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Concertina Sketchbook
Author: Alison Hazel – Updated: April 2025
Concertina Sketchbook: Vancouver Seawall
There are many types of sketchbooks and I’ve spoken about a few here. This week I’m chatting about a fabulous architectural sketchbook which I’ve recently completed and that is a concertina sketchbook. This is not likely to be the first sketchbook you get, but it is definitely a fun one.
Concertina Sketchbook
A concertina sketchbook is one long continuous page folded into a concertina fashion. It has a hard cover at both ends. They are also called accordion sketchbooks, zig zag sketchbooks or continuous sketchbooks.
Video
You can see the process video below .
This is where I talk you through everything that I did to create this special concertina sketchbook.
Sketchbook
Concertina
I ordered my A5 concertina sketchbook from Seawhite on Amazon. It was shipped from the UK and arrived in about four weeks. To be honest, I’d forgotten that I’d ordered it until it arrived. But when it did, oh my…
It has two pages sandwiched together back-to-back and you can draw on both sides if you want to. The paper is watercolor quality so it is super robust for most applications. It comes in a handy dandy cover to contain the spring of it all.

Process
Map and Layout
There may be other ways of using this type of sketchbook, but I’ll tell you how I did it. I live in Vancouver and the city lies on a peninsular with water on 60% of the sides. To help you understand what I sketched, here is a map of the Vancouver city peninsular. You can see that there is a lot of coast that wraps around the downtown core. The rest of Vancouver and the suburbs is south or below.

Topic Selection
I decided to draw the whole sea scape, sea wall and or promenade of the coast looking outwards as seen from the city side of the water. There are multiple bridges and these were how I initially paced the pages in the layout. I’m drawing it clockwise from the Science World sphere and choosing only certain features to add. The arrangement of the pages took some time as I wanted the flow to be as balanced as possible.
Concertina Path
The red dotted line shows the path that aligns with the concertina pages. I’m on the mainland looking out towards the sea.

Pencil Sketch
Layout
First, I sketched out the layout for the coast with my 2H pencil.
Front Page
I left room for an open page at the front, like a frontispiece page, and here I wrote the year I started it, 2024.
Back Page
I only finished it in 2025 so I wrote that date there. I still have some more thoughts to write and these ideas will go on the back page.
Black Pen
Thin to Thicker
When I was happy with the penciled layout, I began inking the drawing. I started with a very thin 0.1mm pen to lightly get the outline of horizon and the hills across the water. Then I moved onto a 0.3mm pen for the foreground bridges, the lighthouse and the other main structures along the coast. For some buildings very close up I used a thicker 0.5mm pen.
The penning took ages and I did it over several weeks as I was not rushing at all. After I was happy with the inking, I erased all the pencil marks.

Colored Ink
I began with colored acrylic inks. I used my Windsor and Newton inks. Inks are less forgiving than watercolors, but I wanted to practice more with this medium. I’d done other ink sketches and swatches before. I began with the lightest colors first and I began on the sea.
I used:
- Blue
- Emerald
- Cobalt
I thinly washed the whole book on the sea part using a combination of the three inks colours which I have, emerald, cobalt and blue. Then I spread the whole thing out to dry.

Pages
Structure
In my sketchbook, I designed it so that each open double spread contains one specific feature be it a bridge, boat, the lighthouse or the nin o’clock gun. I made sure to run each double spread image over the edge of the page, so you are encouraged to turn the page or indeed open up the concertina to see the whole picture. In this way it become an interactive book and like an adventure.

