Noticing (Found Art)

Last weekend, I went to the giant Tempe Art Festival. Lots of tents, lots of people, lots of art, food, sunshine. It was cool, but perfect weather. Hot is not as good as cool for an art festival.

Out of habit, I parked in the shuttle lot and waited in vain for the bus. No shuttle. Cutbacks. I decided to walk the mile and a half to the show. I joined a stranger who looked at her Blackberry most of the time. Meanwhile, I watched planes lining up for landing at nearby Sky Harbor,  noticed you could see Tempe Town Lake from some places and not from others, that an old bridge had been repurposed for the light rail, that the sidewalk changed to blocks that fit together.

The entire walk, I felt like I was picking up information, feeling my internal GPS system adding information, feeling centered and rooted. My walking companion was fussing and texting. Finally she said to me, “This is a long &*%! walk, I should have taken my car.” She was easily 10 years younger, and a good deal slimmer.  She was doing too much work, and it was wearing her out.

It that very act of being OK with doing nothing, with “noticing” that lets you make great discoveries. I call them Found Art, because they are a lot  like found poetry. You notice something, look closely and there it is.

I saw this petrified jelly bean on the sidewalk, worn shiny from being scuffed over by many shoes:

Stepped-on heart. Photo © Quinn McDonald

It looks just like a heart. It IS a heart. And that made me think of all of our hearts, unseen, scuffed over, but made all the more beautiful for the discovery.

I stopped my companion and pointed, but she showed me the hand and continued to talk into her phone.

The moment was exquisite all by itself. I felt happy and light. Over what? Seeing a squished, petrified jelly bean embedded on the sidewalk. Yep. That sums it up.

Taking photographs of perfectly ordinary items helps me create a world I inhabit out of noticing. It is a very different world from the one my walking companion inhabits.

Here is a photo of a block wall with a big, top-heavy climbing plant. I’m interested in the hard-water stain, though. At the bottom of the photo. It’s not a chalk line, it’s chemicals from the water that have been sucked up into the block wall. To me, it looks like a mountain range, the plant could be a big thunder cloud.

Chemicals in the hard water make a mountain range.

This one is even more ephemeral. It’s a spot on the sidewalk–some stain, coffee, maybe, that someone splatted down. At first glance it looked like a dragonfly. Later on, I could see a dove in it. It’s a little hard to describe the dove, so below it, I’m including a drawing of a dove I did. You can sort of see the relation.

Found Art: dragonfly? Dove?

What’s the purpose in all this? Exactly nothing. It’s simply noticing. It doesn’t make money, it simply pleases me. I find it fun, interesting. I find it part of meaning-making. Seeing one thing in another can come in handy some day.

Flight. Reductive charcoal drawing © Quinn McDonald

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–Quinn McDonald is an artist and writer who teaches writing and journaling, including raw-art journals for people who can’t draw.

Standing Up for Your Art

When I sold my artwork at art festivals, I got immediate feedback. If I hadn’t designed a piece in a way that was popular, if it didn’t balance, no one bought it. (Those were days that I designed and sold totemic jewelry made from artifacts that had not originally been jewelry–veil weights, for example.) So I kept my eye on trends and what fit. And I balanced that with what I wanted to make, what made meaning for me, what stirred my creativity.

Found art: jellybead (or gum) spot on sidewalk. Been there for a while, couldn't budge it with my shoe. Still, art.

Eventually, I made the pieces that were popular over and over again. One of the problems of doing one-of-a-kind pieces is that you have to make very similar pieces in big numbers. I didn’t mind. It was the bread-and-butter work, I also got to make new pieces that were amazingly challenging and interesting to me.

When I quit doing shows, I wanted to spend some time exploring how my interests had evolved and what direction to move to follow my meaning. I returned to paper art. Over the next three years I’ve done a lot of exploring, experimenting, and discovering. And for me,  meaning lies in the middle of the intersection of writing and illustration. There is a lot of room at that space–the definition of “book,” “writing,” and “illustration,” all of which I loosely group into the phrase “raw art.” There are others working in that space, and they create interesting questions and meaning-making exercises.

