Author: Martin Salisbury
304 pages

Explore the creative process with iconic and emerging illustrators through selections from their sketchbooks.
This inspiring collection is an ode to the power and possibilities of the sketchbook. It features the journal pages of sixty artists from around the world and across history, including nostalgic favorites like Jean de Brunhoff, Tove Jansson, and Beatrix Potter and contemporary icons like Beatrice Alemagna, Oliver Jeffers, and Shaun Tan.

Curator Martin Salisbury draws on decades of experience as an illustrator and educator to shed light on the lives and work of each artist. A treasury of rough sketches, note-filled margins, collaged pages, color explorations, and thumbnail drawings reveals the importance of the journal in the artmaking process. Some sketchbooks are works of art in themselves, while others showcase playful ideas and happy accidents. This beautifully designed anthology offers readers a glimpse into the raw imagination at the heart of stories and characters treasured across generations.

INTERNATIONAL ROSTER OF ARTISTS: This collection includes the sketchbooks of a diverse range of illustrators hailing from the United States, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, China, Japan, and South Korea. In addition to the engaging work of newer illustrators like Takako Aoki and Victoria Tentler-Krylov, the book features famous artists like Herg, Edward Gorey, and Tomi Ungerer and the sketches behind their iconic characters and stories.

RARELY-SEEN ART: Featuring private sketchbook pages, this book offers a fascinating look into the minds of illustrators and their boundless imaginations.

INSPIRING GIFT BOOK: This beautiful hardcover is a perfect gift for artists, illustrators, designers, and anyone interested in creative expression. It will inspire readers to explore the techniques of world-famous artists and embrace their own brainstorming process.

Perfect for:

Artists, illustrators, and designers
Fans of classic and contemporary illustrators
Collectors of illustrated children’s books
Readers of beloved books by profiled illustrators, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Story of Babar, Moomin, The Adventures of Tintin, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Day the Crayons Quit, The Arrival, Cyclops of Central Park, and many more
Art students and recent graduates
Anyone looking for creative inspiration

Author: Martin Salisbury
304 pages

A treasure trove of visual delights: examples of the sketchbooks of sixty international illustrators offer new insights into their artistic practice.

Intimate and often unseen, the sketchbook means something different to each illustrator. It might be a beautiful object, a work of art in its own right, where every line is painstakingly considered. It might be a pictorial playground, where mistakes can make art. The boundaries between sketchbooks, notebooks and visual journals are often blurred, lending to the creativity that fills their pages.

It is likely that you will recognize many of the illustrators featured, including classic childhood favourites Beatrix Potter, Jean de Brunhoff, Edward Ardizzone and Tove Jansson, and established names such as Beatrice Alemagna, Oliver Jeffers and Shaun Tan. Others are up-and-coming, for example Charlotte Ager and Leah Yang. Martin Salisbury draws on decades of experience as an illustrator and educator to shed light on the lives and work of each artist. He even reveals pages from his own sketchbooks, exposing the rawness of his ideas and the narratives that surround them. As the reader will discover, sketchbooks are often a fascinating and surprising window into the mind of the illustrator.