Her sketchbook from last year chronicles her journey through her mastectomy and chemotherapy. Take the case of Lydia Vltolas from Wichita, US, who was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2013. The crowd-sourced library of doodles, drawings, and scribbles features works on light themes such as the greatest story every told, a list of ex-lovers and favourite songs, as well as subjects such as revenge, loss, grieving and death. Another interesting addition is a mobile library, a food truck which travels with many of these completed sketchbooks, and annually exhibits them in cities across the US and other countries. The digital library on their website is a virtual extension of the Brooklyn Art Library, containing 17,118 complete scanned contributions to the project. The enrollment process for the process is simple: sign up on The Sketchbook Project website (and receive a Moleskine notebook for a fee ($28 or Rs 1,800). What started out with merely 500 entries in its first year has amassed nearly 33,823 sketchbooks in less than a decade, from countries such as Croatia, Argentina, South Africa, Japan, Dubai and many more. At the time of inception, he didn’t have any clue where the initiative would lead them and about its far-reaching consequences. They weren’t going to be among those who would end up selling their works to museums and have big shows,” he says. I knew there were others like me who felt the same way. “I knew I was never going to be a professional artist, I wasn’t that good, but I still wanted to create.

Frustrated by the traditional gallery system, he realised that he didn’t want to “create art for art’s sake”.

Conceptualised by two art students Steven Peterman and Shane Zucker in 2006, the project began when Peterman, 29, was a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta.

With contributions from artists from 135 countries, The Sketchbook Project is a constantly evolving library of sketchbooks and is fuelled by creative people of all ages, from all walks of life.

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Sketchbook mobile express