There are also those who don’t understand or value this work. I understand that. After all, my previous work was functional, and what I do not is not. Some others are not interested in works on paper, and that’s what I do care about.

Something interesting has happened as I continue to explore the meaning-making portion of my art. I began to care more about the work, the meaning, the exploration than I did answering the question, “What can I teach?” “What product will they take home?” “What’s the interesting thing for the public?” Instead, I wrote a book encouraging people to sink into their creativity, to explore the dark edges and the bright outgrowths.

I’ve been working on ideas for a long time, but now I put the ideas down, knowing that I was drawing borders, knowing that I would have to leave out things as well. But I continued to collect ideas, try them out, see how they worked.

Then came the book proposal, and now I am waiting for the answer from the publisher. My friends have a huge question for me–What if the publisher doesn’t take the book? What will you do then? It’s a question that makes me smile. I’ll write the book, of course. I can’t not write the book. Of course I would like to have it published, but I am not writing for publication. I am writing because I have something to say, to share, to live. And that is true whether it gets picked up on Friday (December 11, 2009 for future readers) or not. Writing down what I have learned is important to the exploration and my understanding of my art for myself, and then for others. It’s what I do.

When your art makes meaning, you do your art. People like it and you thank them and are happy they understand it from their viewpoint. People don’t like it and you nod because they have a different viewpoint. But your art is the tool that helps you understand your life or even the bigger question of why you are here. So other people’s understanding is not a guidepost.

I feel deep admiration for people who are involved in creative work of any sort–and are happy to explain it and talk about it with strength and love. When challenged with traditional questions, “How much can you sell that for?” or “Who cares about that when there is so much misery in the world?” or “How does that help to solve the world’s problems?” or even “How can you do that when your family needs the money from a real job?” the artist knows that there can be no reply that satisfies the questioner. The person asking the question isn’t ready to understand the answer. Or they may be very close to understanding. Or they wish they could make meaning but are afraid. But the question doesn’t demean the artist’s value in discovering their art. They don’t have a choice. It IS their life.

The work of art is to face fear, to live with it, to find what is valuable and to value it. A big order, indeed. But the answer holds the meaning to life.

–Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach who trains businesses how to communicate effectively with their clients and helps people who don’t draw or write to keep art journals.

Raw-Art Journal Cover-to-Cover

After years of keeping a journal, I decided to try something new–to make an art journal from the ideas, sketches, and fun parts of my journals. Instead of keeping notes, images, sketches as I do in my journal, I made this one deliberately, cover to cover.

Here are some of the images.

The front cover is made by covering Arches Text Wove with gesso, writing in it with a corner of a credit card, then adding India Inks in black and brown. After drying, I used purple pastels and another coat of gesso. When it was completely dry, I rubbed it–hard–with a cloth. It looks like leather. I’ve never been able to make purple come out well with a camera, and this is no exception–the band looks blue, although it is the same purple as in the cover, which is a good deal more subtle than it looks.

Book Cover with buttoning closure band © Quinn McDonald, all rights reserved, 2009

Found Art starts as a photograph. It’s of something ordinary, that I can see something in. I then print the photograph and alter it using colored pencils or watercolor pencils. You can see the after and before right under it. On the right is a great way to keep your journal writing secret, if you aren’t keeping a journal for fear someone will find it. Write, cut into strips, weave the strips into a design.

Found Art ©Quinn McDonald, all rights reserved 2008-9

This is what the original photo looked like.

Photo of vine on brick wall, © Quinn McDonald, all rights reserved, 2009

The second spread has raw art on the left that serves as a pocket for an accordion journal. The opposite page has found poetry on it.

Raw art on left, Found Poetry on right © Quinn McDonald, all rights reserved 2009

The next spread has found poetry on the left and a gate-fold page on the right.

Found poetry on left, gate-fold mountain page on right, pierced and inked

The gate-fold is pierced so there are patterns on the front and back. It is also inked, raw-art style and one of the lines serves as a guideline for journaling. The image is done on both sides.

The next spread is another version of found poetry. I cut a page from a book, circled the words that created the poem, colored in the rest of the page. I then cut holes in the page and applied it to an inked and painted journal page.

