Sketchbooks & Christmas

I suppose I'm still working out what I want my sketchbooks to be. They seem to be places where things that inspire or excite me get noted, where ephemera from my life get somehow incorporated and where the odd idea gets noted, or if I'm really lucky, worked through, and quite importantly I am finding, all with a dash of guilt if there isn't some original drawing of some sort included.

This was the result of Christmas: amongst other things

collaged bits from: the local butcher's receipt for our chicken, a woeful joke from a cracker, sections from the most splenetic round robin that dropped onto the map, stamps from a card from Japan

and my scribbly drawings of chickens. I wanted to have a go at a turkey, but we didn't eat one so...

And another couple of recent sketchbook pages while I'm at it:

I think there may be a theme here: the more outrageously patterned the more I ooh and aah.

I laughed out loud when I saw the A/W 13 Celine pictures in a magazine at the hairdressers (I always seem to make lots of notes when my roots are cooking). The photographer is Jurgen Teller and the model is Daria Werbowy. 

And my mind was obviously still in that mode when I saw the Breviari d'amor pic in the Guardian or Observer review section a few weekends ago. I loved the background patterning again and as for the subject: the weighing of souls... There are lots of other images from this amazing book, begun in 1288 and purporting to deal with the 'reconciliation of love for God with the erotic amours of the troubadour lyric' (Wikipedia). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matfre_Ermengau

The Wellcome Library has just bought another interesting little item, once owned by Edith Sitwell. A medical almanac which they are going to digitise and make available. I can't wait!

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/dec/29/wellcome-library-medieval-medical-almanac

For me and my world I think this all means: love pattern and go for it!