As the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the globe, people all around the world began locking themselves inside their homes. They felt protected there. After all, everyone has a go-to safe place. As kids it can be under a blanket, as adults that safe place is your home. But a place doesn’t always have to be confined to a physical space you can enter. Sometimes places are abstract, they are an escape for the mind, and that escape, for an artist, can be their sketchbook.
A sketchbook is somewhere where an artist feels safe to experiment, where they try new things, without any pressure or the fear of being judged. In a sketchbook an artist is free to make mistakes, to play, to lay down any masks they wear during the day. Sketchbooks are never perfect, because they aren’t created with the purpose of being published or even shared most of the time. A visual journey through something so intimate and personal can really change your perspective and surprise you, even if you’re not an artist.
And this is exactly what the THU Sketchbook series does. With 24 episodes of pure inspiration through the sketchbooks of artists like Iain McCaig, Kim Jung Gi, Claire Wendling, Karla Ortiz, and Scott Eaton, this series will take you on an unexpected journey of self-discovery.
Thanks to its partnership with Lenovo and NVIDIA, THU is now ready to release all episodes of this successful show for free on its YouTube channel, but not all at once, sadly for binge-watchers. Each episode needs time to sink into your mind, which is why we will release one every Friday until September 18. The first episode, featuring Jeremy Mann, is already available. And you don’t have to be an artist in order to let your mind roam freely and your creativity foster.
This is perhaps the most common misconception relating to sketchbooks: that they are just for the artist themself, or at the most, for other artists seeking inspiration. A sketchbook is a lot more than that, and the THU Sketchbook series is a testimony to this fact. Watching a Sketchbook episode is like looking at a painting: you never know what you will find or what it will mean to you, but it will teach you something you didn’t know before.
The Sketchbook series is about how art is made, but also about how a person comes into being, how the experiences of their life shape them and make them who they are, how what they see, feel, and think every day reflects in their art.
This exceptional insight into the creative mind at work teaches us that art is just as much about the process than the final product. The Sketchbook series distinguishes itself because its protagonists are both the subjects and the hosts of the show. While the artist searches for what works best for them in terms of their approach to art and the creative process, talking the viewer through the pages of their sketchbook, they are invited to examine their obsessions, dig into their memories, and come face to face with their former selves. Their identity emerges and evolves throughout and so does the viewer’s.
No show had ever managed to capture an artist’s depths, contradictions and perspective like this before, which is what makes Sketchbook a must-watch. The quarantine forced us to spend a lot of time alone, getting to know ourselves and rediscovering our passions, but this series will soon make you realize that there’s still many things you don’t know about yourself and, if you’re willing, we can discover them together.
