These days, what with reality becoming increasingly digitized, it’s almost like you don’t have to travel to a place to experience it. Illustrator Lehel Kovacs riffs on this fact with her series of sketches, done from Google street views, of various cities around the world.

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Archigram is recognised as an influencer of many of the world’s greatest contemporary architects and buildings. Exhibitions of their work from 1961-1974 have been touring major institutions worldwide since 1992, and Archigram was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 2002. Despite this, the architectural vision of Archigram is mainly unbuilt and the bulk of their visionary work remained difficult to access, largely stored domestically or in temporary storage. 

The Archigram Archival Project is an online inspiration gallery of Archigram’s work; featuring almost 10,000 items including digitised drawings, collages, paintings, photographs, magazines, articles, slides and multi-media material, accompanied by original texts by Archigram wherever possible.

About three weeks ago, a fellow professor approached me and demonstrated several sketchbook pages from a student who was taking notes with little doodles. He gave a painting demo and the student was illustrating individual paint tubes, labeling them with the recommended colors, and sketching out any other suggested materials. Several days later, during an in-class lecture, I noticed another student using small iconic exemplifications of the material I was discussing.

Consequently, I kept remembering a quote from the book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland: ‘The difference between art and craft lies not in the tools you hold in your hands, but in the mental set that guides them. For the artisan, craft is an end in itself. For you, the artist, craft is the vehicle for expressing your vision. Craft is the visible edge of art.’

Several days ago, as I found myself piercing though the clustered isles of Wal Mart, I noticed a customer’s grocery shopping list that was made out of little doodles. Drawings of vegetables, fruits, drinks, it went on and on.

Observing the visual nature of our mind just never ceases to amaze, regardless of our profession or general understanding of the art field. We urge to draw since the days we crawl out of our crib, so why do we forget it?

Next year, I will have a very small solo show showcasing my sketchbook work here in Richmond, VA and it is my goal to bring back those childhood desires amongst everyday people to start expressing themselves through images as they once did many years ago.

To motivate the viewers, I will have pages of my sketchbooks, framed, accompanied by small journal entries, and a written proposal upon entering the gallery to create a series of 5-10 sketchbook drawings accompanied by writing, which, if chosen, will be exhibited in the next part of the exhibition.

The viewers will have the opportunity to not only show off some of their drawings, but to also write about their experience doing visual journaling, which will be a very interesting social experiment to observe once the many individual persona are portrayed on the walls.

UK-based designer Daniel J Diggle has some beautifully obsessive illustrative work on his site, with nice photos of the beginning sketches and process.

People tend to think we illustrators carry around our sketchbooks everywhere. A confession: I don’t. That is one of the reason why I love looking at other illustrator’s sketchbooks. Virginia-based Tin Salamunic’s sketchbook tells me a bit about an everyday life in Richmond. And his obsession for cars.

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Doug Cowan is an artist’s artist in the purist sense: an illustrator who truly loves his sketchbook. That said, his work is clearly permeated by an overarching sketchbook aesthetic. Cowan doesn’t so much sketch in his book than thoroughly loses himself in it. The result being the most hauntingly beautiful drawings of nature, forlorn figures and everyday ephemera.

I like the sense of escapism in the offbeat work of illustrator, Wacso. By his own admission, his illustrations are ‘all about getting out there and finding cool stuff — a hot dog stand, a cool old building, an old bar, a county fair, a rusted out truck, old people, dogs. Whatever it is you groove on’.