Transcripts
1. Class Intro: Hi, I'm Suzanne Allard. I'm a self taught artist. I didn't start painting until I was 52, 50, something like that. I always had done
creative things, but I just was too
scared to paint. I thought that was for other
people. Sounds so silly. Now it does, but I get it and I get the fear
involved in creating. Anyway, I manage the fear and I ph and it's still
a daily challenge. But now I license my work, I sell my work, I teach
classes and What else do I do? Seems like there's a lot that goes into having
an art business, a lot of moving parts, but I love it,
absolutely love it. Making sketchbooks
just seem like a natural fit to what I do. Since so much of my classes
are in sketchbooks, it just made a lot of sense. In this class, we are going
to make two sketchbooks, a small one, and a larger one. If you're asking yourself, why in the world would I make
a sketchbook when they're easily available at the stores. I think until you make it, you may not fully understand it. At least that's what
happened to me. I started to make one
because I thought, this is a neat idea. Then I realized that
they're so customizable. You can choose the
shape that you want it. You can choose what
you want on the cover. You can choose what
kind of paper. Most importantly, what kind of paper you want inside
what thickness, what tooth, do you want
rougher, do you want it smooth? Depending on how you
want to use that book? Do you want it for travel? How many pages do
you want in it? Just the flexibility
that it gives you. And it's a really fun project. I figured out how to do it with minimal supplies,
minimal hassle. So I put that together in a class and
I just had to share it. Join me and let's get
making some sketchbooks, which hopefully encourage
you to fill them.
2. Project Video: Hello. You probably have taken some of my classes where we
work in sketch books a lot, and it seems natural
to me to figure out how to make sketchbooks and was that something that I
thought would be fun? And it turns out that
it is a lot of fun. It gives you the
ability to customize completely what you want in the sketch how you
want the sketchbooks. Size, thickness, paper choices, you know, the shape of it, whether you want
portrait or landscape. There's just so many as
I started to do that. And then I started
to realize, my gosh, there's so many fun ways like, you know, making the cover. Of course, I had to make my covers really
colorful and fun. So I started out making
some of the more like traditional books like getting into bookbinding
a little bit. And I found that
was just too fussy. It for me, and I love bookbinding. I
think it's beautiful. And I'll show you
a couple I made, but I want the sketchbook to be a playful place and I don't want it to
feel too precious. After spending all this time
making this elaborate book, it started to feel too precious. I love these, and I researched and experimented with
all different kinds of ways to make sketchbooks, to make it quick easy and not
fussy so that we can just play in them and use
them for maybe samples or swatches or whatever
and not feel like, I can't ruin that sketchbook or whatever is silly to
get in our heads. So That's what I did. I put together the
simplest way that I think after trying and a
lot of trial and error. For this project, we are
going to follow a process that is the simplest
one I found, I believe, no glue to put together a sketchbook that allows you to choose what paper
you want in it, what cover you want on it, meaning the cover paper, paint your own cover and a quick and easy
anything you want on it. And We're going to make
actually two sketch books. I have one whole series on the smaller one and then
we'll do a larger one. This is going to end up when
it's open being 11 by 15. I help you join me in
creating these two and then putting them also in taking a picture and putting them in
the project section. I love seeing what
you come up with. And I also have supply
lists in the resources. Let's get going and
make some sketch books.
3. Sketchbooks I've Made: Okay, let's take
a look at some of my sketchbook making adventures. So there are these kind of more bound books which
I wanted to try them, but they are really involved. And what happened is you know, I bought all of these supplies. I probably spent well over $100, maybe more, and then I
made these and it was fun. I'm glad I did it, but because
there were so much work, it became a little bit more precious than
I wanted them to feel. So I think they
have their place, but I said, Okay, well, that was that. I'll
show them to you. This was, I think
my very first one, and I just did a painted,
what this is called. There's the name for this
part that's glued in there. And then I just
started sketching. And this one, even though
it's watercolor paper. And so this one I obviously, I'm not feeling precious about, and it was fun.
Doesn't lay flat. I mean, I'm not the
best, you know, I'm not an expert bookbinder. So that was number one. And then I think this
was another one, and I I made it I had
fun with the cover. I wanted this one to be
just play kind of a theme where I would not be precious and I
would not worry about, you know, I was this was
going to be my guiding thing. Are you having fun? You
can see my construction, you know, was lacking. And then I played with some
landscapes in this one. But I used full watercolor paper in this and it's pretty heavy. I mean, it's pretty thick. And so I since, you know, gravitated more to the 90
pound water colored paper. But I was playing in this
and as it turned out, this bread actually got licensed by for some paper products
and wrapping paper, so you just never know. But I haven't done
much with that. Then this one was like, Okay, I did a really
good job on it. I mean, not if you're
an expert folk finder, but it's pretty darn good. And then I said,
what am I I do now? It feels too precious and I really like this
kind of thing lately, so I've been doing this in it. But then I haven't
done much more, and I'm just getting
over the whole like, don't be precious
about it, Suzanne. Just enjoy it. But
I wanted some much easier and simple and less
precious feeling sketchbooks. So I started learning
different stitches in different ways and glue
and trial and error. And so that's what
we're going to make in this in this class. And is actually these two sketchbooks
we're going to make. So this one was another
one I made that I learned that the coating I put on the paper just
made it too thick. And I had a different
recipe. I'll explain it. But I have two
different colored pages on the spread because
I was just inging it. As I am known to do, but it's still going to be great for making big
spreads of things. It just made it a little
too heavy and unwieldy. So all those lessons
learned led me to these, and I'll show you we're going
to actually make these two. We're going to paint the
covers and everything. And that's half the fun, if not most of fun. This one, I will show
you just was a little different in the style of cover in case you
wanted to try it. And this might make more sense to come
back and watch this after you after
you've made these. But in these two, the
ones we're making, the cover is just the whole
entire one piece of art. This one so that the cover could come off
the edge a little bit. You can probably
see this seam here. I took one piece of
art, same thing, but then I cut it here and here, and then I just put took the first page of the
book and glued it to it. Can you see the page here? Glued it to this piece, and then this is painter's tape. You know, this is
the green frog tape, and then I painted the tape. That's just another way but I decided that was also adding
more time and hassle. I wanted to really
make these simple. I wanted to make them so that we could use them for whatever and just be messy about
it or click about it, and not too fussy. But I just wanted to
show you why that one looks different. All right. So that's the extent of my
sketchbook making adventures, and let's get to making these pretty little
things. It's fine.
