Roz's 2014 International Fake Journal Month Wrap Up—With Gigapans!

Today I’ve written my complete wrap up for this project. I write about the project parameters and supplies, the goals, and the results. I also write about what happened after the project ended.

But before you read my final write up I have three GigaPan videos for you to look at. They are GigaPans taken by Tom Nelson a local photographer. You’ve seen the “fake” show before as smaller jpgs. What you see today are images that you can zoom in on, as closely as if you were in the room, standing in front of the images. You can see where I picked up my pen and put it down again, you can see where I smudged on some rubberstamp ink. You can see where I applied acrylic paint with markers and glued down decorative papers or applied tape. It’s all there if you want to poke around.

I had hoped to embed these videos here in blogger. Tom provided the code for me to do so. But when I put them in the html they didn't show up.

Instead I'm providing you with three links so you can view each image on the GigaPan site. When you go to the Gigapan site you do not need to sign in. It's free. Just click inside the image and start scrolling around. Use the controls at the right to enlarge and reduce your view. You'll be able to zoom in so close you'll be able to see the wall texture, the paper texture. Really, it's pretty cool. Click on the little icon "snapshot" at the bottom left of the image's window and a line of snapshots that I've created for you will come up. When you click on one of these you will automatically zoom up to the portion of the image I wanted to draw to your attention. And there will be a caption that explains something to you. If you couldn't be present at the "show" (and you couldn't, that was just me and Tom) then this is the best way to see the images.  

April 1 to 12, 2014

April 13 to 24, 2014

April 25 to 30, 2014

The Wrap Up

In my last post I wrote about my windfall purchase of 22 x 30 inch printmaking paper for 20 cents a sheet. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it when I bought it. I thought I’d take it to life drawing; I knew immediately upon testing it that I could NOT use it for bookbinding for myself or in my classes because it allowed inks to seep through; but I knew I’d have fun with it.

My original plan for 2014 was to work on a portrait each day from life. Before April rolled around I had already contacted several friends and made dates to sketch them.

The serendipitous part of my IFJM project was that I’d asked blog readers to send in photos and enough people responded with really fun images, that I was able to still draw portraits even though I was house bound (I got ill on March 30 and sick through May 31), I just had to adjust my plans and draw from photos.

Before I got ill I had a few other goals:

Goal 1

I wanted to get back to writing down thoughts when they occurred to me.

For several months leading up to IFJM 2014 I found that I was leading a rather frantic life, pulled in lots of directions, dealing with shoulder issues, coping with eldercare demands. The pain from the shoulder issues changed my sleep habits and that impacted my memory. I’d think of something in the middle of work, and decide to wait and note it down later, return to work and forget it.

The fact that I forgot so many deeply unimportant things shouldn’t bother me, but every so often I have a thought which leads me to my next project and I found that because I was forgetting to follow my usual practice of writing things down everything was being lost.

So that was definitely goal number 1.

Goal 2

I wanted to return to keeping reading notes. In the frenetic life I was leading in the months before IFJM 2014 I was reading a lot of books and articles but I was usually too tired to write my typical notes. Again, I was missing out on reminding myself which things were catching my interest. It’s from that pool of things that I formulate new plans and discover new long-term interests. I was feeling decidedly cut off from my creative process even though every day I might have been drawing for a couple hours, reading, processing, whatever.

It seemed to me things were not sinking in.

Goal 3

I wanted to experiment with large scale drawings. I’ve mentioned already on this blog and on Roz Wound Up that my sketches have been getting larger and larger. And I like to experiment with different ways to scale up my line when the drawing size increases.

I’m not sure exactly why I’ve been drawing larger and larger sketches. I suppose it is a function of going to life drawing and working on a really large sheet of paper, but that doesn’t really explain it.

It could also be an outgrowth of working in larger sizes of journals. Because I have had first one and then both shoulders injured for over a year now I haven’t been able to bind any new books. I do have some journals that I’ve held back for personal use, but since I can’t carry a journal with me (because of the shoulders) I’ve been working on slips of paper when I’m out and about. Then when I return home I glue those drawings into a commercially bound journal like the 9 x 12 inch Fabriano Venezia I have going in the studio. Also, because size of journal doesn’t matter when working at home I sometimes have another larger journal going, like the 11 x 14 inch Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media Paper Hardcover journal. And in that journal I can sketch very large heads with the luxury of all that space.

