I took a break from the cards and went back to sketchbooks. Sketchbooks are exciting, and they keep me motivated to sketch because they represent an ongoing project which increases in value with every new sketch.

But the bigger the sketchbook, the less likely it will be used -- at least for me. This is why I've mainly preferred cheap thin spiral bound 3X5 sketchbooks that fit in my pocket. Because they were always there when I needed them, I found myself sketching more.

Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and I had been cheating myself out of a rich gratifying experience that comes with using good watercolor paper.

So I ordered the Stillman & Birn Alpha Softcover pocket-size sketchbook. Finally I had great watercolor paper in a portable size that fits in my back pocket. Here are some subway sketches done in my new sketchbook.

In this first sketch of a row of communters sitting in a row, these people weren't actually sitting together. I drew the closest person the first day, and drew the person sitting in that same seat the next day, placing him or her beside yesterday's model. So this sketch took four days to complete, and I added the dates above each model.

For the next two-page spread I decided to use brush and ink (Platinum Weasel Hair Brush Pen with Platinum Carbon Ink cartridge) for line variation, close off each area like a stained glass window, and then give each area a slightly different hue. I thought the results were interesting.

As I've written before, sketching in my life is like a pendulum. After I finished these subway sketches, I stopped sketching regularly and didn't come back to it for two years. When the pendulum did swing back again -- and it always does -- I opened this sketchbook and decided to try something different which turned out to be a great idea.

Sleeping Students

I work as a teacher at a local junior and senior high school here in Tokyo as a native English-speaker. The pay isn't great, but I love the work because I love interacting with the students; they keep me young! I have sketched some of the students in the past, but discovered that they are usually too "squirmy" to stay still for more than a few seconds. Some students have asked me to sketch them while they study during their free study time, but the poses are usually a bit stiff and uninteresting -- and they end up squirming anyway.

But recently I have stumbled upon an excellent way to sketch students. I always teach in a team with a Japanese teacher. Sometimes I'm the dominant teacher with the Japanese teacher interpreting and expounding in Japanese, and sometimes the Japanese teacher is dominant while I stand in the background and help out with pronunciation. In some classes, the Japanese teacher lectures about grammar which invariably puts a number of students to sleep.

So I decided to sketch some of the sleeping students while the other teacher is lecturing. I wish I had thought of this years ago.

Now, I must say in all fairness that the sleepers are usually limited to a few students, and this is no reflection on my school. Students are the same everywhere and will sleep in class. I avoided sketching the "nodders" because they were trying to stay awake, and would soon snap out of it. But it's easy to tell from the pose which students are going into hybernation mode for the long haul. Still, no sketch took more than a few minutes, which is more than the average train communter pose. And I only managed one sketch per lesson at the most. I am supposed to be teaching after all...

For watercolor, I used my business card case palette which I describe on this page. Apparently some wise folks had the same idea (whether from my website or from their own genius, I don't know) and have produced a similar business card case watercolor palette which uses magnets to hold the pans in place.

Making these things is such a hassle, I think next time I will order one of theirs rather than make my own. I wish people would take all of my ideas and turn them into products for sale. I'm not driven enough to do it, and the only reason I come up with these ideas in the first place is because I could not find them for sale anywhere. I'd rather buy them than invent them if I could.

As for the sketchbook itself, I absolutely love this Stillman & Birn Alpha Softcover pocket-size sketchbook with Alpha paper. I think it is the ultimate sketchbook for me. My only concern was that the corners might eventually wear a hole in my back pocket the way I've seen smartphones do. This sketchbook is fairly thick, and I wish that it had only half as many pages. So I started to consider my options.

I thought about going back to the cheap spiral bound pocket sketchbooks, but Stillman & Birn had spoiled me; I couldn't go back to sketching in watercolor on cheap paper again.

Back to the binder

My softcover sketchbook was half filled by this time, so I decided to take the second half and trim the pages down to standard 3x5 inch size and punch holes and put them into my 6-ring pocket-size binder. This way I could have the quality of Stillman & Birn Alpha paper in a more portable size that wouldn't wear a hole in my back pocket.

I also rounded the corners of the pages with a round corner punch because it looks so classy!

My mini ring binder with wonderful Stillman & Birn Alpha paper

And one added advantage of this ring binder is that it looks like I'm simply taking notes, which might give some students cause for concern until they come up after class to see what I've been writing. I get lots of happy comments when they see the sketch, and the sleeping model is not quite sure how to respond: thrilled at having been sketched or guilty for having been caught sleeping.

As for my partner teachers, most are as eager as the students to see my most recent sketch.

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