Book38

Der Geist Des Rokoko
spring 2010 - october 2010
9 x 13 cm

Cover of sketchbook 38: a misty black-and-white photo of a Japanese garden framed in Kodak TX film-box edges, collaged over torn German book pages with red initials

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Sketchbook 38 spread in ballpoint: a park path curving under trees toward a small stone bridge, an empty bench in dappled shade

Sketchbook 38, first spread: a graphite study of an old tree's crossing branches over water, drawn dense and silvery against a blank left page

Sketchbook 38 fold-out: aquarium jellyfish in sepia and violet wash pulsing across two panels, beside a dark rooftop against a pink dusk

Sketchbook 38 spread: pencil towers — the Oudenaarde town hall dome, a crenellated castle brushed dark on pink ground, and Bologna's leaning towers with swallows

Sketchbook 38 spread, Oudenaarde: a face rising behind watercolor foliage, gothic church windows, and a pencil driver seen in a car's wing mirror

Sketchbook 38 spread in watercolor: magenta coneflowers with drooping petals at left, a bank of pink valerian against dark hedge at right

Sketchbook 38 spread in watercolor: pale garden flowers in blues and reds, a spiky globe thistle, and red blooms — noted 'Gonks garden'

Sketchbook 38 spread: a great cedar in the botanic garden, dark boughs in ink and wash spreading over water, small figures picnicking beneath

Sketchbook 38 fold-out in pencil: a Ryanair seatback tray, the wing over a coastline near Bologna, and a neighbor thumbing a phone — 'airplane to Bologna'

Sketchbook 38 spread, 'The Roof view': a chimney and a patch of green moss and lichen spreading across pale roof slope in watercolor

Sketchbook 38 spread: the roof view again — a sunset skyline in pink and indigo above, and a brick chimney rising through clouds at right

Sketchbook 38 spread: rooftops in watercolor — a mottled brick gable at left, storm clouds and a dark slate roof-line against blue at right

Sketchbook 38 spread: Prague Castle and St Vitus's spires in loose watercolor, red rooftops dissolving into wash below a blue sky

Sketchbook 38 spread in charcoal: the gothic buttresses and pointed windows of St Vitus close up, and a small sketch of Charles Bridge arches over the river

Sketchbook 38 spread: charcoal sketches of the blackened statues on Charles Bridge, birds swarming around a saint's head

Sketchbook 38 spread: a lattice footbridge at Schwanau crossing between mossy cliffs and firs, all in soft grey-green watercolor

Sketchbook 38 spread: a Tyrolean pine hillside in plum-dark wash, kettles sketched beneath — 'Gutshof zum Schluxen, Austria. Wir freuen uns auf Ihren Besuch!'

Sketchbook 38 spread: a night-blooming flower in pencil, pale petals reserved against a darkened star-flecked ground

Sketchbook 38 fold-out: a pencil still life of a Pelikan Fount India ink bottle lying on its side beneath the curve of a banana

Sketchbook 38 fold-out: a quince studied twice — in soft graphite lying on its side, and in saturated watercolor hanging yellow against green

Sketchbook 38 spread in pencil: a glass of tea, its bag slumped beside it on a crumpled napkin — 'tea, Ronse(?)'

Inside back cover of sketchbook 38: a sun-bleached Polaroid self-portrait among bare branches, hair falling over the face, taped beside a German page on 18th-century literature

Back of sketchbook 38 and its spine: marbled green paper under a black inked cloud, leather corners, spine strips reading 'Der Geist des Rokoko'