One thing that has become clear to me in the last few months is that if I draw (paint, collage, doodle, etc.), I write. Since writing is an essential part of my job (the whole publoish or perish thing is real), I need to draw more in order to write more. Simple as that. It works.

To that end, since le beginning of the year, I have participated in various schetchnoting and doodle challenges, and creative prompt schemes, and produced a lot of pages of stuff on paper. if you follow my Flickr account, you have seen those pieces accumulate.

In the last couple of months, you have seen me do (and complain about) slow journaling. It's absolutely not for me. I have had more pleasure from doing things in my Occasional Journal (9 pieces in all) than from all of the Slow Journaling thing (61 pieces). So I have decided to return to the mostly graphical arts on the one hand, and writing on the other hand. Least June and July, I had done a modified #Index-Card-a-Day challenge from Daisy Yellow in a notebook with different prompts. I had thought I would do the 2015 #ICAD challenge next June. However, I have decided to do the true 2014 #ICAD now. I will not be doing it in exact order and I very well may do it faster than in 61 days, doing more than one card a day or doing several cards in parallel over several days. But I will be doing it on index cards using several different techniques. So far, I have done drawing and mixed-media collage, with paint. I am not placing any limits on myself.

I have found that I make different art in a sketchbook than on loose paper. Both are freeing in different ways. The interaction between pages in a journal brings out a lot of interesting themes and possibilities, but there is little choice to fill the pages in order. I guess one could not fill them in order, but I find I cannot. Loose paper, however, be it watercolour paper, bristol board or inder cards, is freeing precicely because one does not have to do anything in order. Any one piece of paper can go where and when ever one feels like. If I want to do prompt #29 right now and do #4 tomorrow, then that's what I do. If I want #7 and # 32 to answer each other, I do so. And I don't have to worry about smudjing the previous pave while doing it. I like this. If I feel like doing a page in the Occasional Journal, then that's what I do too.

Since I am no longer commited to journal in one notebook in a form I don't like, I should blog more here, with actual words rather than with passive aggressive pithy statements. Which should bring back what little interest this blog has in the first place. No more pithy!