Hello again for another Friday post. This time, I'm going to expand a bit upon something that I touched upon last week, which was regarding a little journal that I had purchased from a dollar store years ago and barely used, and last week, I had actually planned to do some more work and drawing in that sketchbook to see how it felt but ended up only doing one sketch. However, from that one sketch, I was able to get some feel for the paper as a drawing surface and found myself rather liking the lined paper looked when drawn on, and being late instead of never with my idea for using this journal as a sketchbook of sorts, I ended up working in this book almost exclusively this past week and treating as a sort of visual journal that mixed both drawing and writing.

In fact, I ended up filling in just about 19 pages in this journal over this past week alone, and as this book has about 110 pages in total, I would say that I made an encouraging amount of progress in filling this thing up. For the past seven days, I would fill in at least two pages for each day with the most amount I ever did being four pages in one day, and considering the relatively stress-free experience I had filling in this amount of pages, I think that I could work in this journal at such a rate that I could actually full it up completely in about four weeks time or by the end of July, which is making me consider going through with it and making this my focus in terms of what I'm currently drawing in.

I would attribute a good deal of the progress I made in this past week to the fact that this journal is a small and cheap thing that's only about 5.5" x 8.5" and came from the dollar store, which makes it fine for random doodles, practice sketches, and other odd items. Of course, I have more appropriate sketchbook paper for when I want to do more detailed and finished work when I need it, but I'm devoting most of my time recently to just practicing drawing anatomy and subjects from life alongside doing other little drawings and things that are just for myself. These drawings and sketches are more for improving or just getting ideas down rather than being refined final works. As such, this journal is working more than fine as something I can easily carry around and do some daily drawing practice in without feeling like I'm wasting the paper.

However, drawing is not all that I've been doing in this book as I've also been partaking in some of this journal's original purpose and actually writing in it a little bit. Similar to the drawings in this book, these writings have been more for the sake of putting words to the page rather than pumping out refined final work, and as such, I've been writing anything from rough drafts for poem ideas to mentions of something that happened that particular day to ramblings on a given page about how I didn't have a clear idea for what to draw at the moment, which led to me doing a drawing from life of the mug sitting right next to where I was working.

For most of the pages that I filled in this last week, I would have both drawings and writings to varying degrees with either the former influencing the latter or vice versa. I would have some cases in which I would do some drawings and would quickly write and make comments about what I drew, such as a page on which I drew from a movie still and made comments about how it turned out and how I didn't like the ballpoint pens I used for the drawing as they kept leaving randoms blobs of ink. I think that this allows me to sort of interact with what I've drawn a bit more after the drawing process has finished as I'm now thinking things over and trying to put into words what I feel did or didn't go well.

On the other hand, I would have case in which I would write something down that would then influence what I drew on the page. In addition to the earlier example leading to the drawing of a mug, I would also have one or two cases in which I would do random drafts for poems at the top of the page that would then influence a little drawing in the bottom half of the page, such as a sailboat or a person trapped in a box. I found this process of sorts to be extremely helpful as it would often give me some ideas for what to draw that I probably wouldn't have thought of or considered before doing the writings, and I also think that this is another fun way of allowing two of my interests to interact and influence one another.

With me filling in and dating the pages for the past week, this journal has become a daily diary of sorts that combines visuals with the written word, which I'm finding is encouraging me to enjoy the sketching and writing processes even more, so I'm looking forward to how I may advance in using this journal for this dual purpose in the upcoming week. Until next time when I can hopefully display another substantial amount of progress in filling this book up. thanks for reading, stay safe, and have a pleasant weekend.

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