Found poetry on left, Rorschach on right. © Quinn McDonald, all righs reserved 2009

The right side is a Rorschach-like paint blot. I cut out the sides and placed them next to each other. There is a fire-like design in the interference gold and the blue part.

The closing band is held onto the back with a button that I attached while sewing the binding into place. There are two buttons sewn into the paper of the band. To keep them from pulling out, I lined the ends of the band in Tyvek–an polypropylene paper used in Fed-Ex envelopes and house insulation.

The fun parts were the gate-fold and the accordion-fold book that make up the entire book. The whole book isn’t shown, but you can see it on Flickr.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and artist who works at the intersection of words and illustration to create raw-art, available to people who think they can’t draw but want to create art journals.

Creativity Whisperer

Cesar Millan may be the Dog Whisperer, but his method works pretty well for the unruly, leash-tugging creative urge. You know that creative muse–the one you desperately want in your life, but that disappears around the corner and won’t come when called. When it does show up, it runs you ragged. You are off to buy materials and supplies, while your muse stays at home, piling choices on your studio table, and running you ragged with ideas, projects and commitments that you can’t manage.

You are in charge of your own creative output.

The Dog Whisperer has a formula. If you’ve watched the show, you already know what it is. It’s on his website: “Through my fulfillment formula exercise, then discipline, and finally, affection.  As the human pack leader, you must set rules, boundaries, and limitations and always project a calm-assertive energy.”

The “calm-assertive energy” comes first. It’s not about being a control freak, it’s knowing that you are the calm leader of your creative energy and your studio. If you are in control, the studio is not running you and you aren’t searching for pieces of a project. You aren’t forever using the excuse that you have a coupon and heading out to the craft store. You are centered and know what your project is.

You set the rules, boundaries and limitations for your studio. Here are some good ones to start with:

• Know what your project is.
• Know what your project is not. If you are going to create a journal page, don’t worry about creating the whole journal.
• Leave the studio set up so you can begin. Nothing saps energy faster than having to spend an hour cleaning the studio and another finding what you want to work on.
• Put extra materials away. It’s distracting to see unfinished project lying around.
• Set a time to start and be there to start the project.
• If you have an appointment, set a timer to remind you when to stop. You can’t work deeply if you keep having to check on the clock.
• Keep a paper and pencil around to take notes as you work. Once you get to the studio, you will immediately think of “work” that needs to get done before you start. Stay in the studio, make a to-do list. The laundry will still be there when you leave.

The rest of Millan’s ideas work just as well: exercise, discipline, affection.

Exercise is a way to burn off tension in your body. It makes room for creative ideas. While you are exercising, a part of your brain is problem solving. That’s good for your brain and your body. Allow that to happen often, and you will approach a project with eagerness, without a lot of the adrenaline energy that’s exhausting.

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline allows space and time for deep, meaningful work. Discipline allows you to turn off the phone, shut the computer off and head for the studio. Discipline is a set time to work without guilt or fear. Discipline is consistency–knowing what is going to happen. It’s not a wild streak of cleaning the studio one day and spending three hours looking for just the right piece of paper. Discipline is an approach to creative time that includes knowing what will happen–you will work meaningfully, for a set amount of time, on a regular basis.

Affection is allowing yourself to feel good about yourself and your work. Affection is allowing yourself to try and fail, to try something different, to follow a thought or idea until it works or until you know why it doesn’t. Affection for yourself is allowing your growth at your own rate, not at your best friend’s rate. It’s taking the “just” out of your vocabulary, as in, “I just painted this scene.”

Just as Cesar Millan projects a calm, assertive pack-leader image to his dogs, you can project a calm, assertive creative leader image to your muse and your studio. You’ll be surprised at how well it works.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who works with visual and performing  artists to help them find, manage and develop their creativity.

Tutorial: Found Poetry, Raw Art

Found poetry is the discovery of hidden words and phrases in text that was written for another purpose entirely–a catalog or magazine article, for example. The poem is not found all together, you’ll find a word here, a few more six lines down.

