Five fabulous field-books
When I'm on a long telephone conversation, I doodle on whatever paper comes to hand. I tend to draw swirls and concentric circles, and a mermaid or two. Mermaids? Yeah, I don't know why.
What do you doodle? Because let's face it, everyone loves a good scribble. Maybe there's something subconscious about using our hands while talking on the phone... I don't know.
Mr B writes his name over and over again, and my name, and the girls' names, like he's practicing our signatures. You'll find lists of names on loose sheets of paper, in the sleeves of books, on napkins, pretty much anywhere that Mr B has been talking on the telephone.
Of course, some people have a real knack for doodling. So it's these folk that I'm going to celebrate in today's mashup of fabulous field-books. (Field-books in this case meaning: doodles done well, and then a step beyond).
In no particular order...
1. First up, the Frankie magazine project. Frankie sent empty field-books out to just these types of creative doodling folks recently, and asked them to fill the books any which way they saw fit. The books are slowly filtering back, stuffed with drawings, paintings, decoupage and myriad other wonderful, artistic techniques.
2. I love Joanne Thies' red and pink themed field-book, sent to Frankie, filled with intricate patterns and lines, layered one over the other. I wish I had this notebook to thumb through for an hour or eight. Her blog is also well worth a follow, full of lovely things hand-drawn.
3. Super crafter Elise Blaha also has a field-book I love. She calls it a Summer Minibook, and uses a base of coloured or patterned paper to collect "an entire season through photos, ephemera and text."
4. I've blogged about the fascinating Burning House project before. More recently, I fell in love with this travel journal, created by Burning House participant Sarah E Farbo by using an old classic as the base. The book was the Ancient History of Herodotus, "a special gift I recieved on my 21st birthday, which I then used as a journal on my adventures through Europe." What a fabulous idea! When my own field-book is full, I'm going to try something like this next. I wonder what book I should choose...
5. And, finally, we return to doodles. The aptly named blog The Notebook Doodles is another online pool I love to dip my toes into regularly. It's filled with sweet, sometimes sad sayings, drawings and photos, scribbled over grid paper in a moleskin book.
