Fighting with my Journal

I think I have now, finally, gotten used to the transparency of my onion skin journal. I have reached an understanding. Sometimes it concerns me, the building obscurity that eventually happens for some pages - drawings rendered more or less invisible by their page-neighbours - but I've come to mostly accept it. It takes a strong mind to embrace the terrors of a see-through journal. And I am that strong mind.

For a while I drew on both sides of every page, but I started to feel like that was causing too much chaos - especially with the way that pencil transfers from page to page with any pressure from the other side of a drawing. I thought, yeah, lets give these pages some more space. One half step further away so that the transparency doesn't get bombarded. It was a broadly good decision, because really, those undersides of each page left alone look pretty nice, and I realised that the best drawings to make, for layering purposes, were ones that incorporated a high contrast between blocks of pencil and blank space.

I'm also trying not to be too precious with this journal. Because its made with this delicate paper, and has its pretty ouroboros design on the front, it announces itself as a special item. I must refute this and declare it filth in order to lose all inhibition and fully enter into the realm of the journal. The task must always be: to ruin the book.

I drew a particularly horrid bird, and what really makes it lovable to me is that I hate it. Aww. I adore my hateable creature.

Eww...

This is exactly what it's all about. Draw a hideous creature. Accept it into your heart. Never look back. New page new unpleasant image. If this goal is met, you are winning.

I really loosened up after drawing as many dogs as I could fit into a page. This was the moment I was unleashed. I became myself through these twelve dogs (Jesus' disciples btw).

After this, I remembered collage existed, and I realised that I needed to paste a chopsticks wrapper in here to really feel complete. There's something really compelling to me about collaging in here, but just sparingly, just occasionally. So you never know when a collage is coming. 

And then it's back to more creatures. More creatures.

More creatures.