Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Coming soon: Free digital sketchbook



Hey everyone,

Do you like seeing artist's sketcbhooks? Yeah, me too!

So for those of you who'd want a peek into my sketchbooks, I'm planning to make a free downloadable sketchbook available some time in June. I want to keep it simple, a PDF with a bunch of high resolution scans of my work for you to enjoy. No strings attached.

The digital sketchbook will be around 15 to 20 pages, and hopefully released every two to three months. My plan is to lead up to a print version with material not in the digital versions.

Still looking into the best way to host the file and make it easy to download, as it may be fairly large. . So in the meantime if any of you web-savy folks out there have a favorite site for hosting files for free then let me know in the comment section.

Best, Mike

12 comments:

L Jamal Walton said...

Google just released Google Drive, so that may be a way to go.

Mike Hawthorne said...

Hmm, true. Is it easy to share some public files, and keep others private?

Will Sliney said...

Great idea Mike!

Unknown said...

Check out the Behance network, Mike. Reputable and well marketed, http://www.behance.net

Anthony Diecidue (dee-etch-eh-doo-eh) said...

Hey Mike! I look forward to seeing the sketchbook. Love your stuff! DeviantArt.com has a some called Stash for hosting any kind of files you want up to 2GBs. All the files are private until you either publish it to your DeviantArt gallery or give out the link. It's a really easy interface.

Unknown said...

Good idea, thank you!

Mike Hawthorne said...

Will - Thanks! Just hope it goes off without a hitch, and everyone enjoys it :-)

Christen - Ok, I will. Do they host big files?

Anthony - DA, huh?! Wow, I had no idea! I'm already a member, so that might be a sweet idea. Is it free?

Claudio - Thank you! Hope you enjoy it!

Unknown said...

Mike, the only stipulations I have seen are that the images must be a minimum of 202 x 158px, and no larger than 5MB (RGB). Behance will let you create multiple projects within which you can upload your images. There are easy mechanisms for you and viewers to promote your work on social networks, and once you've uploaded your work they have an interface for tracking stats too.

It seems that the only constraint their free service is subject to is that you have to use their portfolio template, which I think is clean and unobtrusive (so not a big deal). They do offer a paid portfolio service with a click+drag template customizer for $99/yr. Not a bad price, but the features of the free service would do just fine if you're not concerned about having a custom template for your project spaces.

Mike Hawthorne said...

Thanks a ton! Very helpful info. Sounds really good, but the size limit may be a problem. Pretty sure the magazine/sketchbook will be mroe than 5 megs. Still, I'm going to check it out.

Kinda leaning towards Deviant Art's Stash or Google's Drive. Both have larger limits on space, and may work well.

Again, thanks for all the info :-)

Unknown said...

That 5MB limit is per image, not cumulative. Beyond that, I see no limit on the number of images you can upload. There are certainly a number of options out there, depending on the format you want to present in.

Definitely looking forward to seeing your work, wherever it ends up!

Patrick said...

Dang, I go on vacation and have my computer crash and come back to this news! Makes it so much better.

Might also be able to look into Dropbox as well! So looking forward to it. Hopefully you have some upcoming time to get a printed version out there. Gladly provide $$$ for that.

Mike Hawthorne said...

Pat, sorry to hear about your crash! That sucks.

I do plan on a print sketchbook, just want to float these out there first.

Thanks!