For every piece of art brought into the public eye, there are thousands of doodles, sketches, and studies hiding in the sketchbooks of painters, illustrators, and cartoonists. It is a rare treat to see an artist’s playful and uninhibited experiments. The Art of the Sketchbook cracks open the covers of thirty private sketchbooks and reveals the personal work of artists in their more private moments. Travel diaries, life studies, and wildly imaginative cartoons fill these pages, rendered with materials as varied as their subjects. Double-page presentations show the sketchbooks in their raw form, and interviews with the artists provide both context for the images as well as glimpses into the role sketching plays in the artists’ larger bodies of work. The result for the reader is an intimate, behind-the-scenes engagement with process and creation.