A Sketchbook Project postscript

Warning: I am not an artist. Yet for inexplicable reasons, I filled up an art sketchbook (with a story, because for some reason I do fancy myself a storyteller) and sent it off to Art House Co-op before the deadline.

I am somewhat foolishly proud of having achieved this minor accomplishment, so against my better judgment I've put all the scanned pages of my Sketchbook Project on Flickr. If you're curious, the whole resplendent train wreck can be found here.

These scans are a bit cleaned up from the original -- the Moleskine Cahier pages are thin and prone to let ink bleed through from page to page. But I wanted to make sure I had at least one documented copy of this first shaky attempt at a sketchbook before it went out into the world and got hammered on by multiple readers. So there it is.

Goodbye, sketchbook

Well, my Sketchbook Project sketchbook is on its way. (You can look me up on their website under the name "laundryfaerie;" I've uploaded a few scanned pages.) It isn't perfect, but then nothing human-made ever is. I know -- "perfect" is the enemy of "finished." I only wish I could have done the central page justice:

From almost the beginning I knew what this page ought to look like. I wanted this quote expressed in flowing calligraphy, with "opposition" rendered into mirrored halves; it's meant to tie together the two halves of the story. I could see in my mind's eye how it was meant to look, but I didn't have the skill to render it on paper.

I wished very hard for my dad's skill. He would have been able to do it right. Then I went ahead and did it anyway.

The story to tell, however imperfectly

Still plugging away at the Sketchbook Project. I'm pretty sure now where I want to go with the narrative. Yes, the "sketchbook" has to have a narrative, because deep down at my core is something that wants -- has always wanted -- to tell stories. This particular story, I think, will loosely chronicle my journey from self-proclaimed jinx to sype.



I hold off creating things, and my go-to excuse is that I'm afraid they won't turn out as beautifully as I've imagined them. What I keep forgetting is that a) that's pretty much par for the course for all creative endeavors, so why should mine be any different? and b) if I don't allow myself to make the imperfect stuff and get the experience out of the way, I'll never progress to the stage where my creations more closely resemble what I first imagined.

Oh yeah, and c) it's now officially too late for me to be a wunderkind, so there's no point sweating it, right?

Sketchbooks and shills

I've been keeping busy this morning, working on a long-neglected project: the Brooklyn Library sketchbook project, to be precise.

In related news, I've used up a ton of those international stamps I've been saving for "some future project... I'll know it when I see it":

Here's the front cover, though it's still not finished. The back cover is similarly adorned in philatelicious fashion. I'm trying to decide whether it needs a title superimposed over all the stamps, or if they speak for themselves sufficiently. The people at the Sketchbook Project website strongly encourage participants to make their sketchbooks as durable as possible, so once the cover is in a finished state I think I'll further reinforce it with clear contact paper. (If it works for real paperback library books, it ought to work for mine.)

This project also serves as a welcome respite from the madness season currently in progress. Endless campaign messages appear on TV, are crammed daily into my mailbox and clutter up my voice mail. (There were four messages on the voice mail this morning, all of them political robo-calls. Thank heavens for the quick-delete feature.) At this point I'd probably vote for the first would-be tinpot dictator who promised to banish all political advertising; fortunately I already dropped my ballot in the mail a week ago. WHICH MEANS ALL THIS ENDLESS SHILLING GOES FOR NAUGHT, at least in my case. Mutta mutta.

No longer quite so scary

Behold the cover page of the sketchbook project!

Well, it's not much, but at least it's a start. I expect this page to be further embellished upon until it resembles Hester Prynne's embroidered A. And now that the sketchbook has something in it, some of its previous looming whatcha-gonna-do-with-me-ness has been dispelled.

My calligraphy skills are so rusty. I need practice.

The scariest thing in the world...

...arrived at my house this week.

Gentlemen and ladies, animals and babies, what you see before you is a Moleskine Cahier sketchbook. 5.5 x 8.5 inches, about 80 pages.

All blank.

I am meant to fill it with -- something. Drawings, writings, songs, found objects, origami, the motley flotsam of my fevered brain, you name it.

Remind me why I signed up for this again?