I've been working away in my Sketchbook Project book, creating hand-drawn patterns over watercolor — and trying to get it finished before the return deadline. 

If you're not familiar with the Sketchbook Project, it's a cool initiative run by the Brooklyn Art Library where you sign up, they send you a sketchbook (which you can use as-is or re-bind like I've done). You fill it with your art, collage, drawing, whatever you like really, and you can choose to follow a theme or just see where your creativity takes you. Then you send it back to them before the deadline and it goes on a mobile sketchbook tour, around the USA and the world, the following year. People who visit it on the tour can 'check out' your book from their little mobile libary and look through it. Then after the tour your book goes to live in the Art Library where you can visit it (and thousands of others) whenever you're in the neighborhood. 

I've been doing the project for years, since I lived back in Australia, and am completely in love with it. The first time you have to send your book back it can be a little sad because you feel like you're saying goodbye to something you worked so hard on, but then once you start seeing other people enjoying your work, it becomes really fun. Plus you can go visit it anytime you happen to be in Brooklyn, so it's not really 'gone'. 

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