Books for the Desk Set: Sketching & Painting

For this month’s Books for the Desk Set, I decided to focus on books about drawing, sketching and painting. All the books included are books I own this time so they are “Desk-approved” recommendations, if you’re looking for inspiration to draw, sketch or paint. Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces: A Mixed-Media Portrait Workshop by Jane…

Books For The Desk Set: Letter Writing & Epistolary Books for InCoWriMo/LetterMo

Paris Letters ($5.25 for Kindle, $11.87 for paperback) by Janice MacLeod Paris Letters is a travelogue/memoir with a bit of self-help thrown in for good measure. The book was pulled together from the author’s personal journals, blog and letters to become this short book about her journey from a disappointed 30-something copywriter to an expat living…

More Books for the Pen & Paper Set

The Notebooks Hardcover by Jean-Michel Basquiat is a reproduction of pieces from eight of his handwritten notebooks that Jean-Michael Basquiat kept filled with strings of words and phrases and doodles. The book recreates a simple composition notebook and Basquiat’s recognizably 80’s street-style all caps writing style in what looks like a felt tip or Sharpie…

Book Review: Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Collections of the Smithsonian Museum

Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Collections of the Smithsonian Museum by Liza Kirwin is a wonderful peek into the notes, doodles and letters from artists, writers and poets. There are typed notes and handwritten notes, some legible and some unintelligible. Ah, Franz Kline’s grocery list is as unremarkable…