Taking Stock and the Tenth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the tenth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

No tip for today, just a companionable reminder to keep chugging along whether it is going smoothly or whether it feels a struggle—we've only got a week left!

OK, so there is a tip, with one week left in International Fake Journal Month 2010 take a moment today to page through your fake journal and ask yourself what "more" would you like to see happen in it.

"More" can be anything from more color to more intensity of emotion. "More" can be visual or verbal. "More" is not about taking more time out of your day and devoting it to the project. "More" is not about spending more money on art supplies at this point.

"More" might be as simple as making a date with your fake journal every day at the same time and finding a way (a pre-journal cup of coffee, a nutritious snack, 15-minutes of yoga, a short walk…) to get completely away from your life before you get into the fake journal so that you are present (as your fake journal author of course). Remember many of the techniques and approaches you use during International Fake Journal Month can be useful when you are keeping your regular journal. This is the time to try out different approaches.

Also this review is not a time to let your internal critic speak up. What I am suggesting is a review of your project as it stands so far, with an eye to pushing the envelop just a little "more" in some direction. Yes this will mean that you skate closer to risk and odd or ugly pages, but it also means that you will really let your fake journal author have control of his/her book.

Give it a push for this final week.

Facial Vocabularly and the Ninth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the ninth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I've been thinking a lot about faces this month, because of the way the fake journal is structured. I found a slim but delightful book from Dover that I recommend to people working with faces—"Sargent Portrait Drawings: 42 Works by John Singer Sargent."

You'll also find books with drawings by other masters like Holbein and Leonardo. The great thing is that many are $6.95 (the price of the Sargent book).

The drawings in this book are reproduced in a large enough size so that you can see subtle nuances of line and shade. (One drawing on each 8 x 11 inch page.) Some of the drawings are loosely started and left unfinished, others are completed and fully realized (though I would argue that even Sargent's unfinished work has a sense of being fully realized).

Seeing how a great master like Sargent makes pencil and charcoal do his bidding to capture a likeness can inform your own efforts. You can see how he developed a vocabulary of marks and approaches that capture the 3-D in the 2-D surface. It is helpful to see how someone so skilled understands the structure of the face and the play of light and shadow on that structure. And it is always instructive to see how a great mind and hand "cheats" and suggests detail with a sure touch, when there is no detail upon close observation.

Sargent, Holbein, Leonardo—and all the great masters—can help you find a facial vocabulary of your own. I recommend you check out some of these books.

International Fake Journal Month Tip of the Day: Enjoy the Chaos

Above: my 2010 fake journal on April 15, halfway through the process. More about what is happening to it in the post below. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

As you can see from the above photo, by April 15 my fake journal was curling up at an amazing angle. Additionally things were getting tight at the spine of this simple, sewn pamphlet (an APICA commercially made soft-covered notebook which I have written about before).

For many journal keepers the journal's final aspect—whether it looks worn or brand new—is important. Fake journaling can help you bust out of your prejudices as to whether or not there is a "right way" for something to happen, or whether there is a right way for something to end up looking.

Often people come to visual journaling with the idea that their filled journal should be (must be) a publishable piece of artwork—rather than whatever it turned out to be.

Imposing such restrictions on yourself can be limiting, even crippling to your journal practice. You allow your internal critic free-reign and constant access to weigh in on any of your activities—he gets to micro-manage your choices. You might put off working in your journal because you don't feel well or you don't think you have enough time to do something that is "worthy." You might actually find yourself thinking about "worthy" all the time—I've seen this happen. (Just the other day a friend told me she finally felt worthy to work in a journal I'd given her made with wonderful paper. I wanted to scream. Happily she feels worthy now, but the book has needed to be worked in all this time—books need to be filled.)

Sure there are artists creating journals that delight the eye and intellect so much that every page should be published. But if you look at the work of those artists you'll see that it is wonderful because they aren't hampered by preconceived notions of what they are "going for" but instead are simply working.

I would love to paint like Gérôme but life intervened and I made other choices and I didn't work as hard as he did, and frankly don't have the natural talent. I can be a realist about it. And because I can be a realist about that I can also be busy in my journal working from the point where I am at this point in my life.

This is something to keep in mind when you look at the journals of artists you admire—they are at a different point than you are, in skill, in talent, in interest, in work ethic, in circumstances you can't even begin to imagine. All of this plays into how their journals look at any given time.

