Start in your own backyard

[Amy]

Thus far most of the Artbook Coalition efforts seem to be based in the US. Rather than whine about the sketchbooks being so far away, I've decided to take Eric's advice and simply start one here. It's no real drama to relocate my daily doodles to a more mobile sketchbook. I'm concerned that it'll be slow to circulate, as I left my art community back in Australia last year and haven't had much luck infiltrating new ones here. However, if desperation strikes, I can faithfully send my artbook back to the land of Oz, where I know able artists await.

With all that decided, this weekend's mission is selecting a sketchbook from Loft, the young person's department store. I favour heavy cartridge for sketching, but it drinks the ink from　my copics like there's no tomorrow. We'll see what I end up with. Meanwhile, watching the progress of the other books has been highly satisfactory.

The post date system for this blog is a little crazy-town-messed-up for me, being in a different time zone, but I'll just leave it as EST to save confusion. For the record, it is in fact 10:52AM on July 6th.

[Eric Terry]

I see! That is very cool. I was in Kyoto earlier this year, and as much as I loved it, I felt it would be difficult to ever live there without knowing Japanese (not that I'd mind learning...). So it's cool that they've got this type of stuff. Makes sense.

[Amy]

Most regions in japan have several publications directed at foreigners (gaijin) living in japan. As I'm in Kyoto, mine is Kansai Scene. I posted a request for artists in the announcements section in the classifieds this morning. For now that just means it's on the website, but who knows, might make it into the print version too.

[Eric Terry]

Man, I can't wait to see how it develops. And I love the theme. There's so much that can come from the thoughts of a foreigner in a new place, an outsider looking in. It's a viewpoint that's always fascinated me. So what's with this gaijin magazine? I'm not sure I understand...?

[Amy]

Thanks muchly :3 I went shopping for a sketchbook yesterday, but couldn't find what I was looking for. I'll try again next weekend. The problem of the catridge sketchbooks is that they have so few pages D:

I've already decided that this book will be titled 'home'. It seems appropriate living as a foreigner in Japan. I've put out the call to other artists via the local gaijin magazine, so lets hope something turns up. In the meantime, I'll make a start, and send you some photos once I have something to show.

[Eric Terry]

As soon as you get it up and running make a new discussion for it in the forum. It'll be book 4, but you can call it whatever you like as far as the title. Then I'll leave you in charge of managing the artist lineup for the book via that discussion. SO EXCITED!