4. Supplies: All right. So for supplies, I really wanted to
keep this simple. You see some
sketchbook videos on YouTube and is like
this supplies, you know, 20 different things. I thought, Good Lord, you know, we're not getting into the
book binding business. So we're just making an but adequate and
sketchbook for our use. You need paper, obviously. And I talked about
this in paper choices, but whatever weight
you've decided on, whether you want
the lighter weight for inside the sketchbook, or whether you want to
use the heavier paper. You just need whatever
size you want. Your sketch book is obviously
going to be half of that. I have done sometimes
where, you know, I want sort of a more
longer sketchbook. I cut off some of that and
then just use this for scrap. So I wanted it to
be more square. I don't remember what I
do with that sketch book, but I cut off some of this. But to keep your
first one simple, I would just use a nine by 12, you know, pad of paper. So your paper, some sort of
protecting for your surface, you could use a
kitchen cutting board if you don't have a cutting mat, most people probably don't. And then this tool
is pretty, you know, You may have something
in the garage toolbox or in your kitchen that
is pointy like this, maybe a really thick needle. If you happen to
have this kind of thing, some upholstery kit. I'm going to give you a
link to an Amazon kit that has all this stuff in it and I think it's like $7 for this. This might even come
with the thread. It's pretty amazing. It comes with the bone folder, which we aren't going to use because we're doing
saddle stitch, but if you do learn other stitches and
other book binding, you could you you would use the bone folder
to fold your sheets. But anyway, you need
something to be able to pierce the pages.
Then you need thread. You know, this is
the wax thread, but you don't need this much
and you don't even need. I think you could use
For our purposes, again, we're not making
books to sell them. We're not concerned with
them lasting being used a lot in terms of
opening lots of abuse. I mean, they're going to
get abuse with paint. But you could just if you've
got some heavy duty thread, you could try that
and see how it works if you didn't
want to buy the wax. I've seen that at craft stores, but the kit that comes with
this is pretty inexpensive. The only time you
would need to actually cut on a mat and
a blade knife is, I'll show you at the end is
if you want to trim the edges of the pages on the
sketchbook, but not necessary. Really, bare bones, you need
something to poke the holes, something to sew with,
a, a largest needle, not this big, but a good
size needle and your paper. Of course, we're
going to be painting the cover of these sketchbooks. Then you need your
painting stuff and your tools to make
pretty things. But I wanted to find
these simplest. There's so many ways to stitch sketchbooks and
overcomplicate this. And I just wanted
you to have a way to make a lay flat
sketchbook that didn't require bunches and bunches of supplies because it's for
our our personal use, and it's for painting,
not writing, like most books are videos that are out there on
how to make a sketch book. It seems like they're more
for drawing and thin paper, and that doesn't work for us. So even a needle this
size is all you need. You don't need a super
thick one like that came with this kit. Let's get to it.
5. All About Paper: Let's talk about the
paper for the Sketchbook. That is something you could
probably talk about for, I don't know a long time because there are
so many options. I would say though that this is an opportunity to use
really inexpensive paper. I would not tell yourself that you had to
use any certain paper, although I've seen people
use the handmade papers and really little sketch books. That's pretty. But
I just a few here. I mean, I could literally make the stack like a foot tall
and talk to you about them. But I concentrated
on what I think are good papers for a low price. This is the Strathmore
200 series. 90 pound. Now, when I talk about pound, that's the thickness of the
paper, the weight of it. Typical watercolor paper, your standard watercolor
paper like this is 140 pound, and it is what you see most
often, it's very heavy. Okay. I don't like using that for the interior
or my sketchbook too much. I've tried it and it
just ends up so thick. I mean, you can if you
only use six sheets. But I just even when I've been buying sketch books in the last year or so, I like to buy the ones that are 90 pound paper on the inside, which are a little
harder to find, which makes this
whole thing another reason to do it because I can
I can use any paper I want. We're going to make
two sketchbooks. One with this, which is why there's none left because
we're going to use it. And We're going to make the cover though with
the heavier weight. Makes sense, that the cover
would be a little heavier, and we're going to
use the same size. Nine by 12 the standard. This will be the
sheets on the inside, and then this will be the
cover that will paint. By the way, this Amazon
basic watercolor, I thought I'd try it and it's pretty
impressive for the price. I also like But they
call it a book. Usually they're called pads, but I don't know if
it's their process. The glue, the amount
of glue they put here, but it almost is
like a sketch book, except that it wouldn't I
don't think it would hold up, you know, once you
put media in there. This is just a thin layer glue. It was kind of funny
that I, you know, bought it to play with it and It's pretty sturdy
the pad part of it. The other thing that
I would just say for your interior pages to consider is you may or may not know
that watercolor has two sides. Who knew, right? It has
