Birth of an Idea......

......Such wavy lines....Probably sketched in a moving car or on the train......LOL.......Wherever, whenever the ideas flow it's nice to have a trusty sketchbook handy!

I have had many sketchbooks come and go in my lifetime.  One that really stands out in my mind is a little one I picked up at the Uffizi Gallery gift shop in Florence Italy.  We had just toured the gallery.  We arrived early and once it opened we raced to the Botticelli room to view "Birth of Venus".  I loved the painting, but the one that really struck a heart chord was "Springtime".  

So ethereal, such a masterpiece in paint.  

Then I saw the little sketchbook with the image on the cover......Nothing fancy, less than 10 Euro, just a nice little souvenir of the day.  It became a favorite and was filled quite a while ago.  I've gone through a "Moleskine" and am now working on a little one I got at the Georgia o'Keefe Museum in Santa Fe.  The small size is pretty wonderful, easy to tuck in a pocket, a purse, etc. 

Fun to look at a sketch and see how it compares to a finished piece.  MUCH easier to engineer and erase a pencil line than tear apart a piece of soldered metal.

Sometimes I freehand it, just start playing with wire or a piece of sheet metal and see where it takes me, but more times than not I am planning out, mapping the next move on paper.  Nice to have a book of ideas to explore.  Sketching.....a Very valuable tool.