360 Page Book

I'm excited to have started a sketchbook project which will last a whole year! I wanted to draw delicately and purposefully but I'm finding the frequency of production is forcing me to reconcile the gap between efficiency and care. The aim of this project first and foremost is about the scale of it. This demands fast work but I want to show as much skill and constructed effort as possible within the restrictions of time. I guess this is, at its core, a time experiment.

There are actually 358 pages after binding, but I'm considering the front and back cover pages for numerical reasons and because I did make them and print them with orange spots myself. The cover is an important opening and closing of a book, so I think it makes sense to count them as pages.

Notes I made concerning the first batch of pages:

My character is an ideal version of myself - something of a magical girl archetype, because I can battle my inner demons and save the world through creative means, or inside the world of the 360 page book. 

Cartoons always have heroes/heroines. Am I a saviour like The Powerpuff Girls or a cartoon expression of unseen thoughts like Lizzie McGuire's animated counterpart? I think there is some overlap in that I want to express myself through a representational drawn figure, but that I also use my cartoon self portraits as an exploration of wish fulfilment. They are versions of myself in an ideal world - most obvious in the beautiful landscape of the first page, with the OK moon (I often use the moon as a symbol of reassurance and comfort because I do feel calmed by the moon when I see it). I am the perfect and ever-changing version of myself in a perfect world populated by sweet and cute neighbours who surround and inform and interact with my "me".

Listening to: Billy Joel - Why Should I Worry?