Fluctuations in vision also play a part. It's easier to pick up a brush pen and sketch large images than to find which pair of glasses works for "today" and work with a fine tipped and small nibbed pen.

Whatever the reason for my ever growing drawing scale this project did allow me to work large.

In fact to create these pages I had a piece of corrugated cardboard that was 4 inches larger than the paper sheets on each side. I would hold this piece of cardboard in my lap with the piece of sketching paper on top. Then, if I was working from the photos that people sent in, I would sit at my computer with the photo open on my screen, balancing the edge of the cardboard on my computer desk and sitting back to sketch as quickly as possible.

Almost all the sketches in this project were made in less than 10 minutes.  I worked directly in ink.

Some images were made from life like Oswald and also the giant toad. To sketch them I sat holding the large cardboard and paper as well.

Sketching this way created some distortion problems for me. I would become so tired (because of the coughing) that I couldn’t maintain the same position even with the light cardboard, and the faces began to stretch and bloat.

I’d like to say that I had less trouble with the subjects I drew from life, but sometimes they were actually worse—executed at time when I was exhausted going into the sketching time.

Besides using the fine-tipped Pentel Brush pen with pigment black ink and the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, I used some Bienfang Watercolor Brush Pens (they didn’t deform the paper much as they didn’t have a lot of water in them) and the Montana Markers that contain acrylic paints. While I mostly used the latter for backgrounds I was able to do some sketching with the markers—often with the 15 mm wide tipped ones. Those were all fun experiments.

I wanted to do more with color, using more collage and rubberstamp ink, but most days I found that after doing a quick sketch and adding a little color I was ready to stop. I was simply too tired. I’m OK with that. I had a lot of fun flicking the brush pen ink about to compensate and cope with the frustration.

Goal 4

I hoped to read a chapter a day of a book on composition I’ve been meaning to re-read for ages. I thought that would be a nice way to get a bit of extra learning in for each day of IFJM. Sadly this goal didn’t get met at all. I found that initially I felt too ill to concentrate on absorbing or reinforcing any concepts about composition. Reading that book will have to wait until another time.

Goal 5

In the last half of 2013 I was drawn to lettering books—I read a bunch of them. Most were disappointing and didn’t offer any interesting discussion of design, composition, or theory. But all of them had interesting examples so they were fun to look at.

I decided after working on my pre-IFJM paper tests that I would let the lettering goal go. The pens that I tested on the paper either didn’t work in a way that I liked, didn't scale up to the size I was working at, or didn’t have enough fun factor. I also found that by day 2 of the project thinking about lettering was beyond my feverish brain’s abilities. The goal became just get something down each day.

Goal 6

I wanted to spend more time each day painting because I missed getting the paints out on a regular basis.

Painting has been difficult for the past year (since June 2013) because of the shoulder issues. I can’t reach easily with my brush to the palette, no matter where the palette may be resting.

Because of the paper that I selected painting was off the table. Paints severely warped the paper and I didn’t want to deal with the extra issues of flattening each page before photography.

Goal 7

There is a short distance between my character’s work, fantasy life, and real life. I set this up intentionally because I wanted to work on very specific issues that were currently impacting my own journal practice—however the distance was too short. (See below for more on this.) 

Goal 8

No explanations. I wanted to keep what was text in the journal devoid of any explanations. I explain enough in my life as it is, whether it is explaining issues of elder care to other family members or issues of health to the folks’ doctors, or memory issues to the folks, or materials and process to students, or just explaining to myself how I’m going to get through the stack of stuff that’s piling up!

I think this aspect of the project was totally successful. However there was one horrible error that I’ll write of in a moment.

Goal 9

I wanted to make one page for each day. No more, no less. I met that goal even though I was sometimes a little punchy from fever.

Since I’ve created so many fake journals over the years and had so many daily projects (some lasting several weeks, months, or even years) I knew that I could meet this goal. I also knew I could forgive myself in advance for each piece not meeting the standards I’d hoped to meet.

Getting ill and knowing you can still produce work is a great gift to give yourself. I’m grateful for that. But I’m also grateful that what is most important to me is process and getting something done, rather than perfection. So despite the various setbacks of this project it wasn’t painful or difficult but actually quite fun.