The journals that I really admire are filled with pages of risk taking—risks that pay off because the artists are skilled, but risk taking all the same—which could result in failure. Embracing risk is part of making art, whether you are doing something to publish or not.

So my tip today, as we hit the final stretch in 2010's celebration of International Fake Journal Month is: embrace all the chaos and risk that comes your way while creating your fake journal.

For me this year, the scope of the journal was different from any journal I've done for myself. I have only been using pencil (something I haven't done since college) and my journal author has been using paper inserts in a way that I wouldn't do in a regular journal without making compensations (i.e., cutting out other pages to make space for the insertions).

The result is a physical object which is warping in a way I had not expected (though if I'd thought about it at all before hand I should have realized this would happen) and has caused me to further let go of my "fussy" procedures as to cutting and gluing. The second half of the book is really about "making it work" rather than getting it to work in the most optimal way. (And the great thing about it being a fake journal is that the author has to make it work, not me, and she doesn't seem to mind at all, so that's good role modeling for me!)

By embracing the "chaos" of this approach in this particular journal I'm able to whittle away at my own particular "optimal way" mentality. It doesn't mean I will stop being someone interested in experimenting and finding optimal ways to do things in my journal, and with the art materials I elect to use. What it does mean, however, is that I can free myself from the need to find the optimal way all the time. I can step away from "optimal way" when that means getting onto a more useful path to creation. That's always a good thing.

For me, over the years, that has been one of the most striking benefits of fake journaling. Last year's use of an Alvin Field Book, dip pen, and watercolor helped push me back into non-archival materials like school notebooks (something I used throughout my childhood). It has freed me even more from "archival" materials. It's great to use archival materials; it's great to work in journals that I have bound myself with archival materials; but fake journaling reminds me that it is simply just great to be journaling, with whatever is at hand.

For someone of opposite tendencies fake journaling might be a time to trot out the specially made journal with archival pages…

As you move through the final days of this year's celebration I hope that you find a way to embrace the oddities, the risks, the less-than-you-had-hoped-for results that may have happened. Own them as part of the journey you're on to express your vision. Use the accidents and mishaps to encourage you to more experimentation, rather than allow them to shut down your creative experimentation.

When we were young and we played, we don't get graded on the quality of our play (unless you played with a really bossy child or an absurdly intrusive adult); your passing or excelling "grade" in play was the feeling you got—the satisfaction you had—in knowing that you were really engaged. That's what matters. Remember that, and bring it forward into your journal practice.

Let your journal (fake or real) be a record of your play and experimentation. Enjoy the satisfaction of being fully engaged.

Eighth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: The eighth entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Yesterday I posted an additional list of new links to people participating in International Fake Journal Month 2010—people who are posting their work on their own blogs. Well, after that I put those links and the previous links all together in a links list at the side of this blog—2010 Participants. You can find them there and check on them throughout the month. (And into May as many of us might be behind in posting.)

I hope you will stop by the blogs where people are working on their 2010 IFJM Journal and give them encouragement.

More International Fake Journal Month Participants and the Seventh Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the seventh entry in my 2010 fake journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Here is an update on participants in this year's fake journal celebration. I have provided the name of the artist and then a short note about the fake journal. If you click on the name a link will take you there.

Gina Mitsdarfer (Gina shows us Santa Fe interior designer, Syndey Greene's journal.)

Margaret Sloan (Her journal keeper is off on a trip to an unusual land—Divergencia—where there are snail trains and cloud cows.)

Jana Bouc (Jana shares a book of spells and unspells—useful for all sorts of things! This is Jana's second year participating in IFJM.)

Ky Sanders (A young boy, Danny, begins a life changing journey.)

I'm going to make a sidebar feature with links to participant's postings on their own blogs. You can also click on "2010 participants" under categories and get to the related posts which list them.

Again, I'd like to encourage you all to jump in and start a fake journal if you haven't already done so. And of course, visit the blogs of those people who are posting their efforts!

Sixth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the sixth entry in my 2010 Fake Journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I'm getting more links ready for a post tomorrow. If you are posting your fake journal on your blog and I haven't already put you in the links update then be sure to let me know so I can include you.

In the meantime, keep enjoying the experience of fake journaling. I will have some more things to say in the next couple of days. And don't forget to check in on the other fake journal keepers—links are found in my April 9 post.

Fifth Entry in Roz's 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the fifth entry in my 2010 International Fake Journal Month Journal. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Today is not only Tax Day, but it is the midway point in International Fake Journal Month.

