Section 13:  Process Recess/Sketchbooks

On your site, the sections displaying your sketchbooks and travel books are a great way to look into your process and to see why you are so good at what you do. How many hours a day (or week) do you find yourself sketching in your books? (i)

Sometimes, I’ll spend a few days on a sketchbook to relax in between deadlines. During art school, I sketched all the time, but it’s been tough finding a good Life Drawing Workshop in west LA.

I was so happy to see the most recent addition to your site - your sketchbook from your visit to Austria. I enjoy reading about the story behind the drawings. I'm curious - What is it that you write on the sketches? (and how did you wind up in Austria?)  (ii)

Thanks Kitty, I'm so glad you like those drawings. The little scribbling on the drawings are just journal entries. If I could, I would write backwards and in Italian, to spare the reader boring tales of love lost. You see, I met this amazing Austrian girl in China the summer of '01. She was very nice, but it didn't work out when I saw her in her a few months later in her native country. While I was there, I spent most of my days alone drawing while she was studying for her law exams. Idle hands and all that...

Process Recess: The Art Of James Jean is your first collection of work, could you tell us a little about the book and what you chose to include? (v)

PR collects my personal work and sketchbooks from the last 5 years: that perilous gap of time from the last couple of years of art school to my first few years working as a freelancer. There are sketchbook pages full of subway drawings, figure studies, and doodles from NY and abroad, ambitious oil paintings, and illustrations from a personal series of images called "Recess." PR represents a very exciting time in my life when I first discovered my powers as an artist, and the possibilities that lay waiting in the pages of my sketchbooks.

How did the 'Recess' series of image begin?  (v)

I started the series after moving to LA. We lived in a small studio apartment with no room to paint, so to continue doing my 'fine art' I started drawing instead. The subject seemed unlimited at the time, and my plan was to do maybe a couple hundred pictures within the same theme. Sadly, I don't have much time to devote the project anymore, but it's always in my thoughts.

(the following is from Jennifer M Contino, posted at comicon.com, 4/29/2005)…

It's been a busy year for the Eisner-nominated Cover Artist James Jean! Along with creating the covers for dozens of comics including Fables, Green Arrow, Machine Teen, Amazing Fantasy, and Batgirl, to name a few; the artist also released through AdHouse Books a collection of his artwork called "Process Recess." He told THE PULSE this handsome edition "is a collection of personal work from the past five years, from my last two years of Art School to my first few years working as a freelancer in New York."


The artist said he's gotten requests for books of his sketches ever since he began his website, but that the timing wasn't right until now. "It finally came together through AdHouse Books," Jean stated. "I’m an illustrator by trade, a comic artist by association, and a painter by aspiration. Process Recess provides a glimpse of the work, thoughts, and training behind the comic covers, since it includes many pages from my days at the School of Visual Arts."

Sketchbooks are great containers for ideas, visions, and visual experiments," continued Jean. "When I travel by myself, sketching is a great way to pass the time at airports and trains. It’s a relaxing and contemplative experience to sit down in a foreign city and observe and draw the surging and ebb of activity. The biggest challenge was to keep my mind free from insecurity and doubt. I find that the best drawings happen when I’m not feeling self-conscious. I wanted to Process Recess to be reminiscent of my sketchbooks, which are all hardcover. The book is 224 full color pages, 7.5" wide by 5" tall, at $25. It made its premier at APE in San Francisco."

Process Recess collects art from Jean's sketchbooks, travels, and other works. It includes pieces from 1999 to 2004. Jean included works from a variety of media including: "Ballpoint pen, watercolor, acrylic, and oil, but I’ve included some illustrations that are finished in Photoshop."

"People have seemed to respond to my sketchbooks in a immediate and personal way, so I almost feel like it's my duty as an artist to share this material," Jean continued. "Originally the book was about 350 pages, so I did quite a bit of editing. Anything that I wasn't absolutely certain about was left on the cutting room floor."

He said many things influenced his work in this volume including his teachers at SVA Jim McMullan, Steve Assael, and Thomas Woodruff. Other influences cited a friend who had a sketchbook of his own that affected Jean. "My friend, Esao Andrews, had an amazing sketchbook while we were at SVA, and that was a big inspiration for me to reevaluate my own work and to start a more personal and ambitious approach to keeping a sketchbook."

"AdHouse did a great job with the book - I have to hand it to Chris Pitzer for crafting such a fine object: five years of my life condensed into a dense brick of art," Jean continued.

Although each piece holds a special place in Jean's heart, he admitted his favorite was from 2000. "The sketchbook from 2000 — that was a very exciting time in my life when I still in school, living in NY, and fearful of the future."

"As a young art student, I was intent on mastering drawing and painting," Jean continued. "Now, the pursuit is about finding something interesting and worthy to say with the tools of the craft."

The front cover is brick red with two children swinging outlined in black. The only other color on the cover is the white in the flowers one of the children is holding. "The image just came to me when I started thinking about the cover to the book," said Jean. "The motif of swings and the act of swinging is something that has developed in my personal work, for reasons I have yet to analyze. Perhaps the white flowers perhaps represent something pure that has yet to be stained by the surrounding pool of red."