Moleskine Japanese Album - starting the drawing

Published by neil on May 28th, 2007

Back in February of this year jEN made an excellent suggestion: create an drawing using a Moleskine Japanese Ablum (my blog post about that here). This weekend, as you can see from the above photograph, I finally made a start.

The albums basically consist of 60 pages, rather uniquely bound as you can see. This creates a very interesting space to create an image, one that exists as a long, slim strip (two strips, I suppose, as there are two sides to the paper!), and also a series of much smaller double spreads all joined together. This means that it can be viewed as a whole, or as virtual pages each the width of however many one might decide to pull out of the album to view. The prospect of such a unique piece is fascinating!

One aspect of the consideration for this piece was what to do with it once complete. I thought that it might be something I could sell or auction, with all the proceeds going to charity. I have not decided at this point, but this brought up a conversation about the value of a finished piece.

To me, the completed item has no value on itself - not personally at least. Any item of art can have a potential financial value, but to me it is the process of creativity which provides the value, not the physical end result. It is the taking of the most basic of raw materials - paper and some form of drawing instrument - and creating something which is a pure outpouring of the mind. This particular project will inevitably be more of a pure creative process than my recent individual drawings, which are all generally concepts or themes. The Japanese album will be a journey, both for myself and for the final owner. It will include elements of what I experience around me in the various locations I might sit and draw. I suppose it may be something of a visual journal - though not a journey of the physical world as such.

I am already itching to get the the end of the project to experience what will appear at the final pen stroke. But I am resigned to this taking a very long time to complete - it could be a year or more before it is in its final state. I’ll post updates here and on flickr for those who are interested in following its development.

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