the front and the back. I grabbed this paper
to show you some of them have no difference on
the front and the back, and some have a
lot of difference. This is an example of one
with a lot of difference that probably would not
use in a sketchbook. Unless you're putting
Jessel on it anyway, then it doesn't matter at all. But if you wanted to just
use the paper plane, this is a really inexpensive. I think this is from Walmart and maybe $6 for 30 or 20 sheets, and it's the lighter weight. It's not 90, but
it's less than 140. But just be aware, see all
the texture on this side. On this side, it's
really smooth. You say, well, so what? Well, it's not a big
deal. It really isn't. But if you've got your
sketchbook like this, and then the next page, so here's the back of this
sheet and it's smooth and then this one has the grain on it,
that could be a cool thing. You could say, well,
you know what? In this sketchbook, I'm going to do certain types of paintings
on the smooth side, which is more like a
mixed media paper, and then certain more
water colory ones on the one that has
the rougher texture. You could embrace that change, but I just wanted
to make you aware that some papers are like that. Whereas, let's see here. This and these are all I picked up all inexpensive papers. This is the B paper company. I've got almost all of this
on Amazon, I think all of it, 90 pound and I'll put links
in the in the supply list. This one I like because it's
that ivory color and can you see how the texture is
the same front to back? Maybe you can't see
that, but it is. So when you're doing
your sketchbook, the surface will seem the
same on all the sheets. So there's no right or wrong, know what you're doing, or you know what you want to do. I will say do not get this. I have gotten sketch
books by this. This is on Amazon, but this is the worst watercolor paper,
I think I've ever seen. I guess it's for kids. It's blue, first of all, it's like purple, and it's. What I've done with it is I actually used it for
because it is lighter weight, 90 pound, which
is why I tried it is I use it for collage. So What else did I
want to show you? I'll show you this paper. This is Canson Mixed
Media Rugh, 114 pounds. So again, less than the 140, so have a nice flexible feel. Both sides are the same. But that will be the case
with mixed media paper. So that would lend itself
well to sketchbook paper. And then the large sketch
book, we're going to use this, which is a 90 pound
watercolor paper from Blick. They're Blick essential,
so inexpensive, and it's a nice paper, which is the same on both sides, even though I'm going
to put some es on that. I'll show you that. So really, It's a time to just think about, what's the sketchbook
going to be used for? Is it going to be? Are you
going to put eso on it? Are you going to do
acrylic painting in it? Like, let me see. We go grab some of these. I might be helpful to
give you some examples. Because I haven't
started painting much in the handmade ones yet. But like this is
watercolor paper and a watercolor effect. Okay? So I would
not jestle that. But this I did jestle because I didn't want all
that paint soaking in. I was just in process. I did make the sketchbook, but this is such
a such a process. And then it ends up having the effect it
becomes precious, which is what we don't want to have happen in the sketchbook. So I was a fun project, but it was too much work. This is actually the
B paper company, the paper that I bought
big sheets of it. And you can see well, I'll just tell you I
did not just this, the paint soaked in. I don't think I did
this page either. I was messing around
with some water colors. So I guess I have not just
owed any of these pages yet. Yeah. This was fun,
but challenging. So that's why I'm
just going with the simpler ones that are
not precious. All right. So I will list these papers. The ones that I think are
probably the best options. And then you know, I would just
recommend looking for a lighter than 140 pound for your inside and the student
grade base grade type paper. Sometimes it's
called essentials. Sometimes it's called student. Stram they do 200 series is good and then there's
300 series and 400 series. You can just stick with the 200. This one's already in expensive. This one was really inexpensive. Like I said, just as
long as you don't mind that two sides
are different. This is Yucky. And this is fantastic
if you want to make the whole thing watercolor paper the heavier
watercolor paper. It's nice paper. Is
same on both sides. Yeah, that gives
you some options. And I will also
mention you can use, especially if you're going to
use a eso to on the sheets, you could try just like
a heavier copy paper and see what happens because by the time you
treat both sides of that, it's going to have some body to it and some texture to it. If you wanted to experiment for your first
sketchbook and just grab six sheets of copy paper
and just sew them, that would be,
perfectly adequate. Make a really nice, small,
lightweight sketchbook. All right. Let's get playing.
6. Painting the cover - Small book: All right. So I think I'm
going to use this one. I don't think I've made
one out of this paper yet. And it's about the same
texture on both sides, or at least it's not
super smooth on one side. It's 90 pound, which is that lighter weight that
I like in a sketchbook. And then I have this 140 pound. This might be that
Amazon basics, but it's the thicker one. So I'll use one of
those for the cover. I get that off for us to paint. Then I'm going to make
this just six pages, which will be 12. Keep it nice and small. I think it's fun to have
these smaller ones. They're great for travel. There's three sheets.
