Drawn In

This book is literally pages and pages of sketchbook glimpses. The book appears to be a spin-off of the authors blog Book By It's Cover, a place where she shares her love of art books and started a little feature showcasing the inside of artists sketchbooks... I will put my hand up now and admit I had never heard of Book By It's Cover... but then I have never heard of a lot of the people that write craft and art books. I know what I like just not usually who made/painted it. This book is quite simply gorgeous. A real feast for the eyes. I am a real people watcher, I love to sit on benches in shopping centers and watch, making up stories about the passers by. I love to read blog posts, sneakily peeking inside people's studios. My guilty afternoon pleasure used to be Through The Keyhole before they started staging it a bit to much. So to be able to see inside so many sketchbooks at one time is just, well, like handing over the key to the secret chocolate stash. It's such an intimate thing for the people involved to show, accompanied with short interview questions, it gives a real insight into each particular person's thought process. What I particularly like is that it's not just one type of creative person showing their books. There are artists, cartoonists, typographers ... so much diversity. I also liked the inclusion of people across the globe - usually I've found craft books are mainly people from the USA, which, granted, this book did still have a lot of, but I was pleasantly surprised to see people from England, Scotland, Singapore and other places represented. I took this book away with me on holiday and read it from cover to cover in the evenings while we were away. Since we've been back I've read it again. It's sparked something, I'm trying now to work in a sketchbook every day - whether it be just sticking something in that's inspired or actually drawing. The only downside to Drawn In was that it left me wanting more - you can see images showing through the sketchbook pages and it's so tantalizingly out of reach. I envy Julia Rothman getting her mitts on all those books and seeing them in ALL their glory. This is not a "how-to" book, it's a snoop-fest. And I loved it!