Sunday, December 13, 2009

7 things I learned from the sketchboook project

Back in the day when I used to do consulting work, at the end of a project we had a post mortem meeting. Or, instead of a meeting, we would have lunch out, all expenses paid. This, of course, was before the dot.com meltdown. Anyhow.. I thought that since the sketchbook project was finished, it deserved a post mortem.
Here is the list, in no particular order
  1. having a tight deadline, even selfimposed, turned out to be a good thing. I think that if I had more time, I would have procrastinated more and in the end, I would have had to rush more.
  2. on the other hand, I did not have time to play with the structure of the book. I wanted to try deconstructing and reconstructing it.
  3. I kept a sketchbook for the sketchbook! It was a repository to record ideas and I could not afford to miss them. It was the first time I managed to keep such a record!
  4. the pages turned out to be quite sturdy after all. However, I treat them gentler than I normally treat my jornal pages.
  5. most pages turned out to be collages. If I had more time, maybe I would have painted more. I like some pages more than others of course, but that's ok. I suppose.
  6. faces still appeared through the pages. I did not plan it and I was not looking for them, but once I saw them, I could not help it. Even if they do not have anything to do with rooms and elephants!
  7. I did not like leaving the left page blank, so in most cases, I painted or collaged the left page as well.I used everything that I could put my hands on, photocopies and images that I had from before.
It was an interesting challenge. Now, I am looking forward to the other ones: the selfportrait, the color project and the fiction project.

Here, I use the pan pastel portrait I already had.

Wrapping paper, stencils, pan pastels, stamps.
A shape I cut from cardboard and then I used as a stencil and as a mask.
Collage and pen sketches.