Four, five, six. Well, that almost uses this
up because I guess I used up. Something else. I just
have one sheet left? I do. So I'm going to go
ahead and make it seven. All right. So seven
sheets of paper. Which hopefully I won't get
any pain on. All right. So we're going to
take our seven sheets and they're ready to work with. But first, we're going
to get our cover ready, which is just the sheet of
140 pounds that I mentioned. You can use the
same, by the way, you can just use
another sheet of the paper you chose
for the inside. There's nothing you can just
take one of those sheets. I just like the cover
to be a little heavier. So that's what I'm doing. I'm just going to paint this
in the most loose fun way. You can do anything
you want with this. So what should we do? I have this orange ink that I was
doing something else with. So I guess we could
play with that. Send its out. A little
bit of green ink. This is just a chip
brush from Michael's, but you can get them at
the hardware store online. And I got some white there. Yeah, you know, I'll
just get some Magenta. This Magenta from my
Nova color bundle is one of my favorite
favorite colors. You'll see why. Look at that. Yeah. I mean, this is just
the cover in my sched book. So you could paint it before hand like
this or afterwards. You could not paint it at all. You could just write
something on it. This brush is very
loose and scratchy. Combine that a little bit and get kind of an orange color. All right. I don't think I
want so much scratchiness. I mean, it was fun, but
let's try the fan brush. I'm just grabbing stuff. Taking those. Basically, the colors I have
there had some acrylic ink, some yellowly, kind of Indian yellow actually,
it was orange. I can take some of it here. I could stop at any point. And of fun what the brush
does with the ink, isn't it? I think I want I'm
thinking that, this will be the front cover, but actually this could
be the front cover, but I want a little
more magenta there. All right. I could
put cran there. I could put some
oil passed down. It's not quite dry over there. So I want my sketch book to
convey to be a place to play. So it makes sense that my cover would kind of be playful, right? Okay. Now, what we could do, if you want your cover to
be just a little protected, you could sish this when it's, or you could put a
mat medium on it, which is something like this. Basically, it's a protector, or if you've got
workable fixative spray because I talk about that a lot. You could use that. You
could also just say, what? It's a sketch book. It's going to get paint
on it and who cares? Those are the options. And then we'll start poking holes in these pages and
putting this thing together.
7. Making holes - Small book : All right. Now that this is dry, I did end up putting a
little bit of the medium on it. I don't know why. Just because I got it out to show it to you,
that's probably why. I've got my sheets ready and now what we need is the fall
something to poke holes. We need a ruler to
be able to measure. And it can help to
pfold the center one. I did that. I just if you
can see the center line, but It's sort of
there as a visual. And now I'm going to line
everything up and use my clips. I think it's pretty lined up. Cover. That's funny. Do you see the difference? They're both nine by 12 pads, but the cover is a
little bit larger, which is actually okay. So I'm going to have to
get these set first. And then we get them.
No, that's not working. Let's just do it this way. I'm just looking here
at the edge and here to make sure pretty lined up. Now that's lined up, I'm pushing down on it and I'm
going to get my clips. I've got the gold ones
just because they're here. You can use binder,
whatever you got. And now we're going to take our ruler and our goal is just the five marks down the center. First, we need to
know our center and this is a nine by 12. Pad. I realized. This is why in the next one I put the
clips on after I measure. But that's okay. I'll
show you both ways. So nine by 12 pad that means
that 6 " is our center. Is going to mark that. We can just mark this one at this end. And then I'm going
to lightly make a line connecting those two, so I have my center line. Really lightly because it's
just not that lightly. Oh, my gosh. There's
nothing there. I wonder if I paint
on this pencil. It wouldn't be the
first time I've stuck a pencil in wet
paint to make marks. Okay. Now we're going to go for the five marks
down the middle. Somewhat evenly spaced. The easiest way to do that. For me, is going with
the halfway mark, which this is nine by 12. And this does not need to be
precise. It really doesn't. This is just a M play
sketchbook for our own use. 4.5 is there. Then I'm looking
for two marks on this side of it and two marks on that for a total of five. That's why I like to
start in the middle. Depending on the size
of our sketchbook, we can see if would 2 " fit? If we did 2 ", it winds
us out way out here, so close to the edge. I think I'm going to
do an inch and a half. That means an inch and half here and an inch
and a half here. That'll be more evenly spaced. Then I'm going to go here
and do the same thing. Inch and a half from here is
right there and right there. Now you see I one,
two, three, four, five, somewhat evenly spaced. We don't really worry
about the ends here, the paper could come to here. I wouldn't probably let
it come way out here, so that's why I didn't
do like 1 " marks. If I done 1 " marks, they'd have been
like here and here, and we'd have a big gap here. So you're really eyeballing it. Just shooting for
the five marks. I'm just erasing my line
because I don't need it on my sketchbook spread
that this page will be. Right? Got my five marks? Now we grab our all and you've got a cutting
mat where you can use the back of a pad, something to protect
whatever you're working on and keep your hands
away, fingers away. Gulls through pretty
easily. Just like that. You could try some other
kitchen implement maybe. But this kit that
I found has a lot of has all the tools
you need not very much. To make as many sketch
books as you want, really. Okay. So those are done.
