Word Sketchbook Drawings

I have an adage: Never fall in love with an art product. As soon as you fall in love, said product will be discontinued and unavailable and you are left with a broken heart and the task of finding a replacement. This has happened to me time after time with sketchbooks. I had just finished a case of books made by Creative Mark called Relexions.(8.5"W ×11"H, white linen cover) and when I went to reorder, I found that that particular book had been discontinued. I did some homework on the web and did find another book that I was hopeful about. Another book by Creative Mark, again called Reflexions, but this one had a black cover. So I bought three. Much to my chagrin the paper was inferior and my crow quill pen ripped the paper. It was a terrible book for my purposes. So I took to Facebook to bitch about my sketchbook woes and received the following level headed reprimand/advice from my buddy Rob Dunlavey, "Hey, buck up Hal! Listen to your media (inferior or excellent) and make the images that result from the dialog." He was right, of course and I discovered that these sketchbooks were pretty good for word drawings.

For the last several years I have been making layered word paintings. The words in these paintings are free associated and touch on popular culture, geography, literature, art, history and what ever else pops into my head. I'm sure a psychotherapist could have a field day with these paintings. I have also done alot of sketchbook work along these lines. So I will devote these inferior books to word drawings. To finish the story, I was able to find a reasonably priced sketchbook with suitable paper from a company called Stillman & Birn. And all is right in the universe once again.

Here are some pages from my this new word sketchbook, drawn in my morning sketchbook sessions from Nov 5 - Nov 12, 2013.