Journaling Superstitions #4: Each Page Must Be Perfect

 
Above: journal spread showing my thumbnail sketches and notes as I planned the layout for the recent MCBA Portrait Party booklet. You’ll see things crossed out, rethought, and scribbled down. It’s all there and useful to me when I sat down at the computer to make the template in Quark, and later when I asked people at the party to do certain tasks. Click on the image to see an enlargement.

Note: this is part 4 of an on-going occasional series on journaling superstitions—those “rules” or ideas which lodge in our brains telling us there is only one right way to do something. Ideas which stop process rather than foster it. Let’s hold them up to the light and let them melt. Find other parts of this series by clicking on "Superstitions" in the categories list in the left-hand column.

This is the big one folks—the one that gets most people, or at least most of the people some of the time. (But then any of the superstitions are big if it is the thing that stops you from making pages today.)

There’s one clear cure for the superstition of perfect pages: make lots and lots of pages. Over time your definition of perfect will align to what is authentic for you. What will spill out of you is just what’s needed at the time.

This doesn’t mean you can’t plan and think before you make that first mark on the page…just don’t waiver and demure; jump in.

Here’s one way people get caught. They confuse art journals or art books or artists books with visual journals. An art journal over time, because of the word “art” in the naming, tends to take on a certain importance and preciousness. The maker begins to see it as art and as art the book has to be important, special…and all the related baggage those thoughts lead to.

The urge, need, and desire fro profundity creeps in—only now it’s a need applied to technique. “If only I could sketch like [fill in the name of the artist whose work you admire],” “If only I had control of [fill in the medium you wish you had better skills with],” “If only I could [draw, understand color theory, grasp notan, etc.].”

If your skills are highly developed and you have a style or approach and each page you produce is a stunning work of art don’t change a thing. You’re producing and it’s working for you. Great. We all know artists like that.

For me, those books aren’t working journals in the way I need my journal to function. I don’t want the same things. If I want to do a finished piece I’ll do it outside my journal. Then it’s much easier for me to display it, reproduce it for print, etc.

I need to experiment in my journal, constantly, all the time. It’s the experimentation that moves me forward. It is this need to experiment that has moved me forward my whole journaling life, which started when I was a child.

The risk taking involved in this approach is play for me. And the results don’t matter because I’m the audience and what matters is the process, not the finished product. The process is happening now; I’m learning from the process and it’s all good, even if the pages aren’t “perfect.”

Sure beautiful pages happen when you let go of the need to make perfect pages. Anyone sitting on the shores of Lake Superior looking for agates eventually finds one! But that person also finds a million other rocks: basalt, obsidian, gabbro, rhyolite, granite, quartz, chert, sandstone (to name just a few). They may not be as dazzling as agates or Thomsonite, but all are stunningly beautiful, if you look honestly.

Left: A journal page on which I tested out a triad of paints (Daniel Smith and M. Graham) to see what mixes I could come up with. I wasn’t concerned that the page be regimented and orderly. That’s all nice, but I didn’t have time, I just wanted to get in and test the colors. Notes about my discoveries or thoughts are written in at the time, so they aren’t lost. I don’t want to try and recall first impressions, I want them noted down. Mixed in with all this are some notes about the rest of my day and a walk with Dick. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

People have heard me say this over and over: “If every fifth page of my journal isn’t a total mess or failure I know I’m not trying, I’m not pushing myself.”

My journal is about pushing myself to see things, note things, draw things, document my life and what has captured my attention in the moment, right now. It’s an approach that demands an immediate response.

There are days when I might sit and glue in photos of a painting in progress, but it's always in stages, mixed right in with the other stuff I’m writing down. It all just keeps moving forward. “Perfect pages” is the last thought in my mind.

Again, if you happen to be one of those artists who is creating pages, each one of which is a gem, then don’t stop. The fact that you are moving forward and doing something you love means it’s working for you. The idea of perfect pages isn’t catching you, tangling around your feet, tripping you and causing you to put your book unfinished on a shelf (or worse, untouched in the bottom of a pile of things to do). You’ve found something that works for you as an expressive method and anyone looking in your journals is rewarded with the beauty, so keep it up. And thanks.

But if the need to make perfect pages is stopping you, start letting that need go. Release it by using a new medium you aren’t skilled in, or a new color triad, or a new viewpoint (literally squat down if you always stand when you draw). Open that handmade journal with lovely $7.00 a sheet art paper and start taking NOTES at your next office meeting. (Take a deep breath if using art paper that way gives you pause, then work on.)

Momentum…build some. Turn some pages. You can’t discover what you want to do on the page if you don’t start filling pages up.

Right: Page from my journals which includes fabric swatches I made using my artwork, and notes on the creation. This custom made fabric eventually was used in my artist's book "Gaggle." Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Over time you’ll learn what makes a satisfying page for you—or what comes close and what you aspire to. Then you’ll aim for and journey towards that. Your journal won’t look like mine or anyone else’s because it will be authentically yours, coming out of you as it needs to, beautiful or crappy on any given day—always teaching you something, always teaching you even if your skills are already polished.

You are starting where you are, right now. That’s a wonderful gift. It’s a gift you get to open everyday, each time you open your journal, and you begin that conversation between yourself and the page.

Each time you hold that conversation the dialog deepens, the vocabulary expands, the felicity increases, the dance becomes more effortless. Everything else falls away. That’s the perfection.

Comments

[Katy]

Roz, this series is great. You are a wonderful teacher. I wish I lived closer to you so I could take one of your classes, but, alas, I am in GA.

Also, I think I've said it before, but I love your palette--so many wonderful earth tones and muted colors. Just lovely.

[Briana]

Thanks, Roz! Love this post.
-Briana

[Carol C>]

Roz, thank you so much for this Superstition!!! It's a big one for me....not that I make perfect pages, but that I seem unable to make perfect pages!!! This is almost as good as winning a journal....well, I wouldn't really know since I've never WON a journal!!!---Carol C.

[Sydney]

This is something I struggle with. I'm a "messy journal page" person. I'm not a neat journalist. But if a journal feels special in any way, it's a struggle for me to use it and enjoy it that way. I have to keep reminding myself that an unused journal is much worse than some messy journal pages.

[Roz]

Katy, thanks for the compliment. You need to visit Minnesota!

As for the palette, well, there aren't any earthtones. Unless it's the palette with yellow ochre in it (I don't have the palette in front of me. Or maybe you're talking about the triad?)

I like to use colors which are somewhat neutralized, they are already moving towards their complement. That's how I get those rich neutrals. That and mixing complements to begin with. It makes using a limited palette rather simple.

Explore and have some fun.

[Roz]

Sydney, I agree, there are few things in book arts as sad as an unused journal!

[Velma]

I like your "wound up" today. In every sketchbook of mine, if I have even a couple bits of art happen I am satisfied. Most of it is rumination of all kinds: words, plans, rants, photos, detritus, drawings, fibers... and often notes made elsewhere pasted in. I never index them, or organize them, or work chronologically, but I sometimes do. I don't like having restrictions, I want it to be "open for business".

[anna maria]

Very interesting post.
So many of your posts are like chapters of a book - don't know if I'm expressing what I mean very well, but that's the best way I can describe it.

[Roz]

Anna Maria, I hope that doesn't mean they are all too long. Get me started and I do go on.