I know enough about my rhythms when ill that I quickly found “ideal” times during the day when it would be a good bet that I could get a reasonable page completed. Because of this you’ll notice that many of the pages have very similar times on them. Often I would do one when I finished other work, or when I had a burst of energy in the evening.

I believe that one of the great things a month-long project like this can give the participant is a better understanding of their own process and creative rhythms. You can take this knowledge and turn it to productive use.

Who Was My Character?

I have to admit that this year’s character was my least “concretely” realized in my head either in advance of IFJM or during, and certainly since.

A 50-something female who sketches people for her “work,” which I conveniently never tied myself down about. Is she doing portraits and these are her studies and throw-aways? Is she making illustrations for books and these are her studies? Is she doing something else visual for a living and she is just able to convince people to pose for her at the end of the day so she can make a giant drawing and then write something snarky on the drawing?

It’s all unclear.

What I do think became clear as I worked through the month was that Goal 7 was being met. This woman wrote down whatever she was thinking at the time she was sketching, and because the thinking and the sketching had nothing to do with each other most of the time she had absolutely no inclination to explain anything.

How freeing.

But That Brings Us to the Horrible Error, or as I Like to Call It: The Near Fatal Misstep

I think it’s important to keep as much distance from your character as you can—especially if certain aspects of your life and work already over lap.

On day 1 I was so anxious to get going on this project that I mentioned a sore throat on the page. I actually had a sore throat, and I allowed the character to have one. (Oops, but I didn’t even realize the trap I’d stepped into yet, that’s how slow my brain was moving.)

On day 2 I actually mentioned the 4 stages of the cold! I had a cold the character had a cold.

That was it. Now that my character had announced she was ill I couldn’t go merrily about and sketch people about town, and do all of the interactive things I’d hoped to do.

She was stuck. Stuck inside her home and studio just like I was. And that was a little too close for comfort.

Given that closeness I’m actually surprised I got through the month unscathed. I didn’t shy away from the insights she had (though of course they really only mean something to her and to me because I know the explanations), but I did avoid further mention of the progress of my own illness.

How Do I Assess the Project?

While I couldn’t complete the project as originally conceived (sketching large portraits of people from life) I was able to work with most of my 9 goals, stated before the project began and examined in this post.

I met most of those goals and was able to have some sort of balanced and healthy response to the frustrations of the others.

In those ways I feel this is one of my best fake journals. Not because it has a narrative thread (it doesn’t); not because close reading exposes an interesting character (it doesn’t); not because the sketches all turned out (they didn’t).

This was a successful fake journal because of its aftermath.

Following the end of IFJM 2014 I was sick for another 4 weeks until the end of May. I was frustrated more than I can even bear to write.

But something wonderful happened. I started working in a Japanese Lined Notebook that I’d finished a couple pages on earlier in the year and then set aside as other projects pulled me towards them. When I picked up this totally-unsuitable-for-visual-journaling-notebook I found that in my frustration (over still being sick) and my “laziness” about getting up to fetch painting materials and other items to sketch with, I entered the most creative period of visual journaling I have experienced since I was 20 years old.

Everything mixed together and my desire to take more notes is everywhere evident in the two visual journals I filled next through May and June. And my desire to write everything down right when I think it was made manifest in those two journals because I always had the current Japanese Lined Notebook right with me wherever I went in the house, so there was no reason to not write something down immediately.

And the goals that didn’t get met on my IFJM journal project were easily met in those journals—I now had two pages on a spread to play with composition and started fiddling more with it. I played with lettering in a loose, non-structured way, which didn’t yield great results except a sense of fun, which is always good, and a good starting point for future exploration. 

I have been reading more of my art theory books and taking notes and asking the right questions. I’ve been watching videos of watercolorists whom I admire, and taking notes and asking questions. Through this exploration I’ve been making plans to paint again as soon as my shoulders can stand it. I’ve been asking questions of myself and taking notes and making plans and allowing the promise of new projects to flow through me.

But most wonderful of all, the thing I have been pushing for the past 4 years, the thing I have wanted more than anything since probably 2008 has happened. I have ease and privacy in my journals again.

