sketcher spotlight
Gabi’s growing ‘ZINE’ store
What appeals to you about this small ‘zine’ format? Sketches printed in zine format feel extra special. If you’d like to create a stronger bond with people who follow your work, they’d appreciate getting a zine from you. It doesn’t have to be a big production. A simple Google image search for “how to make a zine” –here is one – will land you many visual instructions on how to make a small zine just by folding a single sheet of paper. If you enjoy the process, the result of seeing your sketches printed as a mini publication is very gratifying. What was your goal with this project? I love seeing the work of other urban sketchers on social media, but the digital experience of sketches is too fleeting. I’d rather sit down to browse through a real sketchbook or, in its absence, through a publication like a book or a zine. Seeing works of art on paper, especially if they have been reproduced in actual size, is as close as you get to holding the real work in your hands. My goal with the zines has been making people feel as if they were browsing through my own pocket sketchbook. How did you get started? My first zine was simply titled 2021 Travel Sketches. It included sketches from trips I was lucky to take in 2021 after pandemic travel restrictions were lifted. It was 16 pages, with actual-size color reproductions of eight spreads from my pocket sketchbook. I only printed 100 copies, customizing each by adding a splash of watercolor to the cover. When I offered it for free to subscribers of my mailing list (about 600 people back in January), all the copies were claimed fast, which was really exciting.
SIMPLE ‘DO-IT-YOURSELF’ ZINES ARE A GREAT WAY OF GETTING YOUR SKETCHES OUT TO A WIDER AUDIENCE, AS USK FOUNDER GABI CAMPANARIO DISCOVERED
44 drawing attention
My most recent zine focuses on sketches drawn with ballpoint pen. It is 24 pages, including a brief writeup about the history of ballpoint pens and why I enjoy using them. This zine required more effort and investment on my part so I have offered it for $10 on my website to be able to recover the cost. My mailing list subscribers got a discount. Both zines are the size of my pocket sketchbook, 3.5” by 5.5” inches, with round corners to make them look like the original notebooks. How did you make your zines? These are not the kind of do-it-yourself, handwritten and xeroxed publications that proper zines are supposed to be, because I used software to design them and had them printed and stapled at a local commercial printer. As a former newspaper designer and art director, I couldn’t resist the
