The 2015 Summer Invitational: Pimp Your Sketchbooks, continues with Gayle Kabaker, who lives and works in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. She found her sketchbook chops on a vacation in Bali (above)

I have always tried to be a sketchbook artist. I’ve taken my sketchbook on vacations and it stayed in my suitcase. It just always felt like another thing I SHOULD do. Scanning my drawings and paintings into Photoshop to collage and adjust them is a big part of my process, so drawing from life was not something I did often. 

I teach an online fashion drawing class for the Academy of Art University and the students have a weekly sketchbook assignment. I constantly preach to them how the more you draw from life the better you get, but I was not doing this myself! I finally had a breakthrough while on a yoga retreat with my good friend who owns Exotic Yoga Retreats (see the animation I created for EYR—it got into last year's AI Motion Awards). 

During the first two days of the seven-day retreat in Costa Rica I “looked” at my sketchbook. On day three I finally started drawing. Everything looked pretty crappy but slowly I started to gain confidence and when a few people started to ooh and ahhh, I realized maybe this kind of funky UN-perfect drawing is actually cool! I tried to let go of needing my work to look “good”. It was quite liberating. Then a few of the women on the retreat asked if I’d create a book from my sketchbook drawings and paintings for everyone from the group. The book I created has become a great sample to show for new jobs. (Perfect example of doing what you love leading to great things happening as a result). 

Costa Rica yoga retreat. I tried to do portraits of as many of the women as I could. I also talked to them and heard about their lives. I heard some amazing stories. 

I began to take my sketchbook and fineline ink pens everywhere I went and started to really enjoy drawing all kinds of scenes—out with friends, at the symphony, small concerts, just hanging around the house. But I still wasn’t doing it as a regular practice. Then we went to Bali for three weeks in January 2015. Three weeks was the MAGIC KEY! After one week to get over jet lag and to decompress, I had two whole weeks to draw and paint! Every day I took my bag with my drawing stuff, sunscreen and a towel and wandered around looking for great spots to paint and draw. This usually meant being next to the ocean or a pool and having a cold drink.

I was in HEAVEN. Sometimes I asked people to pose for me, most often I drew them secretly. I love to paint florals and nature and realized that often a simple vase or potted plant could later be turned into a beautiful collage. So a lot of my Bali drawings and paintings were the beginnings of art that I knew I could turn into larger collages later, for my floral poster publisher Editions Limited.

As I explore what a sketchbook can be, this feels like a whole new chapter in my 35 years as an illustrator. I’ve always envied my illustrator friends like James Steinberg who has amazing sketchbooks that have always inspired and blown me away. I’ve been using my sketchbook to draw from life only, now I plan to expand that and get even more creative with it. But my main goal is to just enjoy it and have fun!  

I had so much fun documenting my sisters 50th birthday weekend. Drawing in a sketchbook is also a great way to kind of remove myself from a party if I do not feel like talking. 

It's fun to just be an observer

My (photographer) husband and I are very good at giving each other time for creative travel. The kids are gone and I am ready for traveling to be a big part of my life. “Have sketchbook will travel” is my new motto!

This was on of the first of these kinds of sketchbook collages. I had a great mothers day starting at my favorite spot, my neighbors pond for a dip after my morning jog. I took my breakfast and my sketchbook. These collages later got me a recent job for O magazine. It's a very new style for me and lots of fun to do.

Illustration for O magazine about going into the house of someone who has died and finding out who they are from the stuff they left behind. 

Gayle Kabaker. I've been an illustrator my whole adult life. After graduating from the Academy of Art in San Francisco (I now teach drawing  for their online degree program). I began freelancing and have never stopped. I love coming up with solutions to all types of challenges for illustration and design projects. One of my favorite things to do is to collaborate and make connections – get the right talents together for a project and know that it is the perfect team for the project. Whether it’s a design job, concert, fundraiser, campaign or film, a solid team makes all the difference and recruiting the right folks for any given job is one of the things I do best. Gayle in DART.

CORRECTION: In yesterday's post, Jo Ractliffe's name was incorrectly spelled. Thanks to Janet Borden for the catch!

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