I find this accidental discovery a perfect match for raw art--which is drawing abstract patterns that are pleasing, exciting, soothing, or engaging. Both are a discovery and both result in the creation of something new.

You can make up a variety of rules to make found poetry more challenging–mine are simple: You choose a set number of pages from a catalog, book, or magazine and find words or phrases that, when cut out and placed next to each other, make poetry. No fair using song lyrics or pieces that are already poetry.

Be careful to cut out words that are grammatically correct in the place you want to use them. That might mean cutting out extra letters. Because you are creating a collage  the words can be different typefaces, sizes or colors.

Then you add raw art–in this case a repetitive topographical pattern, with a suggestion of plant life, to match the seasonal theme of the poetry and to emphasize the word “freedom” and the tribal feel.

Horizon Dust

Time around us moves faster.
The seed that was sown 20 years ago
sweeps into the season raw-edged and tribal.
New growth, striped in rich autumnal hues,
moving to a new feeling and a new freedom
blossoming forth.

All the words in “Horizon Dust” comes from a variety of clothing descriptions in two pages of the Sundance fall catalog.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer who stands in the middle ground between words and illustrations, believing they both make meaning and create art. © Quinn McDonald, 2009 All rights reserved

Making Meaning With Your Decision

The earth heaves forward and you see the place where dawn will polish a hole in the sky.
You are the creator, this is your doing. You can call up the dawn, or you can step into the shadow.
Or you can step into the light and cast a shadow, falling in front of you.
You can wait until the sun is in your face, your shadow falling behind you.

You wonder if this creation is good, will sell, will become viral and make you a success, famous, a celebrity, rich beyond belief. You aren’t sure you care.

Genesis. Pitt Pen, watercolor pencils © Quinn McDonald 2009 All rights reserved

So you ask your committee to speak up.
The “Devil’s Advocate” who warns about the thing you haven’t thought of yet.
The Critic who says the public wants it smooth and cool, and you feel hot and sweaty.
The Marketer who says your portraits aren’t of pretty people, they are raw and ugly.
The Expert who says that people don’t like  hard edgy words now, they want it soft and easy.

You love this work, this scooping out of meaning from the blood-sponge of your heart.
You love it, but this Committee seems to know. Who is right? Who knows enough to advise you?

Sun pushes up the dawn. It’s time to know. Either you or your shadow will step into the shoes that leave deep marks and walk across the face of the earth.
This is no one else’s decision.
This is yours to know.
This is your creation.
For this one heartbeat, you are the Creator.

© Quinn McDonald 2009 All rights reserved

Prescott, AZ–Found Art

Prescott was the original capitol of Arizona. It’s an old town that’s tucked into mountains high enough to support snow in the winter. This weekend there were broadleaf trees that had turned to bright, brittle yellow. The smell of autumn leaves was unmistakable; I haven’t smelled it since I left the East Coast.

Autum leaves, Prescott © Quinn McDonald, 2009

Prescott is a lovely town, a town that shows art to anyone who wanders into The Raven (either the cafe or the pen-and-paper shop) or Van Gogh’s Ear, one of the art shops that line Whiskey Row.

Prescott also puts out its own art, the town as it is, for anyone to enjoy.  Cortez Street is packed with antique shops that are stuffed with vintage, old, worn, odd, and delightful objects.

The Armadilla (yes, it ends with an ‘a’) Wax Works is a candle factory with a retail shop. It’s at the top of the hill that makes Cortez Street, before the antique shops take over.

This candle factory is in the building of a former bank. Arizona produced a lot of copper in the old days, still does,  so the entire front of the store is still home to the old vault and safe.

The detailed copper molding that is both bold and delicate,  and a sun-mirror that is rich and polished to match the older copper safe wall with the dentil and decorative molding. In some light, you can see the copper has taken a lot of polishing, but it’s thick and hefty and won’t wear out any time soon.

Antique copper moulding and mirror © Quinn McDonald, 2009

On the opposite wall was a grouping of candles and grasses with blossoms. The sun was at the right angle to make it a perfect photo all its own.

