Following on from my completion of process books in May of this year (here), I undertook to make some sketchbooks that I could use with my newfound skills. These I completed in late May and early June to tag along with me as I did some travelling around Europe.
Unlike a "proper" book, there turned out to be a lot of advantages to making my own sketchbooks. I needed a new watercolour sketchbook, and when searching for such a book that is affordable one becomes quite limited in terms of paper selection as well as format. It is also rare to find a sketchbook that will lay flat without resorting to a hideous spiral-ring binding. Combining all that with a hardcover? Apparently out of the question.
Paper
I started with the paper, and after some deliberation decided to go with Khadi A3 size sheets at 320 gsm. Khadi paper is 100% cotton and has a reputation for being able to soak up a lot of water.
This would turn out to be a bit of a mistake. While the paper certainly was able to soak up whatever I threw at it, I found it to be far too rough for my liking. Penciling in roughs, and particularly inking, prior to applying watercolours, became quite troublesome for me and it took some time to get used to adapting the approach that I had developed from my previous sketchbook.
Without any concerns about printing, the bookmaking process is extremely simplified. The book format is limited only by the size of paper that one is able to source. I settled on an A5 landscape format for my watercolour sketchbook. While this format is common and therefore rather unexciting, it meant that I could maximize the number of pages and the size of pages I could get from the A3 sheets. I also reasoned that once laid flat, I could make sketches that spanned the gutter, giving a more appealing wide format aspect ratio where appropriate. I cut the A3 sheets in half, yielding two long strips per sheet. The Khadi paper has deckled edges, but my cuts were clean, leading to a combination of rough and smooth edges. I decided to leave the rough edges as they were, rather than trying to size everything down to obtain uniformly clean edges.
With the strips cut, I carefully noted the midpoint on each sheet - a task made difficult and necessarily imprecise owing to the deckled edges on the sides of the strips - and then used a bone folder to score the fold line.
Once I had a signature of pages folded and nested I repeated the process. As is typical, I used sixteen page signatures (four folded sheets nested inside each other). In bookmaking I found the need to sometimes employ an odd signature consisting only of twelve pages to get the correct page count, but with the sketchbooks the page count is basically arbitrary.
With the signatures ready and stacked, I prepared them for binding, placing them between the pieces of greyboard that I had cut to size.
For the other sketchbook I opted to go for a more notebook-style portrait orientation and to go narrower than the A5 format. This meant trimming the pages along an additional edge, so that only one edge remained deckled.
Covers
Unlike with the process books that I previously made, I wanted some sort of graphic design for the covers. For the designs themselves I wanted something that referred to geography. I decided to do urban maps for the portrait sketchbook and a more topographical one for the landscape one.
For the portrait sketchbook I started with google maps of the cities of London and Berlin with the labels removed and simply screen-captured them. I then edited the images in PhotoShop to give a stark black-on-white look. As the images were not high enough resolution for print quality, I brought them into Adobe Illustrator and used the image trace function, smoothing out the linear details.
I printed the designs out onto sugar paper, which provided a soft cream background colour and a slightly rough or fuzzy texture. For the landscape book I experimented with google map data and made some covers using aerial data of Qubec, but I found the result to be unsatisfactory. I ended up digging a little deeper before coming upon some beautiful topographical data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). I found the look I wanted in some 1919 maps of California.
These too I printed on sugar paper. Fortunately the USGS data is available at high enough resolution for printing, which spared me from having to further edit the images.
With the cover designs settled and the greyboard cut to size, I set about gluing them on. Building on my previous experience making process books, I applied the glue using a brush, giving a thinner and more even application.
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With coptic-stitch binding - the binding method I had chosen for these books - I wouldn't be gluing the signatures to the inside covers, instead the thread would continue through the hardcovers. As such I went ahead with gluing some sheets on the inside covers.
Binding
My previous attempts at bookbinding with my process books had left much to be desired so I was determined to improve on this going forward. I saw coptic stitch binding as a way to hold the signatures more tightly and remove the loose cohesion between the covers and the pages that plagued the process books while enabling the books to lay flat. One significant improvement I made was to acquire some thick bookbinding thread which would prove necessary for the heavy stock paper as well as the covers, and a set of bookbinding needles. It's hard to overstate how much easier the binding process went by employing more appropriate tools.
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In the end the coptic stitching worked out remarkably well. The sketchbooks remained sturdy and flexible, with none of the issues that plagued my earlier process books. The key drawback to this binding method is the exposed spine and the thread running through the covers, which might be seen as aesthetically unpleasing to those wanting a more finished and polished appearance. In the context of a sketchbook, I quite like the "rough-and-ready" appearance that it bestows, although for a printed book I think its uses are more limited.
Conclusion
The sugar paper covers didn't quite work out as I had hoped as repeated use tended to wear down the edges and the printed designs quickly became faded and worn at those edges while the choice of paper proved inappropriate for my preferred use cases. In spite of these issues I was fairly pleased with the overall result. Bookmaking offers a lot of advantages for making a sketchbook, particularly one where the choice of paper is important. Sketchbooks are also one of those cases where the format can become quite important, yet sourcing a specific format can become difficult. I expect that I will make my next watercolour sketchbook as well rather than buying one.