It seems an odd thing to say, since I put my journals up on the Internet. But I only put up selected portions. When I teach journaling my journals are brought out to share, and in that sharing I had started to hold back portions of myself from myself. There are clear boundaries in my life over what I will share and won’t share with students, strangers, even friends, and probably especially family. Because I knew the journals would be handled by others I found myself sometimes not writing what I really longed to write because it would break those boundaries.

I have always maintained that these boundaries are healthy. And I have always had these boundaries in my life to protect my creative life. As I taught more and more journaling from 2000 to the present I found myself sometimes sketching something in my journal but not writing fully about it because I didn’t want to share those thoughts with others.

I like to keep my creative energy for myself to use it to bring projects forth that are fully conceived. I like to encourage my students to do the same.

But when you have to bring your journals to a class as examples even the best will of getting everything down gets challenged.

And in the two months since IFJM 2014, in two Japanese Lined Notebooks I was able to totally wallow in privacy (even while knowing I would post some of those images).

There was the cheap paper that allowed me to run full steam ahead. (Normally I don’t have a problem using up art paper for notes, but because I wasn’t painting due to injury I found myself hesitant to run through journal after journal of $6 a sheet art paper only writing and maybe sketching a little with black ink.)

There was the cheap paper that took brush pen ink so marvelously. The fun factor was incredibly high.

There was the texture and “happiness” of the completed pages, crinkling and crunching as I turned them, while holding the book in my lap. (This brought up memories of my childhood and college days when all I could afford were books with cheaper paper.)

And there was the pent up energy from being ill for two months. All the things I wanted to do and think about and work on were just pouring out of me.

I said to Dick one night: It’s like being nineteen again—except I can stay up as late as I want because I don’t have a 7:30 a.m. class.

A certain journal type or book structure will always influence the journey you take with it. But there are certain types of books and book structures that will take you in a totally new direction with materials, thoughts, projects, and your life.

The change might not even look different to anyone else, but that’s part of the point—it doesn’t have to. You only have to feel it in every cell in your body to know that it’s real and something fantastic has happened.

That’s one (just one) of the fabulous things about journaling.

And one of the great things about keeping a fake journal is that you can use the fake journal as a directed and customized tool to move towards the goals you want to achieve.

This was a very good year for me, even though I spent two months of it housebound with little contact with the outside world.

2014 THANK YOUS

I want to thank all the participants from 2014 for trusting the process and jumping in this year. I hope whether you participated privately or publicly that you received something positive from the experience and a new sense of where you might go creatively.

Thanks to all the folks who sent in photos of themselves for me to sketch from. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, you saved my life, my attitude was pretty sucky when the month started! I am working on prints to send out to all of you as thank yous. They will be coming soon.

I want to thank Tom, for his patience and for his skill in photographing my work so that I can share it with others and communicate with others using the work. When we were taking the photos of the pages hanging on the walls Tom said, “It’s like parachuting into your mind.” He was chuckling and shaking his head at the time, reading some of the entries.

I shook my head and reminded him, "It's my character's mind." And he shook his head and chuckled.

Yep, I guess he's right. And he also knows that 90 percent of the time my fake journals are my most personal. 

I’m so grateful to have a friend who helps me share my work. It's so fun to spend time with Tom that I hope he never realizes how boring I am!

And of course I’m grateful to Dick who took up all the slack for two months, kept the house full of chocolate, and who sent me back to Wet Paint in the first place to buy all those luscious 20-cents-a-piece sheets of paper. I’m going to enjoy using the rest of them in life drawing and other projects.

A Before and After Peek at a Page Spread in My 2013 Fake Journal

Above: A prepainted (acrylic printing with the Gelli Arts Printing Plate) page spread with collaged paper elements. (The printing was actually on a sheet of paper that was collaged down as well.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I happened to have taken photos of this spread after I collaged some printed papers and some decorative papers down in place, and before my character ended up journaling on it.

Above: The completed page spread. (Well almost completed—the collage papers which extend past the pages' edges haven't been trimmed yet.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

This year's character was all about not being precious with anything—backgrounds she liked, papers she liked, sketches she might have liked…

In the first image today you see how the page looked before she was journaling. In the second image you see how it looked when she finished. Beneath the sketches of the man on the righthand page you can see there was also additional printing with acrylic paint before the collage started. This happened during a second printing session. The journal pages were flipped through and ones that seemed too "bare" got more attention with more printing.

