From The Journal

I finished a new journal last week - here are a few of my more successful pages.  

It's funny though, many of them are not my "best" drawing or the "best" use of technique, but pages that I made in unique circumstances or that were inspired by something particularly meaningful. 

Paper that I marbled my very own self in my kitchen

 On my trip to Brussels I took the SLOW train to Gent (I mean, really slow) and satisfied myself with recording all of the stops we made along the way from "Bruxelles-Midi" to "St. Pier - Gent".  Later that night I treated myself at a lovely neighborhood market with local sausages and cheese, fresh fruits and nuts. These were my first pages of the trip and though they are a little sparse, they got me started for the rest of the visit.

 Christmas Eve 2014.  I'd been drawing all break and just generally enjoying the beautiful Muscat weather.  After some last minute Christmas shopping we saw a tiny sliver of a moon hanging above some buildings.  The horizon was just starting to turn orange and I made Max wait in the car for a few minutes while I sketched an outline to watercolor later.  

   

Our sweet housekeeper's mother passed away last week and she left me a perfectly simple and expressive note. "I am so sad" it read.

Regardless of nationality or language, loss is something that translates.

The text behind the Sri Lankan woman is Sinhala, one of the national languages of Sri Lanka.       

Books I've Been Working On

The problem with making your own books to use as journals is that when you need a portfolio, everything you've made has been tossed around in your purse for a year and looks terrible.  A few weeks ago months ago (this post has been sitting in draft for a while) I needed to work up a small portfolio ......


leather, headband, marbled paper from Istanbul

 

flat back casing

regular old coptic

paper case binding with spine stitching, paper from Bangladesh

 

More Visual Journaling of Turkey

Remnants From The Orient Express

 Above is the ramshackle neighborhood where I later wrote:

Do I regret walking the winding road from the Chora church, along the Thessodosius walls, past a hundreds of years old syanagoge, past the old women leaving chicken necks for local cats and to the Egripike gate alone because some 10 year old, after being dared by his friends, raced around the corner and slapped my backside before disappearing into his house?  No.  I wish I had paid more attention to his quickening footsteps or walked faster when the group of boys crashed their kite, weighed down by a water bottle of sand, at my feet instead of looking up to see where it had come from but these are all choices we make as explorers.  

Yeah, it happens.

Paper Marbling

A little history and demonstration of the art.  My paints, gall and water thickening solution just arrived in the mail yesterday.  Next item of busineess:  get a rad red bandana.