Sketchbook Rebinding Project! (Patreon)

So, if you're a person who draws a lot, and has been drawing a lot for a long time, one possible thing that might happen is you end up with a lot of filled sketchbook. Like... a LOT.

I can't even take a good photo of them because they're at the back of my closet behind a huge stack of books, but this entire bookshelf goes the entire closet width and is stuffed FULL of sketchbooks. 

And, obviously, my initial thought is "of course I want to keep it, it's my life's work!" but the reality of hauling all of this around is not great. And for many years my go-to was this spiral bound kind of sketchbook which really doesn't store nicely. And on top of all this... the sketchbooks are sometimes... sketchy! And yeah, some of that is nice to see, the process of it all... but a looooot of it.... is just half-finished doodles and rough pencil smudges that no one ever wants to see (including me). 

So I decided that while I'm stuck here in the house, it might be nice to go through them and rebind the nicest pages! 

Sometimes my drawings fill most of the page, but other times they're in a tiny corner. When that's the case, I have been cutting the drawings out and making a sort of collage-y thing with them. I'd like to get better at collage. I have also been enhancing a few of them... cleaning up the inks or adding effects to enhance the underlying drawing. Just for fun. 

Then I can group them by type in batches of about 10, trim them clean and get ready to bind them!

I didn't take a good photo here, but I have a stack of about 10 loose pages. The method I'm using is called "Japanese stab-binding". first I measure out four marks along what will become the new spine.

I punch a whole through all the pages using an awl, or "very expensive nail I bought at the art store". 

There's a particular kind of method to how you loop the thread through here, but I won't go into detail. I followed this tutorial . I also waxed the embroidery thread with some Very Expensive Bees Wax that I got at the art store. (Just kidding, it wasn't that expensive. The thread I got at the dollar store). 

And just like that, I have a little bound cluster of drawings!

As you can see, I do lose a bit of real-estate with this method, but all of the pages are preserved and I think this holds them together neatly. I'm going to group sketches together by type in little clusters, and then maybe bind them again in the a few larger books when there are enough :)

Also, as a footnote, this post should have gone up last week, and I apologize. I signed up to foster cats, and I just got my first foster cat last week! His name is Parker. 

So I spent most of my week frantically cat-proofing my apartment, and trying to manage a VERY freaked out cat who didn't want to eat anything. He's a sweetheart though <3