having dealt with these people before and found them to be less than honest, I was loath to put any more of my money their way. But also being the lazy bastard I am, I know it takes something like this kind of project to get me motivated enough to actually fill a sketchbook  these days. So, last week I reluctantly ponied up my $25, noticing in passing that the project website no longer claimed to be sending out moleskines [fake or otherwise] but…

Sketchbookers spoke and we listened! This year, Art House created a custom-designed sketchbook in collaboration with Scout Books featuring a host of improvements and a greener footprint.

This year’s official Sketchbook Project book is made from high quality 100% recycled paper milled in the Pacific Northwest, printed with vegetable-based inks and produced with renewable energy. We’ve also improved the weight and texture of the paper, enhanced the strength of the cover and selected wire saddle stitching so that each book is easier to rebind if necessary. We’re proud to say that these are the best books we’ve ever been able to offer for the Sketchbook Project – thanks to feedback from hundreds of members of the Art House community.

Well folks, here is the magnificent “custom-designed” sketchbook, “featuring a host of improvements”:

No. I havenae got giant hands. This postage-stamp sized object is apparently a “sketchbook”

Maybe I shouldnae complain about the anorexic dimensions too much. At least there shouldnae be much difficulty filling it!

And, if nothing else, at least the shoddiness of the “sketchbook” has already inspired me to put pen to paper.

Translations:

“…enhanced the strength of the cover…” - made it from recycled cornflakes boxes

“…selected wire saddle stitching...” - it’s got two staples holding it together.

I had a look on the scoutbooks website [the people who make these all-singing, all-dancing “by user request” sketchbooks] and found the following:

hmmm… three of these crap-o-trons for about half the price of a single ‘real’ moleskine

It’s great to see an organisation responding to customer demand in this way. Without regard for what it might cost them financially , The Sketchbook Project were quite prepared to charge their customers the same money this year for a sketchbook 2/3 the size and about 1/6 the price of the ones they [claimed to have] sent out last year.

You dinnae get customer sevice like that too often!

As I’ve mentioned previously, I participated in The Sketchbook Project last year and, in true student fashion, failed miserably to complete mine in the allotted time –although, in my defence, I did only hear about the project about a month or so before the deadline.

Anyway, at the time i entered the project, I stumped up the extra twenty greenbacks to have my sketchbook digitised. As the months zipped past from last year’s submission date, I alternated between forgetting all about it and thinking I’d been ripped off, when visits to the project website eternally promised that ‘digitisation of submissions’ was under way, without providing much in the way of evidence for this.

Well, this morning I got an email to tell me that my sketchbook has now been digitised and is online at the following URL:

http://www.arthousecoop.com/library/4224

Woohoo! - does this mean I can now call myself a ‘published author’?

I was relieved to see that, although my sketchbook was a half-arsed travesty of an effort, it wasnae quite as risible as I’d remembered it.

So, fired up with enthusiasm now, I’m off to order my sketchbook for this year’s Sketchbook Project –and will hopefully make a better fist of it this time.

i thought this might be of interest to those of you who are interested in street art/grafitti. [ amazon linky ]

i’ve heard rumours that somewhere around here, there might be a snidey link to download a scanned PDF of the book [255mb], but i would personally never involve myself in such underhand goings-on.

…ie. ‘repetitive scanning injury’.

well, a couple of months after signing up for beyoncé behance, i thought it was about time i got off my arse and actually stuck something on there. so, where better to start than the drawer full of old sketchbooks i’ve been meaning to sort out for so long?

so, after nearly two days spent scanning, cropping adjusting and uploading, i’ve now got ten of said sketchbooks digitised and added to my behance profile page:

http://www.behance.net/madra

most of them are old college sketchbooks, dating back to when i was on the ND audio-visual design and HND multimedia courses at this ‘ere very establishment, way back in the early nineties, when the manchester college was still city college manchester and the boy matulevicz was still firm of fetlock and luxuriant of hair.

so, next time you’re bemoaning the fact that we keep making you draw eternally in those damned sketchbooks, when all you want to do is play on the macs, remember we had to go through the same thing too, when we were stoo-dents!

the other day while researching into print on demand publishing sites, i came across this self-published sketchbook of the works of norman j schureman.  not someone i’ve ever heard of before, but i’m loving his scribbles:

linky poo

EDIT:

wow! - i just googled ‘norman j schureman’ to see if any more of his artwork was available on the intarwebs and found this:

murder in westlake stuns community

it’s a crazy world out there, folks!

i just stumbled across this at random on amazon. looks like the kind of reading material any sketchbook obsessed scouser would love to have in their collection and,  at not much over a measley tenner, they wouldnae even have to shoplift it!

linky

An Illustrated Life offers a sneak peak into the wildly creative imaginations of top illustrators, designers and artists from around the world through the pages of their personal visual journals. Popular visual journalist and author Danny Gregory reveals how and why keeping a consistent, visual journal leads to a more fulfilling creative life. Designers and artists working in all mediums will find creative inspiration from these insightful interviews and stunning examples.