The still life of the boots I feel are one of the most successful pages in the sketchbook, they have much more the look of a visiual journal and I think I have arranged image and text together quite well with the typography aspects finally coming together well to join the final outlook of the pages together. Also because it was a still life, I was able to work at my usual pace and therefore the image has more detail, neatness and proffesionalism. Having said that however, I actually did not spend very long doing it, certainly not over an hour so therefore I am quite pleased with the results as I think I am finally learning how to work quicker.
The thumbnail picture at the far right above of is the next page in the journal. I think the repetitive portratuire gives it a narrative aspects and makes it quite journal-like. I’d tried to capture all the different moods of my baby cousin within ten minutes or so of me being around him in which he cried, had to be consoled, and was happy again. This was quite interesting and interactive and made me think of things Craig Thompson mentioned in his interviews (that I looked up whilst researching him for the essay) of what its like to draw something so personal to you and how when he draws a person from his past he remembers them all over again and how his life drawings of freinds are more to do with him expressing his relationship with them then just life drawing for practice’s sake in one of the online interviews I cited in the essay he says ‘I mean, these figure drawings [pointing to a sketchbook] are more about the process, probably, than the final drawing, and they’re as much about the relationship I have with the people I’m drawing as the process. With each one [person], I’m remembering them over again.’ , this was particularly true and poignant for me as I was seeing my cousin for the first time and had never drawn him before (I wonder if this come through?). Also when looking through Thompson’s Carnet du Voyage I couldn’t help but notice the similarities of page 8 and my own journal page not just because of the subject matter of children or even the composition of the page but because of this idea of trying to get across a mood, or a character or scene through multiple portraits and how important portraiture is to these kind of ‘visual journals’ as we interact with people so much just in our daily lives. Thompson has about 20 pages alltogether devoted just to portraits of people on his travels (again this is something I was unable to expand on in the essay) and likewise while I was with the birdwatchers I had to rely heavily on portraiture to record the things around me and as I was interacting with them so much I felt this particularly important for the project and an intergral part of thejournal-keeping process. On a practical level, I feel the hardest part was drawing such a small child, the youngest person I had drawn before from life was a 7 year old and I found that I didn’t know/understand enough about the facial measurements of babies to quite get it right, the baby kept looking a good few years older then he actualy was! The thumbnail furthest left is afurther page in which I devoted the whole page to making a portrait of one of my other cousins, trying to describe him through both drawing and writing, and the thumbnail next to it of my baby cousin again who I was obsessed with drawing, trying to get his features to look right, I like how in that image I incorporated the Zzzz as a symbol for his sleeping and used it both as a an image and text (I had trouble doing this at the beggining). All these pages apart from the boots, were done during my break to the US to visit family, a week after I had finished with the birdwathers but I felt I wanted to continue the joyrnal-keeping part of the project while I was away because I had enjoyed it so much. 
February 4, 2008 at 9:01 pm
This is really interesting to see your process, I definitely see the semblance to Craig Thompson. I almost wish you had made your final drawings more journal-like, since I think the comments and smaller sketches add some more context to the drawings. When you were showing us your final drawings in class, you had a lot to say about the people, and it would’ve been interesting if those notes were on the images themselves. Little things like the binoculars they recommended, the boots you were wearing, and the sassy comments by the old man during the quiz make the portraits more personal and compelling.
I almost was confused whether the second small image was yours or Craig Thompson’s. I like too how you talk about drawing your little cousin, and Thompson’s comments about drawing people he’s close to.
February 4, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Yeah I was dissapointed with my final ten A3 images too, I wanted to add text but I didn’t know how and how even my writing should look aesthitically on the page so I just left it, maybe that was a mistake. I even began to add a text of speech on one of the portraits, the one of the old man you mention but felt that it didn’t look right so I just erased it. I should have worked through it really and not been afraid to make a mistake. Otherwise I know the final drawings didn’t look quite as lively as the originals because they had to be reconstructed so much from A5 to A3 and lost so much character because they were reproduced much slower, whereas everything in the sketchbook that was done on site, was done in the moment.