On top of that printing you'll see the collaged sketches which overlap each other, washi tape, collaged papers (the original blue paper on the right hand page is only visible in tiny peeks).

News that Roger Ebert had died was noted down. This character did three page spreads a day and it wasn't important to her to write much about some things, but just note them down to fill up the spaces so she could finish a page. And she liked to note things that were happening in the world.

After noting Ebert's death she sketched a pineapple in mid-blue watercolor brush pen and outlined it with strokes of light blue acrylic paint using a Montana Marker. (We happened to have a pineapple sitting on the kitchen counter—evidently she also likes to eat pineapple.)

Note: This pineapple step was like pulling teeth for the real me because it meant obscuring a sketch I actually was fond of. My character recognized no such fondness for her sketches and was brutal. Let's just say that when I closed this journal with its pages filled on April 18, I felt very bruised!

She ended all her pages by stamping a large dot (usually red) and writing the date around the dot. (See the bottom left of the spread, under the B in Ebert.)

More Faces as Collage

Above: Three Pentel Pocket Brush Pen Sketches of the same man chatting. (I actually did five in a series at the same time). All on gridded paper. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Sometimes so many sketches of someone were made during April that the person became a "character" in the fake journal. In other words someone real became repurposed as a friend or acquaintance of the character creating the fake journal.

Above: The same three sketches collaged on a spread in the fake journal—over a background of acrylic prints made with the Gelli Arts Printing Plate. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

When you see the final page spread in the video flip through you'll see that the character journaled about something unrelated to Chuck, and added some more collage papers. There was a total lack on the part of this character for any need to explain when, where, or why she sketched something or someone. And generally the accompanying journaling was unrelated to what she wrote. 

Layering in My 2013 Fake Journal—Faces as Collage Material

Left and below: Four face sketches made on graph paper and lined paper using the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, DaVinci Gouache (for color) and various washi tapes to hold pieces of paper together so I could expand a drawing beyond the original sheet of paper's edge. Click on any image in the post to view an enlargement.

My 2013 fake journal character's approach to journaling was lots of layers. You saw in a clown spread how she used those layers. Here are a couple more faces that you'll see soon in place on pages when the video flip through is completed.

Some of these sketches were made while watching TV (something both I and my 2013 character enjoy doing); others were made from life, typically with not very patient models. It seems that April was a stressful time for everyone I knew.

The process of this year's fake journal started when I began painting the backgrounds of the journal I was using at the end of March. My character works ahead so I actually had to imagine not only her daily journaling process but her work-ahead process. Besides prepainting and pre-printing the backgrounds on her journal pages she created a massive amount of face sketches to cut up and use as collage material once April actually started. She kept them in a large envelope and they were used in the journal out of [gasp] sequence.

I know, I know, I don't know how I survived the horror.

Starting My 2013 Fake Journal—Before and After Photos

Above: The sort of before photo, by which I mean, the journal when I'd worked in it for one afternoon on March 21, 2013. Read below for details. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

If you've been reading along so far for the 2013 celebration of IFJM you'll know that I used the Leuchtturm 1917 Notebook for my fake journal this year.

The pages really were too thin for simply drawing on them in ink—all the inks I used seeped through on my test pages more than I would have hoped. But I was already in love with the size of the journal and the dot pattern grid on the pages (which oddly you can rarely see now that the book is filled).

Immediately my mind started working on ways to use this book despite of the paper's limitations for mixed media. By now you've also read how this mind churning happened at the exact time I went to visit a friend who was recovering from surgery and watching Gelli Plate Printing videos on the internet. I realized that I could do a combination of techniques to the pages that would make them more resilient to abuse by the mixed media.

Left: The completed book on April 18, 2013. It no longer really closes, in fact typically the cover just flops open. Two days after finishing this book I made the decision to purchase an archival newspaper storage box for this book and store it in a half open position. It's the only thing I could think of that wouldn't put continued pressure on the already stressed spine. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I began to print monoprints with the Gelli Plate—sometimes on paper I could collage into the journal and other times printing directly onto the page. I did two evenings of printing. The above photo was taken between those two evenings when I had started to stick the papers from the first evening into the journal. I was working with PVA so that water from later painting sessions wouldn't cause the collaged material to buckle up away from the page. Because I was working on several page spreads at a time, and as I worked into April some pages started to have gouache paintings on them, I couldn't weight the collaged material while it dried so that it would dry flatter. (The trapped moisture would have reactivated the gouache paint before the glue had dried and made for interesting pages.) Because the pages weren't under weights when they were drying, and the paper is lightweight, there is a wonderful buckling to every page. The layers of collaged papers are not only buckled across the page but create a stiffness to most pages that makes it a tactile joy to turn these pages. I think you'll see that when I get the video flip through posted.

