Fun between the covers: Sketchbook Project in Seattle

A traveling band of nearly 10,000 sketchbooks filled by people from around the world lands at a Seattle gallery Friday as part of the 2011 Sketchbook Project tour.

The exhibition at Form/Space Atelier comprises thousands of sketchbooks filled with amateur artwork, from simple doodles to mini-masterpieces.

Eli Dvorkin, operations coordinator with Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Art House Co-op, which developed the exhibit, said visitors will see sketches from a broad range of people, from graphic designers to lunch-break doodlers, toddlers to grandparents.

Each book is a complete and utter surprise. Some contain fantastical pencil-drawn figments of the imagination, some colorful watercolors and others intricate collages. But each book plays on one of 46 themes the project is organized into, such as "happy thoughts" or "in flight."

Here's how the project works: Anyone who wants to take part can register at arthousecoop.com and pay $25. Participants receive a blank sketchbook to doodle in for about nine months before it's due back to Art House, where it becomes part of the project.

The project was started by Art House Co-op founders Steven Peterman and Shane Zucker in 2006. Its first year, the project included 150 sketchbooks. This year, Art House Co-op sent out about 28,000 sketchbooks to people in 94 countries.

The gallery show is like a library; the moment you enter you're handed a "library card" for checking out sketchbooks while visiting the show. If you're interested in books from the "coffee & cigarettes" category from Paris, for instance, the librarians enter the search term and hand you a book in less than a minute. Sketchbook artists are able to see who checked their books out, and where.

Dvorkin said interest has been phenomenal this year. The first show of 2011, in Brooklyn, drew more than 800 people in two days, who checked out nearly 2,000 books.

"The Sketchbook Project has blossomed into this massive communal participation art project where the artists may not share anything in common except for their love of art," Dvorkin said. "That's really where it's at."

After this year's tour, the sketchbooks will go to their permanent home in the Brooklyn Public Library, where they'll join books from past projects.

Registration for the 2012 Sketchbook Project just opened — and next year is the project's first international tour.