I keep a pretty poor excuse for a sketch­book — it is a dis­jointed com­bi­na­tion of notes, bad thumb­nail sketches and assorted loose papers. That’s why, when I look at Craig Bowers’s sketch­book, I can’t help but feel pangs of jealousy: There is an amount of beauty and restraint to these pages that I love. ...

Astrid Flo­renti­nus is an almost-to-be (her words!) illus­tra­tor from the Nether­lands. She makes use of pen and pen­cil, really work­ing with the media to cre­ate depth to each piece. Astrid intro­duced me to her lat­est project, as she is on the cusp of graduation: It’s about three dif­fer­ent peo­ple, three dif­fer­ent object mak­ers who ded­i­cated ...

I used to have hair that was pretty long. You could do all the fun things with it, like braid it, putting a bun on the top of your head, brush it a sat­is­fy­ing 100 strokes…but then I decided to chop eight inches (maybe more!) off. While I don’t often regret my deci­sion, it’s look­ing ...

For the record, I don’t use sketch­books effec­tively as I should. Mine tend to be filled with scrib­bles, non sequiturs, and aren’t very exper­i­men­tal. The best sketch­books help artists to refine their style, and make it a safe place to “mess up” and try new things. For this Thursday’s round up, I’ve included some sketch­books ...

I really enjoy the work of Lore Smol­ders, but I had the hard­est time find­ing any work by her out­side of see­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to a Rotopol Press show. Lore uses graphite and her style has a heavy hand to it. There is a lot of cer­tainty to her lines, and they’ve made the work ...