The Open Compositions assignment has always challenged me and I haven’t managed it most of the years I’ve taken this Sketchbook Design course. I understand open corners, overlapping sketches, extending sketches, or “just put things on the page in a random way and have fun.” I just get overwhelmed.
I did two pages and ran out of time. In fairness, these were very time consuming pages. I leaned into the concept of overlapping. I leaned in hard. I ended up with a scattered desk look that I rather like.
Planning Page
I am loving making these planning pages to keep me organized for each lesson. I drew the sample sketchbooks tumbling over each other, each holding its own small watercolor: trees, orange autumn flowers, a sunset, and a few swatch tests. The dark shadows under each book did a lot of the work. They push things forward and back, so the pile reads as a stack instead of a puzzle. The planning wheel sits on top of everything in the corner. It holds the lesson checklist, my workflow list, the livestream dates, and a little October calendar tucked underneath.
Site Q and Trompe-l’œil. (Contains Spoilers for the mystery!)
Site Q is a mystery box from Cosy Killer, and this spread is my notes and cipher key from Box 1. There’s a basecamp map collaged in, a symbol alphabet to crack, and some suspicious numbers that needed a lot of red ink before they gave up their secrets. Sketching my notes instead of just scribbling them on scrap paper made the whole thing feel like I was keeping a real field journal.
This is the spread I’m happiest with. I drew most of the elements to look like paper: ruled notebook sheets, yellow legal pad strips, and torn parchment scraps. It was so much fun! What a great trompe-l’œil effect! Once everything is “paper,” overlapping makes sense, because papers pile up on a desk. The cipher key slides under the number chart, the cipher wheel sits on top of both, and the basecamp map gets shoved into the corner the way real notes do mid-investigation.
The dark green background holds it all together and makes the pale papers pop. And yes, there’s a crossed-out wrong answer in the bottom corner. It stays. That’s what an investigation looks like.
This Site Q mystery has twelve episodes, and the first episode was two full pages in my sketchbook. I’m going to be having a lot of fun! This is my holiday season recreation project this year. I’ll be sharing as I go. (Along with the ink advent calendars again! They have been ordered! Stay tuned. December will be fun!)
What I’m taking away
Overlapping was much less scary once I gave myself a reason for things to overlap. Books in a pile, papers on a desk. If the objects themselves would naturally stack, the page stops fighting me. It’s still time-consuming, but I love the look of it.
Next lesson is the one I consistently struggle with. Designing on the Fly. It isn’t the designing part that gets me. It’s getting out to sketch multiple pages. However, the timing for this is right on Halloween week. I can’t resist leaning into that theme!