8. Assembling - Small book: Now, our thread and our needle. I already had this piece of bd. I think it's too long,
but that's okay. I well it up. And I don't know, three or four lengths of this is not four lengths
is too many one, two, three is, I think. I keep eyeballing
it and then saying, I should really because it depends on the
stitch you're doing. I also depends on the size of
the sketch book, but right. The first thing we're going
to do is from the inside. There's our cover, but from the inside, I'm
going to go through, we're going to leave like a two inch tail
two to three inch. Maybe I didn't make that hole big enough for
this giant needle. I don't really need
such a giant needle. And then I don't want
to pull that through. So I just find it's
easier to grab a piece of tape just to keep it
from sliding through. Something like that, that way. It's secure and when we tug on it doesn't
come through the whole. We're on the outside now. So think of this as you're
coming this way or either way. You're going out and back
and then out and back. Doesn't matter which way you go. You're here on the
outside. You're going to go to either this one or this one doesn't
matter. Go back in. And then back out the next hole. Yeah, this needle. You don't want to do it
in the switch needles. I just too big. Yeah. That's why I think I was using
the smaller needle before, and I thought, I don't
need this thick needle. I don't want holes that big. I don't need holes that big. Okay. Much better. Now I've gotten to the end. The last hole, so I'm going back through and I'm
keeping this snug. The first time you forget
to keep it snug and then you can go back and tighten
it just like shoe laces. But now that I've done
this a few times, I'm getting used to
keeping it snug. I'm going back in the middle. And now we're going out
the other end. Super easy. Back to the last hole. Snugging it. Just give
it a tug, not too much. You know where you rip your
paper. And then back in that. Heading back to
the middle again. Okay. Now I've got one
more space left. I'm going to go through it, and I'll be outside
my sketchbook. Actually, I can
take these off now. They're not necessary anymore. Making some clatter. Now I'm just going to
tie it either end. I've got it nice and snug, but if you don't, go back
through and just feed it, tighten it from both ends, the way that you might
tighten shoe laces. I'm just going to
hold this here, go underneath here,
and then over it. To tie a knot. That secures that. Then
I'm taking my needle off. This is where most sketchbook
instructions tell you to feed this back into the sketchbook and have
your knot a knee inside, but we're painting in here. We don't want knots
and threads here. I do the opposite. Now I re
thread with this little tail. And to go ahead and secure it here either side, we'll
go to the other side. To a little. I could
have left a longer tail. I forget that the
needle is super long. And then I'm going back through. Now I've got them
both. I just tie them. I like to leave a little tail, but if you don't, you
can work it underneath. I just think it
makes it sort of a handmade feel. All right. So you can just take
the thing and fold it, or you can take the cover first. And like this, even it
up here and pinch it. The other end. Got both ends pinched. So I've got the
cover separately, and I'm folding it out. Some people say it just
makes it easier to get your fold in the
middle that way. I don't know. I've
done it both ways. And as long as you
take your time, it's hard to get to
the middle of it. So at that point, I'm going to go just fold it. Pinch it right here
in the middle. Pinch pinch. Pinch. And you're going
to end up putting this a stack of books
on this overnight. You can stand on it, anything to help you
get that crease. But this is creasing prey well. That's because we don't
use too many sheets, which also makes it a really
lightweight sketch book. Well, now, I like to go through and train
my sheets a bit. So I'll do this even when I
get a commercial sketchbook, go through and press sheets so that when
you go to use it, it's kind of pre folded.
There's our middle one. No ugly not in there. It so much pain in
my hands. Okay. Yeah, with the idea.
That helps too. And then I like
it just this way. You can see the sheets
stick out because as they're being folded
at different places, the middle ones are stick out. That doesn't bother
me for this kind. Sometimes I do trim it. I'll go ahead and trim
this one to show you. So Trim, just take the sheets like that away from the cover because we don't
want to trim the cover. And I probably wouldn't even do this until
you left it overnight because it'll be nice
much flatter for you to see what you're cutting. But I'm going to go ahead and
show you I wonder if I can mimic leaving it overnight by I don't know if this will work with the
ruler, but let's try it. By kind of securing
these here. Yeah. Okay. And then you take you definitely want a cutting mat
or cutting board. Line up where you
want your cut to be. How banging my head
against my camera holder. Further. All right. I'm going to go for it because it doesn't need to be perfect. The imperfect sketchbook. Then a blade knife. Be very careful. I
needs to be sharp. The main thing is holding
down this really well. Because when I've done
it before and I didn't, it you start going diagonally. Take your time, your pressure is down and you're going
to mind it up here and makes basically several
passes like this. And sometimes things
will come off, and sometimes they won't, and you can just go like that. But if you take
your time, I take those was much better than I don't know feeling like
you have to do this quickly. You could also use scissors, but it's just harder to
get a straight edge. Again, you don't have
to do any of this. I'm going to show
you in one of these. You could get C and not even perfect because the other end, the other side was That's because I didn't
leave it overnight. Yeah. So leave it overnight
before you put the edge. I mean, it's closer than it was. But I'm going to leave it that
way because I don't care. All right. Another
sketch book to fill and so light weight. I mean, so great for travel. Because, you know,
if you're traveling, you're not going to fill
a 60 page sketch book anyway. All right. This one's going under
some books so it can get nice and wet. Sometimes I stand on them. Now, you'll have a sketchbook. I'm like, anybody else's. How fun? All right, go forth
and make sketchbooks.