If you have been working right along with the rest of us then you are half way through the month! Congratulations and keep working.

If you are still sitting on the fence, come on, join in. You've got two weeks to have some great fun—stretching, playing, and exploring!

Fourth Entry in My 2010 Fake Journal

Left: the fourth entry of this year's fake journal. I'm still using only the Stabilo All (black; used dry) and cutting away the page to expose Canson Mi Tientes. I'm working in the APICA soft-covered notebook. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Since I don't use pencil in my visual journals much (I don't like all the smearing and smudging) I'm having a bit of a vacation from myself and my usual prejudices against smudges.

The insertion of a backing sheet of Canson Mi Tientes on each page (you can see the previous page's backing sheet at the left of the image) has caused this slim writing notebook to start to curl (with the grain of course) in an interesting fashion. It causes the pages to rub against the previous page—and since this isn't my journal I'm not in the least concerned.

Yep, quite a vacation.

International Fake Journal Month Tip of the Day: Don't Worry about "Bad Pages"

Left: Page 3 in my 2010 fake journal.

Sometimes our pages don't turn out the way we expect them to—or hope. Fake journaling helps us get over the push to have "perfect pages." I addressed an aspect of this in yesterday's post—the need to keep going.

But beyond the push of keeping yourself going when a page doesn't turn out the way that you would have liked or hoped, you also need to let go of the idea of having perfect pages, even in a "special" journal such as the fake journal.

On my third day of sketching in this year's fake journal none of my angles were working out. But because I'm not concerned with the need to make perfect pages I can use this experience to delve deeper into the mind of my character, freeing me even more from the need to be accountable to any internal critic.

So as this drawing started to depart from my initial hopes and direction (the shading was too dark and clumsy in some areas, the angles and proportions not keenly observed) I started asking my character what her expectations and thoughts about this were.

And that's when I really met and connected with the author of this year's fake journal. So I recommend you turn any moments of disappointment into moments of discovery. These are opportunities to understand your character's goals and expectations—which may be totally opposite from your own.

Part of the fun of International Fake Journal Month is the opportunity to try out someone else's approach. This means you have to step back out of the way so that can actually happen.

When you learn to step out of the way in this fashion, without bringing judgment to the situation, you are also building your mental muscles for dealing with your own internal critic.

Accept what happens on each page—but also take a moment to learn from it. Let the "aha moment" of discovering more about your character happen.

If you are really stuck in the concept of "I must have perfect pages," then read my post "Journaling Superstitions #4: Each Page Must Be Perfect," on my regular blog Roz Wound Up.

Keep working.

International Fake Journal Month Tip of the Day: Keep Working and Don't Second-Guess Yourself

Left: the April 2 entry in my 2010 fake journal.

We're almost halfway through International Fake Journal Month 2010. My fake journal is bulging nicely. (I'll take a video of it this year too so you can see how deformed the notebook gets.) I've been able to keep up with my page-a-day-strategy, so far. Sometimes, however, it isn't easy to keep up the pace. Life interrupts us and eats up the time we've set aside for any art activity, not just fake journaling.

Something else can stop us too—indecision or a sense of vagueness. Or perhaps I should call it the "second-guessing yourself."

Maybe the story line you'd imagined (if you were hoping to have a narrative thread running through your fake journal) isn't coming together the way you thought it would. Maybe the images don't have the look that you thought they would? Maybe the ideas seem weaker than they did when you were planning for April?

If any of that is true, or other ways of second-guessing have popped up, take a moment to do a quick self-assessment. Is your internal critic calling for attention? That's the first order of business—get him to shut up by any means possible. "Laterizing" him is always a good method. "Hey, I'll deal with your comments later…" Do that enough and he'll get the message. You'll be left alone. It's worth the practice you get doing this when working on your fake journal.

If it isn't the internal critic that is stalling you look for other possible road blocks. Maybe you simply need a nap. (I can't take naps, but I know lots of people who do and naps always work for them, so I'm suggesting you try it.) Or maybe you need to avoid sugar to keep your energy levels up and even (I know I have to do this).

Whatever it is, take a moment to look into what is going on, take a couple deep breaths, and then KEEP WORKING. That's the absolute best cure for stalling and second guessing. Put yourself back in your character's mindset and get back to work, their work. Don't worry about creating a great piece of art on your page or page spread, just let your character get something about his day down that is honest. (Well, within the confines of "fake" of course.)

Keep working.