Looking like a real artist...

So in the van today, as we turned a sharp corner, my tea mug (with about 2 inches of cold milky herbal tea with honey in it) tipped right over onto the unbound open edge of my sketchbook/journal, drenching the pages and everything within...

My dear sweet soulmate (the driver of said van) patted me on the (also wet) knee and says: "Now it looks like a real artist's."

Rude words abounded ~ I was devastated. It wasn't his fault at all but you see, I have this thing... I love prisine notebooks. I like them neat. And tidy. And, above all, clean. Not for me the mucky, dog-eared look. Ruffled pages seriously disturb me. Uneven paper edges actually keep me awake at night. I can handles water wrinkes, just. Only as a result of a watercolour sketch. Smudges bother me though. It took me, literally, years before I stopped carrying whiteout in my purse along with my journal to correct my spelling mistakes. Come to think of it, now that they have those whiteout pens I could... But I digress...

Words smeared... Paint ran... Ink spread... Pages stained. There is an unsightly tea stained mark along the bottom edge. My poor sketchbook/journal, proud in its crisp, clean state now lies battered and mottled. Bruised and worn. Like a warrior home from a war that was lost. Dejected.

Which makes me feel sorry for it. Because on some level I know it senses that I may just pick it up later tonight when I go to journal and reject it. Needing, no craving, the safety of a new, clean, and might I add, DRY, place to write and sketch.

Waiting for the ferry on the way home I did do a quick watercolour sketch. I had to. The first rule of thumb when you fall off, is to get right back on. Works for bicycles, horses, and skates too I understand. So hopefully it worked for sketchbooks. I did a quick sketch of the scene, did a watercolour wash, and then began filling in the details with Pitt pens. Absorbed in what I was doing until it felt good to be working in there again.

Am I going to abandon it? As someone who has had abandonment issues with toasters in the past (that's for another post) I don't honestly think it's within me. After all, this journal sketchbook has seen me through an awful lot these last couple of months. I'd have to be a pretty lousy person to discard it just because I forgot to put my very tall and unstable mug of tea somewhere safe in a van that delights in throwing things all over the place just because it can turn on a dime. I did mention the driver who loves same, didn't I?

It's really been there for me. Accepting without crisitism all that I had to say or draw. So I'll see this somewhat unsightly sketchbook journal through to the last page.

Besides... apparently, now, it looks like it belongs to a real artist...