| Saw this quote by Seth Godin and my hair caught on fire: "Here's the thing: The book that will most change your life is the book you write." He's onto something. My thoughts immediately ran to the rows of journals I have made and filled over the past three years. I am certain that the act of filling these books has impacted my life in hundreds of ways. I have been continually refining my system for making matching-sized books since 2013. (Let's call that Year Zero) It doesn't take me long, I can begin and finish a book in the same day . . . even making the bookcloth, if I start with that first thing in the morning. Bob Burridge, in speaking about preparing his painting surfaces, says, "I like to get my DNA all over it!" (This he says with vigor as he scrubs some gesso onto watercolor paper.) With each new book, a unique character develops. The covers vary from each book to the next, but the structure remains the same. They look a little odd, side by side on the shelves with their black lassos encircling most of them. Like a snapshot of long-haired girls at poolside, hair rubberbands on their wrists. As each book is ready to use, I jot down a little calendar on one of the front pages, a list of often-searched-for words. I put an "If found please return to..." note somewhere near the front, and . . . potential awaits. I write anything and everything. I draw and doodle, make lists and take telephone messages. There is no index, although I've seen this great Japanese indexing technique that I've fiddled with a time or two. I used to say that someday I will mine these books and see what I can develop from their content. But I find I've already begun. My calling cards have quotes, comments, bits and pieces on the reverse side, gleaned from within some of my recent books. I expect some of the people who start making their own books will find the same delight, catching the idea "permission granted" for wherever they want to go and whatever they want to put in their books. | |
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 I make books and write in them. It's my "thing". Late at night I will just let my interests run willy-nilly and write things, draw things, and basically fill pages of my current book. I'm very generous with my pages, because I have materials on hand to make many more books, as they become full. (Recently my husband counted something like 85 books that I have made since the end of 2012, but by adding gifts, exchanges and commissioned editions, I have made more than a hundred in the past 3 years.)
Yesterday while waiting to be called into an appointment, I "borrowed some faces" of other people in a clinic's waiting area. They weren't exactly likenesses of the people, I was just exploring what the people looked like and what my pen could do with what I was seeing. A woman nearby wore a beautiful sweater and I captured its appearance, dressing one of my ladies in it. Late at night, I used a light ink wash to bring some depth to the forms. I may add color later. My books become little "coloring books" some evenings, as I go back through recent drawings and augment them with Inktense pencils and water washes. I Yesterday I found myself at Artist & Craftsman Supply in Seattle. Sometimes my car just simply takes me there. While I was there, I chatted for a minute with two sisters and flipped open my book to show my favorite skin tone color. Off the top of my head, I said that the color was "orange vermilion". I was remembering wrong. The color's correct name is Mid Vermilion. It doesn't look like much on first glance, but makes a nice general skintone (for white folks). Inktense pencils are a special formulation of pencils. They behave like super-charged watercolor pencils, and provide vibrant marvelous colors. I lay down a little color onto the paper and then activate it with a waterbrush. Once dry, the color is permanent and can be drawn or painted over without disturbing the color already in place. You can buy them individually online. List price is $2.89. I've seen them for $1.54. They aren't available at my favorite art supply store, but there's a big commercial place on Capitol Hill that stocks them. I have just begun to pay attention to the visual energy fields around people (they look a little like oil-on-water to me, many colors, sort of rainbow, flowing together). Tried to depict it. These pencils make it a fun experiment. "Let's shed light like my dog sheds fur."  |
AuthorGretchen Williams has been journaling / note-taking in hard-covered blank books since 1970 and has made her own journals for the past few years. She wants to teach 300 people how to make their own journals. Archives
February 2016
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