Ideas for Using a Concertina Sketchbook
Horizontal Drawing
Ideally a concertina sketchbook lends itself to a long horizontal drawing. Some examples of this are:
- You could do a city street with rows or buildings and trees and so in
- You could a 360° landscape from the top of a hill.
- You could do a full circle of your own garden and house and include all the buildings, the potting shed, garage, greenhouse and fishpond or whatever fun features you have in your back yard.
A Seasonal Frieze
Use the concertina sketchbook to capture the changing seasons throughout the year. Start in January and divide the book up before you start into twelve months so you can add the natural changes as the seasons develop. Like a nature journal,
Tell a Story
You can tell a story. Perhaps tell the story of your family and your life or a more well-known story from a part of history that interests you. For example, the Bayeux tapestry tells the story of the events which led up to the invasion of England and the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Record your Travels
If you are going on a long journey, or a one-off world cruise, your concertina sketchbook can be a record of your activities. As a timeline, you can use the length and divide it up into the days or weeks of your great travel adventure. Note what you did and where you went on separate double page spreads. The story of your epic voyage will be from the start to the end.
Honeymoon
Perhaps you decide to go to New Zealand for a fortnight on your honeymoon (as my friend did), then you can capture the main highlights of the trip in your concertina sketchbook. This then becomes a part of your wedding memories and can be enjoyed in years to come by your kids and other family members.

Color
Colored Pencils
Over the next few days, I started to use my Faber Castell polychromas coloured pencils. I started really with the buildings in shades of grey, cool greys and warm greys and some beiges. I went through the concertina and did all the buildings first. Then I started on the trees and used several different colours of green to work through the trees as I flipped through the sketchbook.
Once I’d picked up one colour of green in my hand, I went through the whole book with that colour. Then I started back at the beginning and took a lighter green and continued on in that way. It took a while. Quite a while.
Markers
Wanting to bring some other features into higher focus, I chose to use some of my Tombow markers to add definition to some of the actual features. Features like the lighthouse, the Totem poles and The Drop and some of the boats and so on. I want to say it was sparingly that I went through and added richer colour with markers. I spent several days tinkering away with details and in some places going back in with my black ink pen to more clearly defined the foreground features as I thought best.
The Sun
I did originally create the Sun in yellow as it was setting over English Bay. The reason I colored the Sun in that way, fading onto shades of pinks, mauves into blues, was that I just didn’t want the whole sky just to be blue from one end to the other. I was trying to show a little bit of interest, changing the sky as well as I had done with the sea, working with the different colours of inks. I attempted to show some clouds as well just to add extra interest.

Is It Finished?
Nearly
Now when I got to this stage, I was pretty happy with how this sketchbook was looking. It did occur to me that I will probably tinker with this concertina sketchbook of the Vancouver Seawall. I may perhaps even fiddle for a few more weeks, adding bits and bobs, bringing more features to life and adding a bit more colour here and there.
Almost
I think the real question is when is an art piece finished? This concertina is not quite finished yet. I realize that, but I wanted to show you how I’ve created it and the potential for using concertina sketchbooks overall.

Overarch
Annually
Using a concertina sketchbook is not likely to be something that I will do all the time. I perhaps will do another one next year if I find a suitable subject. Overall, I love how this Vancouver seascape has turned out. Not everything in the sketchbook is to scale, but rather there is a good representation of the whole seaboard that surrounds the city.
The Future
I’ve already ordered my next concertina sketchbook, so I’ll have it ready for when the urge presents itself. I can’t wait…
Over To You
Have you used a concertina sketchbook? What would you draw in one? I’d love to hear from you.
References
Photo Credits
Lions Gate Bridge photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
Granville Island photo by Mia de Jesus on Unsplash
Burrard Bridge photo by Jorge Ramirez on Unsplash
Siwash Rock photo by Brandon Brown on Unsplash
Brockton Lighthouse photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash
Totem Poles photo by Itsuka Iwaki on Unsplash
9 O’clock Gun photo by Albert Stoynov on Unsplash
Float Planes photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash
The Drop photo by Pascal Bernardon on Unsplash
Port Vancouver photo by Ronin on Unsplash
Canada Place photo by Lauren Kan on Unsplash

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Author Bio: Alison Hazel
Alison Hazel is a hobby artist and she shares her ongoing journey about becoming an artist later in life. She creates simple art that anyone can make. She hopes to inspire you to reach your creative potential in the area that suits you.

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