On the bus last week, a woman (in her fifties maybe) was sitting at a 45 degree angle to the side of me reading what looked like an art book. I saw glimpses of sketches and handwritten things on pages which instantly caught my eye. Fortunately, she lifted the book just enough for me to make out the title, "An Illustrated Life". I thought that was a nice title and then looked it up in the internet and found it had good reviews. I ended up buying it this weekend and had been reading it since yesterday. It got lots of nice hand drawn watercolor, pen, pencil, colored pencil drawings/paintings mostly on sketchbooks from different artists. It talks about journalling but instead of using mostly words or the newer version of journalling which makes use of collages or scrapbooking, the type of documenting this book talks about are ones which mostly contain intricate drawings/paintings/doodles with some words written on the sides. It is journalling by artists and looks at the artists' sketchbooks instead of their more formal works. It is a different kind of artform in itself. More personal, unedited and raw. Overall, it inspired me to document things I encounter in my everyday life. (I already am doing it once a week on average, obviously not as often as these artists do. They do it almost everyday!) It just feels right to me and gives me the opportunity to reflect on things which otherwise would get blurred in the hustle and bustle of everyday rush. It almost is similar to praying. As one artist in the book said (Peter Arkle), " If you make a drawing, you remember much more than if you take a photo. Here is the blog of the book's author - Danny Gregory, which is quite inspiring on its' own as well.
While reading through the book, I did find myself yearning for much more than what the book had. Although it contained numerous examples from different artists which gave me lots of ideas, after a while, I had hoped to find some more substance or story somewhere in the drawings, instead of going through a lot of fragmented examples all throughout. Maybe it's a different book altogether that I need to read or a zine perhaps. I hope graphic novels or maybe these sketchbooks someday would soon evolve into illustrated storybooks for adults. Much like children's books with all the beautiful illustrations but which tackle more mature topics.
One thing I got from the book is that it made me experiment using pen and ink with my watercolor sketches. Here I tried the steel tip nib with plastic holder and black acrylic ink. Not having gone to art school, I have long been wondering how those comic type drawings were achieved, and now I realized, they may have used these nib pens or some other caligraphic pens and not necessarily brushes. It is quite addictive to use. I could easily find myself getting lost in making crosshatches all over my drawing. It is calming to be marking out line after line after line. I had liked the erie feeling of the crosshatches found in Edward Gorey's work anyway. It is quite nice to try something new and finding out I'm liking it... now I just need a story.