Left: Detail of the book closed with the book's elastic band positioned around the book. This is the only time I've put the elastic band in this position. The band stretches too much to be useful with this bulk and the front cover is pulled into a curve because of the bulk of the pages. But this image shows how the fore edge of the book is deformed as the thickness of the collaged items keeps the spine from closing properly and pushes the pages out past the cover's edge.

I started working on backgrounds and collage materials on the 18th of March for two reasons. I had a feeling I wasn't going to have the amount of time I had hoped for each day (and in fact that did turn out to be the case) but more importantly my character was someone who was constantly working ahead in her journals and so while she would be finishing up a volume she would be working simultaneously ahead in preparing backgrounds in a new journal.

Left: Detail of the spine now that the book is filled to over flowing. You can see that the ends of the signatures (where paper is folded and sewn together as groups) is now no longer flat against the spine board like it was when I started. Instead it is now convex, creating a circle that is curved outward, pushing the signatures outward. Hence the way the pages jut out at the fore edge. (In my real journals I tend to do only a little collage and I pre-cut out pages, leaving tabs to hold space at the spine. That creates space for the collage materials I do add. Since in this book I wasn't cutting out pages and each page sometimes had 3 layers of collage material there was no way the spine was not going to severely deform. For a description of how and why I cut pages out of my journals you can read "Journaling Superstitions #5: You Can't Cut Pages Out of Your Journal." (About half way through that post I explain my process.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

If I had waited to work in this journal until April 1 she would not have been in her work flow mode.

When a character speaks so strongly to you, tells you to work on backgrounds for pages she intends to use weeks from now, and insists that you use paper that is unsuitable for mixed media, you simply must listen to the character.

So I printed and collaged and tried to listen to the character as she spoke to me in little bits and pieces during the day. I had hoped to have a "leisurely" month in April where I could take multiple photos of each stage and let you see the gradual growing of the book. But everything happened very quickly—which I learned is what this character likes. You can see some of what happened from photos like the ones in today's post.

I'll have more to write about the interior of this journal and the process. I would like to say this about the Leuchtturm 1917 notebook I used for this year's fake journal—it held up to a phenomenal amount of abuse. Most books would have disintegrated in "pre-production" before April 1, when character  started actually journaling in the book.

Despite the abuse all the pages of this journal are intact and holding firm. No stitches have torn out (this is a sewn book or I wouldn't have tried this approach). The cover of the book long ago lost any remembrance of its hinge space yet even with repeated opening and closing the cover material (which is one of those synthetic coverings that's not paper, leather, or fabric) held up and continues to do so. There is virtually no wear on the cover—except for some acrylic ink that I splashed on it from time to time when I was printing in the book.

I didn't weigh the book when it was new and empty.  By now it must weigh 4 or 5 times as much. It is unpleasant to hold it is so heavy.

I loved working in this book, and if all you do is take notes and you test this paper and love it for that and the pens you use then I have to say you couldn't find a better, more user friendly, and attractive notebook.

And if you want to get all wild and crazy with it and go extremely wild with mixed media—well it's going to hang in there with you.

My character isn't concerned with such niceties. I on the other hand am very, very grateful. And I find myself passing the book as it sits half open on the drawing board, awaiting the arrival of its archival box, and I can't help but page through the encrusted pages and savour the fun of working in this book all over again.

Papers Used in Roz's 2013 Fake Journal

Above: Three "notebooks" that I scavenged paper from for my 2013 Fake Journal. Top left: APICA Notebook, ruled; top right: Fabriano notebook with gridded paper; bottom center: Quatro pad, gridded. All pages are approximately 8.75 x 11.5 inches. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

This year I fell in love with a commercially bound journal that had lightweight paper. But I wanted to use it anyway. Right away my character's mind started thinking of ways to use the book despite this impediment. (The book was the Leuchtturm 1917 Notebook.)

