The «Mixable 2013» book, and how it should work.

I waited until we got ourselves through a full month, so I had some material to show for the idea behind this year´s diary book. Part of the idea is from Graham Oakley´s book: "Magical Changes". Here are two good interviews with Graham. Anyway, This is what the visual experiment should look like:

Besides being a "diary"-kind of book, there are few more idea´s to it.
One of them is to swap out the top and bottom halves of the pictures.
Here´s an example from week 5.

Some combinations are funny, others are surreal.
Life is fictional. Too many different things can be going on at times.
I read in a book once, that being a housewife is the worst.

Other combinations don´t really work. But they are fun to play with.
As the year goes on, I will get better at figuring out how to make good ones.

All the stories and drawings are done in an actual book, I like to have this "real thing" when the year is done, much rather than a big folder with loose drawings and stories. In the same way, all the weeks are together in this one year.
I use a simple template to make all the entries will look the same.
This is very handy for the drawing-part.

First off, here is the book just when I bought it.
It is a A5 size sketch/notebook from TeNeues with 136 pages,
is solid enough that I can have it in my bag for a whole year.

With the book followed a paper, with lines on one side and a grid on the other.
The lined side got vertical lines for the week number, date and for the Initial.
The gridded side has marks for where to connect both sides of the drawing.

Forrest Gump said: Life is like a box of chocolates.
Typically, an artist wants to establish or push a norm in society and state, "this is how we are going to have it". Wether visually, musically, or in the ways we think and feel about things. Even the daily strips in the back of the newspaper subtly shows a norm of what life should look like.
This «Mixable 2013»-book is a celebration my one life, it´s complexities, it´s diversities, it´s connectedness. Putting stories and pictures on every week, is a normal diary-practice. I get to see the value of a given time, and I take with me what I need to remember.

Then, taking all the stories and pictures apart, and wonderous magical combinations with them will show what they really are. All part of my one life.

But there is so much more …

I don´t live by myself, and I don´t live for myself.

Real life is when we share with others, and mine mixes with yours.

I can make it look good on paper, but that is "a look" only.
I am not perfect, and neither is the world.

The status quo that no-one can stop pushing, is keeping to be involved with one another´s lives for all the weeks we are given to be together. Push even when it hurts.

I know it´s going to take me a lot of effort to grow in this area.

Here is "One" by U2 and Mary J Blige:

We´re one, but we´re not the same,

Well we hurt each other, then we do it again.