I Love this Alvin Field Book

Above: the April 2 entry for my IFJM journal. I'm using a soft-cover, 2-signature Alvin Field book. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Great news about the Alvin Field notebook, even the soft-covered version has sewn signatures. Now that I've been using the book for a few days, holding it in my hands as I work, I've been pressing into the spine and it is opening up ever so slightly and I can see the threads used to sew the signatures. I'm thrilled to know they are made so well.

But I'm happier still because the book is so much fun to work in. I'm using Ziller acrylic ink, Glossy Black, with a dip pen, and having a delightfully messy time. For watercolors I'm using Schmincke Pan watercolors. The pages buckle with the watercolor, but it's more a ripple than an annoying buckle, so you can keep on painting. It's fun.

I thought the Ziller Acrylic ink would dry faster on this paper than my Staedtler Pigment Liner test, but that hasn't been the case. I think the dip pen deposits an uneven thickness of ink and so there is a crust of dry ink that develops on the thicker strokes. When I come in with the washes that's where some bleeding will occur. But I'm blissfully happy even so. The journal is in part about totally disregard of neatness!

Some readers here or at my regular blog don't see the fakeness of this journal. I've asked friends here about that. The majority see what I'm doing as totally fake, but perhaps too subtle in the opening pages. We'll see, there is a story being told and it isn't me telling the story, that's all I really care about. If it works out in an interesting way, that's just additional fun. My fortuitous choice of journal to house this year's effort has already paid me back many times over in ways I couldn't have imagined.

For people trying to read the page:
Verso page, top: a quotation from the current New Yorker from a profile on Cheung Yan, a waste paper tycoon in China. It is about seizing the moment: "…We only have a certain number of opportunities in our lifetime. Once you miss it, it's gone forever."

Verso page, bottom: Find a way to make the ringbilled gulls look less meanacing. They don't look this menacing in person!!

Verso page, various notes, top to bottom: turning away; landing; white stripe on wing tip not shown; far wing; can't see details on the bill/beak; torpedo body.

Recto page, top to bottom:
09.04.02 3p.m. Target Parking Lot, Sunny 43 F. Very Breezy! Orientation lasted all through lunch so I'm glad of an opportunity to get out and check out what's around, even if it means taking my shadow Chuck!