Drawing on other sheets of paper, painting on those sheets sometimes, was what my character ended up doing. It led to some interesting "events" which included the reactivation of gouache when the moisture of the PVA seeped through the paper I'd painted on and was gluing down and caused some of the paint to lift off on the wax paper I was using to burnish the paper in place; and with a lot of wrinkling of the moist papers I was gluing.

But I had a ton of fun. I love drawing on gridded and lined paper so my paper choices were perfect for sketching on in a variety of pens. And the top three items shown above all took gouache well, though the Quattro is the least fun to paint on with Da Vinci gouache. (I used Da Vinci gouache because my character wanted to use an inexpensive lower quality gouache.)

Left: here's a scan of one of the final sketches in the book, this one done on the Fabriano gridded sheets. That's washi tape down the center holding a couple sheets together. (I'll have more to say about that on another day.) I was working with a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. This sketch remained unpainted. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

The last few sketches in my fake journal, which I'm showing you in this post, were completed on Thursday, April 18 and scanned before I glued them to the final pages of the journal. I haven't shot photos of the journal yet (it's too bulky to do it on my own). I wanted you to have some examples of what I am writing about so I used these.

Left: The final sketch in my 2013 Journal before it was glued down to the page. It's Fabriano gridded paper with washi tape holding pieces of paper together. The sketch is done with a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and then painted with layers of Da Vinci Gouache. In this piece you can see heavy layers of gouache, and you can see light washes. While the paint seems to bead up on the washi tape here, I could, when I was using thicker applications of paint, cover the tape successfully. Even in this image, when the paint dried on the tape it stayed put. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Sometimes I did paint right on the page of the journal. In those instances I typically had previously applied some acrylic paint or a thin sheet of mulberry paper on which I'd made a monoprint with acrylic paint. Sometimes I painted over other sheets of collaged materials.

Above: Here's a detail of the last sketch so that you can see the gridded paper, the washi tape, and the thick and thin layers of gouache. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

But I wanted to show you these sketches and write about my choice of these papers. I was working on the Quattro paper, sketching with the PPBP before IFJM 2013. But I ran out of it when I started doing this in the fake journal and that's when I turned to the other papers that I had on hand. If you want to sketch and work in gouache, and don't mind a little bit of buckling I recommend these papers as an economical choice for doing a lot of studies and working out your ideas.

I also used the following extra papers in the way explained below:

• Office Max Yellow Legal Pads—for sketching with various pens.

• An 18 x 12 inch pad of Sumi paper (which I printed on with acrylic paint and glued over an entire spread as seen in this peek into the journal or which I cut into smaller squares and sketched on—which you'll see in another post).

• Pack of Black Ink Block Printing Paper from Blick (multiple colors) used to make monoprints with the Gelli-Arts Printing Plate and acrylic paint. (I think this paper is excellent for monoprinting with this plate and it is lightweight and easy to collage. The darker colors are particularly fun to print on. It is economical and I recommend it.)

• Strathmore Toned Paper (Tan) torn from a 9 x 12 inch spiral bound book and used for monoprinting. (Excellent.)

• Various letterwriting papers from Paper Source and Paper Depot (for printing and collage).

• Scraps of watercolor paper (both 90 and 140 lb.) that I had painted on with acrylics or printed on with the Gelli-Arts Printing Plate.

• Indian Block Print decorative papers.

• Scrapbooking pre-printed papers purchased in the bargain bin (35 cents each).

• Crescent Graffiti Paper 7 x 10 inches (Bleedproof for markers, smooth, used for printmaking in this book. OK for that, but a bit thick.)

• Text pages from an archival book—printed on and used as collage.

• Heavy weight tag board of the type used to cut stencils. I used it to cut stencils and to print on and use as collage material.

• Collage scraps package—package of decorative Japanese paper scraps that I purchased last year (no longer available) on which I printed, or which I just used plain for collage.

• Paper ephemera sent to me by people participating in the interactive phase of my journal this year. The papers received ranged from tissue weight to cardstock.

I was happy with all the papers listed in this post, for the uses I describe here. I will continue to use them in the future.

I also want to thank the folks who took time to send me something for the interactive portion of my journal creation. You all selected wisely! Your pieces all fit easily. We were often working in the same color palette. It was great fun. Buttons will be sent out to those whose pieces I received before April 17, 2013. Thanks so much.