I was an Illustration major when I was in undergraduate school at the Rhode Island School of Design. Even though I went on to teach and work in the jewelry industry, I still find tremendous satisfaction from the drawing process. I came across this sketch book in 2012 at the San Diego Museum of Art gift shop and immediately fell in love with it! The book is called: “One Sketch a Day” and is by Chronicle Books.

I love the sketch book’s retro styling! It has a 1950s textbook feel.  In the interior, each page is divided into two sections for drawing, making it a manageable size to tackle on a daily basis. At the beginning of each section, one can write in the specific date of when the drawing was created.

Interior of sketchbook

Above are some of my early drawings in the sketchbook. I find the paper quality to be decent, despite what I read in some of the reviews of this sketchbook. This is not a multimedia sketchbook, therefore I found pens to work the best.  Micron and Copic Multiliners are my favorite brands to draw with to achieve the kind of fine detail that I am looking for.  Here are a few links for sets of these pens:

Sakura 30062 6-Piece Pigma Micron Ink Pen Set, Black 

Copic Markers SP Multiliner Set A with Replaceable Nib

Good old ball point pens are also excellent to sketch with! I can build up light layers when shading that give my drawings a similar feel to those done with pencil!

Below are some later sketches.

I worked in the sketchbook more consistently in 2012, however, in 2013…well…I ceased to make it a priority to draw in this book. In 2013, I finished a dismal two sketches! Now that we are in a new year, I want to draw on a regular basis and I feel, hopefully, that creating blog posts and videos about my weekly progress will give me the structure I need to produce. This time around I will use the sketchbook as a tool to aid in my design process for jewelry designs and other creative freelance projects. This will in turn give me more purpose in utilizing this awesome sketchbook! I hope you enjoyed looking at some of my drawings! I hope this encourages you to practice sketching as well!  If you are interested in this specific sketchbook, check it out here:

One Sketch a Day: A Visual Journal

If you would like to watch my video review of “One Sketch a Day”, you can watch it here: