Category: Composition Notebook
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Compbook Comics
2022
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Compbook Scrapbook
One thing I love about the composition notebook is its casualness. It’s different than a sketch book. There is something about the lined paper that already lets me know this isn’t that critical. And when I use it for both drawing and writing, it feels not like a thing, but more like a place I can ride around, like a roller rink. If I stay in motion, I get somewhere
It’s easy for me to paint and draw and write on compbook paper or old file folders like it’s easy to sing when I’m alone in the car. It’s a bare-handed way to catch and re-conjure so many different parts of the day. I like seeing what will show up on its when I have my compbook open and hands in motion. I know that writing and drawing at the same time is never a bad idea. And I know that making things without knowing what they are or are for is also never a bad idea.
The images below made their way into the world somehow.
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Round Robin Juxtaposition: Giving a Body to Worries, Wishes and Needs
This is an exercise that begins with writing for five minutes in your composition notebook about the things that concern you: things you have to do, things you’re worried about, things you wish were different. The next step is to fold a piece of copier paper into quarters and divide the spaces by running your flair pen down the fold lines. Set a timer and draw any animal in 90 seconds. If you are doing this exercise with others, pass your paper and then draw another animal in the next box. Repeat this until all four spaces contain a drawing of an animal.
Pass the paper again and look at the piece you wrote in your compbook. Find a worry, wish or need and write it in a speech balloon as if the animal is saying it. Pass the paper and repeat. In my classroom this results in a page that eight different people have contributed to.
What happens when we give a body to a concern? This is one of the things comics can do.
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Compbook Practice Pages
The paper in my composition notebooks is just average lined notebook paper. It helps have a hair dryer to dry down the page so I can keep moving.
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Compbook Collage
At some point I will get stuck in whatever project I’m working on. This always happens. It’s as if what ever is moving the work forward needs to take a break. I’ve found that if I stop trying to make things work and switch to making collages in my composition notebook, it keeps my hands in motion and keeps me ready for when whatever it is I’m following decides to start up again.
I don’t think very much about these collages as I’m doing them but much later I’m always surprised to find them looking so fresh when I open an old composition notebook.
9″ x 7″, crumpled magazine pages, watercolor, white glue on notebook paper. January 2019
