Bonus Post: You Can Make This Book

I had to make a new sketchbook this morning, and the first thing I drew in it were sketches of the process of making it.  You can make a journal/sketchbook like this very easily.  I used a market bag from France, just cut a section out of the side of it.  The size that you cut is determined by what size you want your book to be.  To help determine the size, I first tore and folded 45 rectangular sheets of paper (about 1/2 were Strathmore 500 series drawing paper and 1/2 were the willow paper I like to use).  Then I made 9 booklets of 5 sheets each and stacked them up as in the drawing.  I used the stack to figure out the size of the cover, allowing for a pocket on one side and a hem all around.

The only tricky part is sewing the groups of paper (signatures) in, and the diagram at the bottom shows how.  I sewed it on my treadle machine.  It can be tricky to get the fatness of the book under the foot of the machine, but if you follow the sequence laid out here, it works very well.

Here's the finished book.  If you want a book similar to mine but you don't want to make it yourself, email me what size you want , how many pages, what kind of paper, and what sort of recycled material you want for the cover.  Most journals that I make to sell are $22.  If you need special expensive paper or an extra large book, the price will be a bit higher.  Email your order to me at weRpiecework@gmail.com.

On the right are some bakery drawings from City Bakery.  Cake pops again!  Today they were chocolate peanut ones.  It was chocolate peanut day in the dessert case today:  the cheese cake was chocolate and peanut butter.  Both looked really good.  And there were lovely brioche in the rolls section.

At the bottom of this page is an attempt to get down a Jesse grooming drawing.  These are continued on the next page.

Jesse was grooming furiously.  He never stopped moving.  All the gesture drawings on the left side of this page were done as a single movement of my pen.  He finally settled in to grooming his shoulder, and I was able to get a more finished drawing of him on the right.  I'm collecting more moving drawings for monotypes.