Notebook

On rare occasions I will pen a drawing to go with my poem. And sometimes finish it off on PhotoShop to add colour and effect. Like the above one was penned for Girl with Tangerine Dress.

The above scribbled note to myself inspired the development of “Your Worldly Wisely Motherly Eyes“.

Sometimes, I write notes to myself in my notebooks. Like this one:

Sometimes the hardest person to forgive, and the one person you need to forgive the most, is you.

Can you tell I was angry there when I drew this? I can’t remember the reason, (this was dated February this year) but I recall the feeling of frustration and anger, on my journey to work, so I brought out my blue biro and inked hard on to the paper to release the emotions. I didn’t feel that I could put my emotions in to words, so I scribbled and marked and etched.

What do you do when you’re angry and frustrated?

Some poems come fully formed, others need drastic editing and re-writing, but most for me are in between. Above is the drafting of I Am Not Islam.

I love using coloured pens. Often (and you will see as I share more pages of my notebooks) I will write only in colour without black or blue pens because I feel we tend to use them for official creativity-stifling papers, so do not want to use them where I have the freedom to choose otherwise.

The number of colours also shows how many times the poem has been edited on paper. Some need further editing once typed up, others are perfect after the coloured-pen-editing process.

I asked my lovely readers through facebook and twitter if they’d be interested in seeing my behind-the-scene scribbles, stemming from a random moment of pilfering through my various notebooks. The positive reaction means I am now creating a new category called ‘Notebook’ with which I will upload selected pages, for your pleasure hopefully. I will also be putting up more drawings/art/doodles.

I was unsure what page to upload first. When I came across the one above, I knew that had to come first because it is the sketch I did  to create the header for my website. After sketching it in black biro, I took it to Photoshop for colouring in and editing. *smile*