As I worked this week on a new children’s book (see my last post) titled Patch La Belle I’ve thought more about the importance of enjoying and trying things regularly.

Too often we expect our enjoyments to be big life changing experiences when in reality a good life is a cumulative of many small pleasant moments. To have a good life one has to be able recognize a pleasant moment when it happens (even in the midst of a pandemic). This ability to recognize something enjoyable, while also absorbing it, is a skill to be learned and practiced all of one’s life.

Anyway, I spent time this week rereading my poetry sketchbooks, thinking, writing notes and sticky-flagging pages. Here’s a picture of two of my poetry sketchbooks. They’re small books, about 5 x 3.5 inches and I wrote in them with a fountain pen

As a way of working creatively I find it helpful to collect a bunch of thoughts into sketchbooks for sorting into something, a published book or an art exhibit, later. (I do a version of this sketchbook method with my fine art exhibits too.)

When I work in a sketchbook it feels random, the thought I’m recording feels unconnected to any future book or exhibit notion. The book or art exhibit ideas come later from rereading the sketchbooks and refining elements from my sketchbook. Essentially every sketchbook is a series of very rough drafts along with notes on what inspired me.

Here’s a page from my poetry sketchbook. Please note the margin notes, my thoughts in connection with my poem effort.

That poem with its marginalia sat for a long time. Months later I tried this effort, pictured below, to shape it a bit… still without a firm plan for what published book or exhibit it might become.

That finished art sat in my files for a while, gathering dust, unconnected to any project.

Then more recently when I was talking with the folks at Storyberries – www.storyberries.com – about formats for doing my words and picture combinations for them I remembered my illustrated giraffe poem and shared it with Storyberries. The above format of my poem it turned out wouldn’t work for my future Storyberries projects. So I shoved it back in my files.

Later on when rereading my poetry sketchbooks for the umpteenth time I came across the original poem yet again. As I reread my sketchbook I’m noting themes; multiple thoughts on a topic. The raw poem and my thoughts that inspired the giraffe poem fit with my reoccurring theme of trying things. Seeing this theme and thinking more on the topic is helping me to organize my current project Patch La Belle. So this week I reworked both the text and illustration for this particular poem.

That format fits much better with Storyberries guidelines and with my desire [more on that here] to do an entirely handwritten book. Now the poem has a place, it has become – at least for now – part of my newest children’s book effort. It will stay there till all of my pages for this project are finished and I reread them and decide what ultimately fits together best.

This project still feels “in flux” and uncertain but I just keep working, trusting that as I bring my vague notions into the real world as touchable objects I can see better what to do with them. My project idea firms up as I work. The trick is to roll with the feelings of uncertainty until that point.

And here are some more new Patch La Belle pages that have been done and redone in similar fashion to what I’ve just described. To save time I’m skipping ahead, omitting the sketchbook draft pages, and showing the finished work here.

I’m sure you’re seeing my working method now. My way of getting a thought outside of my head into a sketchbook, however messily, however vaguely, and then working with it multiple times in multiple ways just to see what it can become.

It’s my way of trying out ideas, of practicing enjoying something, of taking a notion and playfully exploring it. It’s also a way to have a small pleasant moment of fun regularly.

Thanks for reading. See you here next Monday?

P.S. if you’re just joining this party – welcome! – and you can see my other children’s book projects on my portfolio page here.