9. Priming pages - Large book: So for the large sketchbook, I'm going to use this
Blick essentials, 1151590 pounds. The nice weight. I like that it's Well, I'm going to the texture is
pretty similar on both sides. I haven't tried it without any esa because I just got this and I'm making
the sketchbook with Jessa, but it seems like a
really nice paper. But often when I'm
working my sketch books, I like to seal the page unless I'm using the watercolor look with the gah or acrylic. I like to seal the
page with Jess or paint so that all the
paint doesn't soak in. So I just depends on what
kind of creating I'm doing. But for this sketchbook, I wanted to make one with the treatment or
the surface sealed. Like I said, I
normally do that with my sketchbooks. The
ones that I buy. You've probably seen me
paint them and jestle them. I have a whole YouTube on how and why I just
je slew my sketchbooks. But then I learned from
another YouTuber Sandy Hester, and well, not that I'm a tuber. She's truly a
utuber, but anyway, she since she was
making her sketchbook, she pretreated it with
this mix of medium. I don't know if she used Jess. I think she just used
medium and paint. So that gave me the idea to mix my concoction of Matt medium, Jess water and a little
bit of off white because I like the ivory colored paper more than
white white paper. Just all personal preference. The point is that making your own sketchbook really
allows you to customize the whole thing from the type of paper you're
using, the color that it is, the treatment that
you have on it, if any, what the
cover looks like, the size of it, the
thickness of it, all up to you. That's
what's so fun. Next, we're going to show you the concoction
mixed up and we'll start treating these
sealing this paper. I think I have
enough here though, 15 sheets to make one without doing that
with the plain paper. That way, if I want to do
a watercolor approach, I can and if I don't, then I can put my mix or
Jess or medium on the pages. I think Sandy Hester, I think she used
more of a medium. I like the Jess because
it gives a graininess, often called tooth to the page. And it just medium is kind
of slippery and just, you know, every again,
personal preference. So let's start putting
my stuff on these pages. So you can see what that's like, this one, and I'm
going to paint. I could leave it as is. Obviously. This is a watercolor
paper. I like the color. I don't really like
let me show you, white, white, for some reason. I prefer sort of an ivory. I like that it comes
in that ivory color. But since I'm usually
using acrylic and I don't want all the
paint to soak into the paper, Acrylic or acro guash, I'm going to This is a just a I eyeballed it as far as what I put in here or how
much I put in here. I put in Gesso to help seal it, and then I put in a little bit of buff. Let me get the paint. Liquid tex, basics. Just to keep that
ivory color because Jess so white
unbleached titanium. And then just to extend
it a little bit. I've done it with and
without this mat medium. I'm trying the mat last few
times to see if I like it. It just maybe gives
me a little more. And then I also added some water because
it was too thick. I don't really
want a thick coat. In fact, I can wet my brush because I don't want my
pages getting really thick. That's why I used
the 90 pound paper. So that would defeat
my purpose if I funk them up with
a lot of material. But I do want a thin
layer to seal it. And I could just use Matt medium. Some people do that, which is really thin
doesn't add any bulk. But I find that it then
you try to paint over that and it gives some weird effects
which maybe people want. But I don't like it makes the paint slimy in
spots depending on the paint. I was trying it with
the vinyl paints the other day and
it was strange. Anyway, I'm not being precise. I don't even care if little
bits of things get in there too much because
this get book. I'm going to do this
on all six pages, and then I'll flip
them and do the same. And let them dry.
Let's do another one? I just had a drop cloth
here on the floor. And tab my brush in some water, Tab it in some of my mixture. The reason the first
time I did this, I did not make a mixture. I just squirted
right on the page, a little bit of eso, little bit of paint, a
little bit of medium. You can probably
guess what happened. The pages were all a little
bit different color. When you put them
in a sketch book, and you open it up, again, I don't care because I'm
going to paint over it, but I have this side
that's a little bit more tan or off white and this one the left
side is more white, and the spreads are not
the same, which you know, I'm not trying to
be precise here, but that's a little
too I don't know. When you open your sketchbook, you kind of want to two sides. Although I was about to
say you wanted to be the same by Alp and end up
painting them differently. So who knows? At least this way, I've got the stuff premixed. And I can, you know, grab it and go and not
although I try to think. I think it was
probably mostly Jess. So I'm going to try to
give you some I would say it was I did
three parts, Jess. To one part medium and
one part water fish. Then a few squares of the
color, if you want one. Often, I start with a a
fluorescent pink base. I might make one of
these with that mixture. Just this same thing, but instead of adding
the unbleached titanium, just adding some fluorescent. Or I might just when these are all dry and
that they're in the book. I I want to do that on a page. Just put some floc in
on there, watered down. If you mind getting this
kind of stuff on your hands, you might want to
use latex gloves. All right. I will come back
when I've got all of these painted and both
sides them Also, I started with this base for
the color for the cover. This is a 140 pound, and I just did like we were
just talking about, actually, Jess with some
fluorescent and looks like I've thrown in a bit of orange in here, too,
which I like to do. I could leave this
as is as a cover. But maybe we'll come back and do something to it
to paint the cover. Okay. I will see you when done with this and
when it's all dry.
10. Painting the cover - Large book : All right. Let's do something fun on this. It's going to be
the schedule cover. And I thought I would
try out I've just got these big fat liquid
tex, paint markers. And I maybe sort
of draw some kind of loosed flow Let's
just see what happens. That's all I have in mind, You know, I'm gonna
draw with the pink, even though there's already
glass and pink here. Just be really loose 'cause
it's a sketchbook cover. So Let's make some shapes. And holding this this big fat nib in different ways to
see what it does. Trying to hold it loosely too. Using a big tool like it's
like using a big brush. It forces you to loosen up. This green is. But maybe
it's a good starting point. Kind of the idea of believes. Maybe. I've got some red. This is a. Let me tell you what the
green was lime green, avid lime green, a Crimson. C. We end up covering a lot of this and paint,
but who knows? Maybe it'll make
some marks I like. I like the the fat. The way this is turning out. I'll leave some mostly
pink mas outliner. I could do some little
thy things, too, why not? I will do a YouTube video
on these markers in more depth with kind of the things the marks
and and so forth. Especially as I learn
more about them. The Trika Those are a little too square for me. I like different shapes.
