Sketchbook Club: 1. Hannah Hinchman

The first in a weekly series from Sketchbook Skool co-Founder, Danny Gregory.

This week's books:

All by Hannah Hinchman
• A Trail Through Leaves: The Journal as a Path to Place

By Danny Gregory

Hannah Hinchman's "Scale of Journals":
On one end is the Informational journal, the true naturalist’s field journal. It concentrates on the quantifiable and identifiable, gathering names, facts, and observations with an impartial thoroughness. It contains drawings, but they are meant to be explanatory. There is little room for the personal in this kind of journal, though I admire it for the valuable role it serves in adding to the body of knowledge.
On the other end of the scale is the Reflective journal. It’s purely personal, mostly concerned with human-generated culture, investigations of the psyche, relationships, responses to art and writing, dreams, memories”as in Anais Nin’s diaries. The self is the subject rather than the world. The art in this journal might look more like William Blake’s paintings.
In between the two poles are two other kinds of journals that have become more and more central to my interest. The first is the Investigative: It documents the outer world, but includes many unmeasurable and unnamed phenomena, like the effects of light, ways the seasons change, patterns and textures in nature. It goes outside the categories of the Informational journal and finds links between apparently dissimilar things. Thus it includes more of the person making it, because it’s up to that person to invent new categories. Art in this journal would look more like what we find in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks.
The other is the Resonant journal, so called because it acts as the place of interweaving between the person and the world. Curiosity extends both inward and outward: You are a naturalist on the trail of your own life, and you search for insights in the more-than-human world as well as the human. These two kinds of journals, as embodied in Goethe and Thoreau, seem to me the richest of all. The art included in them might look like anything from Albrecht Durer to Paul Klee.

[angelreading]

Your love of sketchbooks and your passion for people and books makes for a interesting combination, knowledge is so joyful especially when shared with others in this way.

[valerietillman]

I think I’ve enjoyed this lesson the most out of many you’ve presented! Thank you for your generosity here.

[lwadman]

Hello Danny. As a personal friend of the artist, I was happy to see such a glowing review of Hannah's work. I will let her know how you've been touched by her purposeful usage of text, composition and her handwriting.

[gabrielerosa]

Danny what a great teacher are you!! Thanks for sharing your personal library, don't stop doing it please, I love books, and I love drawing and you became an inspiratlon to me (and to thousand people!).

[veronicawu]

Thank you Danny! What impresses me most is actually your genuine amazement and admiration of those journals. I can feel your happiness and enthusiasm. This is really encouraging!

[androandro]

Amazing books !my favorite type with the gorgeous drawings iced with woven thoughts and memories, gonna get them all !thanks for recommending!

[janekirsch]

Thanks for this excellent video - so inspiring...I've been at this for a while now and struggled with trying to keep my journals singularly focused - either just drawing or just writing - now I know I can mix it all up! Great first episode - looking forward to more!!

[roseboss]

Wow, this is fantastic! It's like looking into someone's personal thoughts. How inspiring it is. It appears that her books are out of print now. Love this video and your idea to do sketching book reviews.

[larryglatt]

Any chance of knowing what materials she used or uses, greatly appreciated. Thank you. Received and read this book, started another, she seems more like she is talking about a therapy book plus drawing.

[susanwildt]

I treasure my two Hannah Hinchman books!

[antonschmid]

Hallo danny, i really like your work of this sketchbook club. Would like to see your library of sketchbooks by my own in real life. :)
Do you have an email address?
Greets from austria.