Unbounded

My Word of the Year for 2025

Unbounded possibilities . . .

As I have said before, New Years Day is my favorite holiday. There is a sense of having a new platter on which to arrange the varied pieces of my life. Also, it has always worked out, even in the retail gallery business, that the first weeks of January are a nothing zone. There is nothing I am really required to do.

This leaves me to putter amongst a thousand what-ifs. Because I have shiny object syndrome, all of these seem like a good idea - for awhile. Then, I second guess myself, until another good idea comes along. Is it like riding the crazy train? It is.

There is always a reason to do something, and there is always a reason not to. We weigh these reasons against a background of shoulds, shouldn’ts, unknown outcomes, and flights of fancy. We do this in order to get permission from ourselves to do the “something” we feel inclined to try.

“Permission” was my word for 2025. But I really want to quit asking, and just do.

So, I changed my 2025 Word to “Unbounded”. I will be doing (or at least trying to do) a few of those “somethings’.

Here is a big one . . .

I am going to make this Substack newsletter the focus of my online art life. I no longer feel like posting anything to the Meta - verse. more about that in another post.

In ancient times of my life online, I published a free online art magazine called “Now What? and a newsletter called “Whatever . . .Whenever”. They were just what they sound like - fun, creative, and interesting. They had thousands of subscribers.

This newsletter is called “Sketching My Life”, which is not quite as catchy, but it will also be fun, creative, and interesting. And I hope we grow to thousands of subscribers.

I live in a major art center (Santa Fe, NM). I have three young Huskies and two cats, I am an avid gardener, a lifelong road-tripper, an art teacher, an artist in four mediums (mainly), a person who hates to cook and clean, and I invent things. All that makes for lots of interesting stuff as I “Sketch My Life” - sometimes visually, and sometimes with words as I tell my stories.

I will be keeping this a free subscription, and hope that support comes in building a community I actually want to hang out in, good feedback from you, and support for some of the things I make - as in buying them, for example.

I won’t have a publishing schedule, but it will be more often than it has been for sure. This kind of content is only lively when It comes to me - and that is when I’ll be sending it to you. If it turns out to be too often, you can complain.

The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before. -Neil Gaiman

And I have.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Every time I come up with a new thing, it is because there is something I wish I had that doesn’t exist. I make it exist.

I have been a sketchbook artist for more than 20 years now. There are obstacles to crawl over in the sketchbooking process that occur again and again. I approach many of these in my “Foolproof” sketchbooking classes, and have offered solutions to some.

The biggest one that gets in my way is maintaining sequence. Like in a travel sketchbook, it is almost impossible to keep up with your pages and still enjoy the trip. So, spontaneous sketching is thwarted when you don’t know which page to work on -because you don’t know how many pages to leave blank for yesterday or the day before.

A couple years ago, on a long roadtrip with a friend, I tried a new idea. I cut up smaller pieces of the same paper as my bound sketchbook, and carried them in a card case in my purse. Along with a pencil. Instead of taking my sketchbook into a restaurant, for example, I would take the card case and sketch things on the table, on my plate, hanging from the ceiling, etc. Later, I would ink and paint the sketch and put it in my sketchbook like a photo. Here’s an example. The piece with the fan and wine glass was incorporated days later when that day’s spread was done.

That was a successful idea. My friend asked me awhile back what I had ever done with it. She felt it had been the beginning of something great to come. Since then, I have been working to develop that thing-to-come and here it is - The Unbounded Sketchbook . . .

The Unbounded Sketchbook comes in a lovely hinged tin (4.25” x 7” x .5”), which contains 15 sheets of 140lb 100% Cotton Watercolor Paper (Cold Press), a mini mechanical pencil with white eraser and extra lead, and a waterproof black ink mini ballpoint. The whole thing weighs only 7 ounces. These pages don’t get glued into other books - they become a “book” with a tin cover!

This watercolor paper has been chosen (after much research) because it will take large washes and still dry completely flat again.

I took my Unbounded Sketchbook on a virgin run when I went to Arizona in August. it was perfect in every way.

Pages can be done in any order and be rearranged as necessary. You can work on both sides. These pages are all covered front and back. And, you can change the page orientation at will. Work landscape or portrait - it doesn’t matter.

The 4” x 6” sheet size means that photos and postcards and other ephemera can easily be kept in the tin with the pages.

The tin can be closed and used as a tiny lap desk or you can even sketch standing up.

Since taking these photos, I have added a clear plastic sleeve to the cover so that our label can easily be replaced with a custom cover of yours.

I have produced twenty of these so far that I can share. If they are successful, I will certainly make more. Up to three can ship in a single Priority Mail box.

You can find Unbounded Sketchbooks at this link

https://www.jessicawesolek.com/shops.html

And you can find my Foolproof Sketchbook Classes on Skillshare and under Online Classes at same link as the Sketchbooks

Until next time,

jessica