It's really dark. But I could mix it with white. I'd have to use a brush, though. I'll just use it
for some accents. I'll try just pale
pink. So leaves. It really matches
the background, so it's not showing up. Yeah. I figured I could
have maples yellow. I guess I'm using all the
liquidx colors to see. This kind of background, maybe. It's funny, isn't
it creating like my hand just started
making it a background. When I put it down. So I guess I'll just follow
what my hand wants to do. Sometimes that turns out
well, sometimes not. I think most often
I like what happens when I give up some control. I can just you can't
hear it, but my dog, she has a rescue. Mix. She has a dog door. And when she comes
in the dog door, she comes running up the stairs, like she's like a little kid
like, I'm back, you know, like like we might have missed her and not noticed
she was outside. And I just heard
that sound of her. It makes kind of this carpet
on the basement stairs, so it makes kind of a it's become like a happy
sound to hear her running in and I
know she's out there in the living room
looking for me like, Di didn't you notice I'm
back? I went outside. Well, I think I didn't
use these two neurtrals. This is what is this one? Un bleached titanium
and parchment. Um The Naples, a yellow ended
up being a good neutral. Let's just see what this does
if you know what I can do. Yeah. This will soften the
turquoise maybe, let's see. It's dry already, so
I'm not ruining my nib. Yeah, I think that
needed a settling down. In some places. I won't
do it in all of them. Maybe a little settling down
on the lime green, too. I like my colors
right, as you know, but they can't all be. Saying, Look at me. Then
there's Get a headache. Let some bits come
through that are bright. They dry really fast. I did learn that I
watched some reviews, and that was one of the
things people liked about them compared to
other paint markers. I mean, I love my Pascas. But I wanted to these tiny
bits for the large one. Not enough to, you know, say you one way or the other, but I just thought I'd
give something to try. I was just thinking, should I
challenge myself to just do this whole thing with
the with these markers? We'll see. If I feel like I don't want to
do anything else to it, then I can leave it. I do want some
metallic gold though. These are my favorite metallic gold pens I talk
about all the time. I'll try to put the links to some of the stuff
in the description. I guess we're using the
black watercolor pad, the liquid markers. So the gold pen. So I think I want to do some squigglies and maybe some dots. Maybe with a thinner one a bit of outline
leaves or something. Why are you so stuck? Holy cow? Okay. It made me wonder if it was
gonna be dried out. Oh. Maybe something pure. Well, it's not boring. Was that dry and start putting
the sketch book together. I could always add to this
or do something else to it. You know, after I've sewn
the sketch book together. I don't have to do at all now. Just seeing if I
go back, you know, to make in some places it less transparent by using
a second coat. J for some headed this and that. T. I do like how these
force you to loosen up. You can't you can't
really I mean, I suppose you could
control these if you really wanted to, but they lend themselves
to looseness. Okay. Put it down, let it dry. This is the last mark. Okay. Wait this one. Oh, my goodness. All
right. Let's put that dry.
11. Making holes - Large book: Okay. So I did mess around with this
cover a little bit more. I think I decided it
was two fluorescent D, so I toned it down with some green ink and put
some little metallic. I just have f of it. So whatever you've
got for your cover, you're just going to
put it with your pages. Here's all my pre treated
both sides pages. It did make it a little
thicker, which makes sense. So I don't know if we'll
see how that works out. The other one that
I've done was I use thicker paper and then put this on and it was
just too thick. This looks like
it would be okay. But maybe I'll go back to just using the plain paper and then covering the sheets
if I want to. All right. We've got our sheets. We're just going
to line them up, best we can. All four sides. Then we're going to
find the middle here, which I know this is
the 11 by 15 pad. So I know that 15 is going
to be move this 7.5. I'm going to just mark some 7.5 marks down
the middle here. So I can get my mid point. You could just do one at the
top of one at the bottom, but now I'm going
to make a line. I'm going to make it faint because this will be
a sketchbook spread. This whole process, I hope I've conveyed not to be too fussy and turn this into
something stressful. This is just for our use. It's meant to be imperfect, just like the art
that's going in it. Now I'm going to find
five holes along here, somewhat even based
and Basically, the way I've done that
is I find my midpoint, which since this
is 11, it's 5.5. Then I've either said, well, we 2 " apart work, or should I do 1.5 ", whatever the size
I'm working with to get a total of five marks. I've already got one here, which means I need two on this
side and two on this side. If I do 2 ", let's see, that's the half, the half, that would be there, and
there. I think that works. Let's do one, two, and one, two. Then this way, one,
two, one, two. Depending on the size paper, you might if it's a
much smaller one, you might just do 1.5 " or
even 1 ", it's a little one. But your goal is to try to get your five marks along here
and now I can actually erase this line so that it's not on my sketchbook spread because all I really
need with these five marks. A Okay. And just in case I've fast this, I'm going to make sure I've
still at m as even as I can. On both sides top to bottom. And then now I'm
going to it helps. You really want to
be able to clip this somehow when you're
doing your holes. And you could actually clip
it before we just measured, you know, if you're
worried about it moving. To keep it secure. Move
on. Do it this way. You can use binder clips. These guys, doesn't matter. I just have the gold ones here because I use them a lot
in my sketchbook spreads. Okay. Now we can not
worry about it moving, and I'm going to take the all. I've got a cutting mat here. If you don't have a cutting mat, just get maybe a cutting board, something that could even be where we took The
watercolor paper pad. These backs of these
pads are really tough. I'm not going to say you should have pie furniture
underneath it, but it's a pretty good surface. You're just going to go in trying to stay on the line that is the center line that
is somewhat erased. And go right in to your mark. Again, there's nothing magical about being right at
that 1.5 inch mark. What's more important is that
it is on the center line. So if I made it up here
or down here, so what? I do want to try to stay
on the center line. And it goes in really easily. If you don't have
an all and you have a really big needle
that could work. But I will put a link to this
kit in the supplies list. It's a really kind of nice
kit for the amount of things, exactly what you need,
no more, no less. Okay. Next step will
be to start stitching.
