lets have a good laugh shall we?  at my expense.  i don't mind.  this was a blind contour drawing of pam.  we howled over this.  later i watercolored over it and tried to spell contour.  ha! ha! ha!  i JUST THIS MINUTE realized that i spelled it wrong.

the one above is a semi-blind contour with a water soluble fountain pen.  that purple lattice was already on the page when i started.  a remnant of a day a few months back.  there's some colorful language on that page so avert your eyes if you're easily troubled by brash talk.  yadda yadda.

i forgot to show the groovy cans of soup in my fav color combos that pam brought me.  won't they be fun to sketch & paint?

my GIANT journal is 15x11.5 inches.  it practically takes up half of my kitchen table.  which as you can see i didn't bother to clean up before i took this pic.  

sunny sunday in los angeles.  

my neighbor just brought me 2 tacos and a diet coke from the taco truck.  life is good.

combinations of red & white are like heroin to me.  immediate high.  narcotic bliss.  all that.

i found myself charged with excitement yesterday and today while i built my new visual journal.

i was so feverish and swoony that i missed a couple of stitches on the spine.  whoops and who kayres?!

also someone hid my yellow waxed linen, i ran out of the orange, and i had to switch from red to orange sometime in the 3rd inning.  this is one big mother.

i might not have been thinking straight when i started cutting out letters and gluing them on the front.  maybe.  i'm not sure yet.  haven't decided if it's a mistake, a tragedy, or staggering genius.  

the back is my favorite part.  i was going inside the closet to get a roll of paper when the pinwheel i had taped to the closet spoke to me.  

"glue me on the back" it said in a james earl jones sort of voice.  so i did.

i'm thinking i'll incorporate this technique into the travel journal that i make for TICKET TO... class in the fall.  it's going to work perfect for the type of binding i have in mind.  something different.  know what i mean jellybean?

in the unlikely even that you were wondering, the binding on this journal is one i teach in TICKET TO VENICE.  

hope you're having a fabulous saturday.  doing something that makes you feel bright eyed and bushy tailed.  i know i am!

pam my crafty gangster friend came over yesterday to play our favorite game:  one flew over the cuckoo's nest visual journal edition.

she brought her watercolors to tempt me with.

i don't think i've been surrounded by so many pretty palettes before!  naturally i wanted to try them all.  so i did!

i always insist upon gifts at our playdates.  in fact if pam doesn't bring stuff for me, i make her drive all the way home and get something.  who wants to do that in LA traffic?  no one that's who.  so she planned ahead and brought lots of good stuff, starting with these rose chintz and currier & ives plates.

"how can i possibly accept these generous thoughtful gifts?" i said as i shoved them into my cabinet and stood in front of it with my arms crossed to indicate that a change of mind on her part would not be an option. 

pam also brought me some gorgeous fabric scraps which i added to my fabric drawer in my art storage cabinet.  sweet ingrid from sweden sent me some beautiful scandinavian-looking scraps in march.  and now my drawer, which was very anemic looking, is full to the gills of bright graphic prints and pretty trims.   i sort of feel like i won the lottery.  i locked the drawer and hid the key after the fabric was safely inside.  one can't be too careful with one's lottery winnings!  

i always love going through pam's giant journals, running my hands over the pages, and staring at all the intricate patterns.  i casually remarked that i should make a BIG journal for a change.  but i rarely work in 2 visual journals at the same time.  pam leaped out of her chair, charged over to my bookcases, and grabbed this huge old postcard scrapbook i got at a flea market in paris a few years ago (for 10 euros!)

"MAKE ONE NOW!!  this can be the cover!"  she screamed at me in her best one-flew-over-the-cookoo's-nest voice.

"but i don't have a back cover," i whined.

then she rummaged around somemore and pulled out a gigantic piece of chipboard i had forgotten about.  "YOU'LL USE THIS!!!"

"but you know i can't start a new journal until i finish the old one," i whined some more.

"SHADDUP AND DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!"

i do not understand how such a little person can have such a big loud bossy-pants voice.  in fact i was just about to say, 'you are not the boss of me!' when i realized it was a good idea.  so i shaddup.

and today i went to work making my enormous journal.

i didn't have enough paper the right size so i just copied what pam did in her journal and sewed together enough strips to make the pages long enough.

now i'm getting ready to stitch the whole thing together.

and that's a true story.  um except i left the part out about the contour drawings we did of each other.  insert laughter track.

more on the GIANT journal tomorrow!