The Library of Congress recently digitized and made available a new online archive of eight sketchbooks made by architect Victor A. Lundy when he served in World War II. The eight sketchbooks have a total of 158 pencil sketches and everything’s been digitized; they’re available at http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/628_lundy.html.

Unlike other archives and exhibits I’ve seen where an artist might have a fairly good-sized medium, Mr. Lundy had a 3×5 spiral-bound sketchbook and a pencil. That’s it. For some sketches he does studies of faces; sometimes he’ll do detailed drawings of buildings, and sometimes it’s just the rapidly-sketched activity of a group.

You can view all the pages here, but the home page of the exhibit has a list of the sketchbooks in chronological order, along with a few comments from Mr. Lundy. Pick a sketchbook and you’ll get a set of images (including the sketchbook cover) with the option to look at large images and download archive-size TIFFs.

If you want to get a good sense of Mr. Lundy’s drawings, look at volume 5, “1944 August-September. En route to Europe,” but they’re all worth browsing. A great collection.