12. Assembling - Large book : So far as stitching, I've got the wax thread and I'm using white because
it's a sketch book. I'm going to don't want a
colored thread in there. Lengthwise, it seems like
just about two times, but I like to go over because
I don't want to run out. Maybe one, two, three, I'm using almost four
lengths of the spine. Then take a needle. We're going to
thread our needle. And we're going to go right in that middle hole and
not going to not it. We're going to leave
a tail. You're going to see how easy easy this is. Okay. And then if it's easier for you to put a piece of tae on it. Maybe to keep it from escaping. I did have an escape one
time, not a big deal. You just thread it again, but I do want to leave enough
to be able to tie in. So a couple inches, 3 ". Okay. Now we're going to go in one direction
and then the other. We're going to come
up in this hole, we're going to go down this way, and then we'll go back this way. In this side, we're going
to go in that next hole. Okay. And then see it does help
to have a little tape because I just yanked on
it, and it would have gone. And then we're going
to go back back to the outside again. And then I'm going
to go back in. And then back into this
center hole again. Kind of back to
where we started. You probably guessed it?
Go in the other direction. Then into the center. I'm sorry. No. I have to go
back out this way first. I just remember you're going out back and then out and back. Set Although making mistakes is how you learn and then
you untie and do it again. So now I'm going back
towards the middle again. I am keeping the pressure. We can tighten this in
and tighten it that in. At the end, I like to
tighten everything up. So if you pull too hard though, and especially if your paper, is just plain paper,
not coated like this, you can tear it done that. So tight, but not to the point
you're ripping your paper. Now we're going back
out and you can see that we've got
something on all the holes. So at this point, before I tie that, I
do want to snug it up. Yes. Find where
where it's loose. Can basically feel and pull
until you get it tight. Then here I'm going
to do a knot. It doesn't matter which end that you let me show
you that again. I be hard to see what the
pattern of the sketch cover. You can do another one, go underneath one side or the
other, and tie a knot. Then most sketchbook
instructions will tell you then
to feed this back inside because they want the thread and not
on the inside, but of course, we're painting on the inside, so we
don't want that. I do the opposite. I take the little tail that
we left in here and also do a little
n just to secure it, and then feed it
back to the outside. I mean, you could
leave it in there, but I want that spread
as clean as possible, and I don't care if I've got
threads and knots out here. Now I'm going to take both
of these just to secure it again and tie them again. You could tie as many
times as you want. I like leaving a little
I don't know bit here. I think it looks I like a
handmade sketchbook, like that. But of course, if
you don't like that, you could try to leave it under there and glue it
and things like that. But, it is stitched. Now we can take these clips off. I've seen some
people who say that it's easier to take the
cover and hold it this way. First, like on itself. I seems to make sense
because you're kind of precreasing the cover. But you could try try it this way one time and try
it another way in a time. Basically, you just
want to make sure these hedges are similar. Again, we're not being
our goal is not to make a fussy sketch book of
a perfect sketch book. You can see what my
pencil mark is there. And of course if you'll notice
that when we fold this, we have these different lengths of paper because
we're folding here. And they end differently
here. That's okay. That's part of the
handmade look, and if you really don't like it, I'll show you what
you can do about it. Now I just I pinched
that a little bit. Pinch here a little bit.
That's folding pretty nicely. Now I'm going to lay down
and pinch across the middle. And we'll end up putting this in I usually put it on underneath a stack
of books overnight. So like that to get
it flat more flat, but that's actually, especially for all the material I
put on those sheets. It's actually doing really well. You can kind of work
it a little bit more. And the like I said, a night under some heavy
books really helps. And also not using
too many sheets. There we go. You can leave
these sheets like this. You don't bother me
because when I'm opening, I mean, painting, they're
obviously it's not a problem. If it bothers you, then all you do is go back to where you were, and for this, you do need a
cutting mat or cutting board. Take a straight edge. Be very careful.
And a lad knife. I don't really want
to cut this one because I like the way
the edges came out. But I'm just going to
show you the trick is that you want to apply a lot of pressure here
and be very careful. And you're just going
down like this. I said, I'm not going to do it, but you're pressing
and then just keep doing it and
little bits will come off and I've done this where I wasn't holding with my left hand really hard. And it came out all uneven. But then again, who cares? So yeah, you could just keep going
like that and who knows how many times it'll take
and then you'll see a little bits and
just click them off and continue until
you've gone through all your sheets and you
have your nice clean edge. But like I said, I like the kind of rough
way that it looks. And So we're done to decide which side of the cover you like best or for the front. And it lays pretty flat. You might need to do some
more training with it. But I have now some
nice big spreads that are pre treated. And look, see, that's not
perfectly even there. I don't care. I mean, you know, that you can even go
through it like I'm doing now and train the pages. I actually do that with
brand new sketch books that I buy like from
mole skin or other. You'll notice that
they're put together and the pages haven't been
I'm calling it trained, but pre folding them so that
when you go to use them, they lay nice and flat. There we go. That is the larger sketch book
that's been treated. Fun, right? You can
make up any size. You can make this could
have been two size. But for travel, you
can't you know, feel this because
we're on video. But it's really lightweight. So enjoy
13. Wrap Up: Well, I really hope you enjoy
making your sketch book. I know for me, it has motivated
me to fill them up and, you know, like in this
one, But this one, no. This one, just using this page to just test
out new materials, you know, to not
feel like I need to create a perfect
painting or anything. And I wrote, you know,
the materials down here. And so I think this one
might end up being for that. Maybe I'll have this
one B for, you know, new supplies and what they do and testing
out their effects. And the fact that they're so
easy to make an inexpensive and fun means that I don't
feel like I don't know, that I don't want to use up
the sketchbook for that, which is kind of silly anyway, but it can be if
they're $28 and, you know, you might feel like
you don't want to do that. Anyway, I hope this encourages
you to create even more, and please join me in my other classes where we
do all kind of fun stuff, florals, abstracts, and
probably everything in between. Landscapes are coming,
still life is coming, collage, stay tuned,
see you next time.