Candles from the Armadilla Candle Works, Prescott © Quinn McDonald, 2009

The Raven Cafe is a wonderful old building. I’m a fan of the collages that sprout in bathrooms, and this was no exception. This one seemed to be planned–it had originally been created, quilt-like, a block at a time, then mounted on the wall and continued with paint and pen.

The Raven's Cafe's artful bathroom © Quinn McDonald 2009

This garage was graffiti’d and then painted over unevenly. The resulting unfinished raw art is perfect the way it is.

Garage Mural © Quinn McDonald 2009

The next building was painted when it was too cold. Half the paint popped off in the dry air, leaving a great pattern that looks like an angel food cake.

Peeling Paint, © Quinn McDonald, 2009

Prescott has art around every corner, great weather to enjoy it, and astonishing rock formations around the town. A great place for a quick getaway. If you have time to drive up from Phoenix, don’t take the Freeway. Nothing against I-17, but the scenery is not spectacular. Take a bit longer, go through Wickenburg and Yarnell and see mountains and thumb buttes that will astonish you.

Out of Yarnell, don’t take the switchback road that 89 turns into. Turn left onto Kirkland Road and go through Skull Valley and into Prescott. It’s 10 miles longer and worth every inch.

–Quinn McDonald rides a motorcycle and takes pictures with her iPhone.

Traveling Journals Switch to Postcards

Is there something you’ve left unsaid? Something you didn’t say right and would like to say it now? Here’s your chance.

I’m starting the PostScript Project, a way for people to say the things they didn’t say right the first time, to say what was left unsaid, to say what they wanted to say but didn’t. It doesn’t matter if it was 30 years ago or yesterday. It doesn’t matter if it was in a conversation, a snail-mail letter or an email. If you left it unsaid, you can say it now.

Aha! Moment postcard by Bridget Benton ©2009

Use a postcard. An ordinary postcard is fine, or you can create your own postcard. If the Post Office will accept it, that’s all that counts. You can write, draw, paint, glue, tear. Use your imagination. Create a postcard and send it in.

Just to be clear: I am not going to forward your postcard. It will become a page in a group of handmade books I’m making. These books will join the Traveling Journals, whose time is coming to an end.

Need a postcard? I’ll send you a heavy watercolor paper postcard for free. Send me an email with your name and address to rawartjournals [at] gmail [dot] com.

Want to participate? Don’t wait. Say what you left unsaid, and mail it to:

Quinn McDonald
P.O. Box 12183
Glendale, AZ 85318  USA

Here’s the backstory for the journals, for those of you who are worried about contributing to them: If you signed up to add to a journal, you will still get one. But I’m not adding any more names to the project. When I started the journal project, I thought people would sign up, draw or write their contributions, return the journal and I’d scan the pages and send them on.

But like most art projects, it didn’t turn out like I thought it would when I started.

People didn’t send the journals back and I had to phone or write them to remind them. They weren’t always happy to hear from me. Some of them changed their minds about contributing and handed the journals to friends who weren’t on the list. People on the list didn’t want to wait.

I became the journaling police and an administrator, neither of which I wanted to be–I wanted to participate in an art journaling project.

The loose pages idea was the start of a more imaginative turn, but to date, less then 10 percent of the loose pages have been returned. Again, I spent more time reminding people than creating handmade journals from the pages.

I needed a way to involve people but let them be creative when they wanted to, without waiting. So I came up with the idea for the PostScript Project. People who have left things unsaid–in a relationship, in a letter, in any way at all, can write or draw what they still need to say and send it to me on a post card. Any size or material the Post Office will take is fine.

Want to participate? Don’t wait. Be creative. Say what you left unsaid, and mail it to:

Quinn McDonald
P.O. Box 12183
Glendale, AZ 85318  USA

Altered Book: Fahrenheit 451

The Big Read is an idea sponsored by the Valley’s libraries. Each year a book is chosen and libraries sponsor events to encourage people to read that book. One of the events involves artists–I was one of the artists chosen to alter the book for a display at one of the libraries. This year’s book is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

What makes the book interesting is that the 1953-written book has elements of  current reality–a society obsessed by television and celebrities, a fear of intellectual discussions at social functions, a minority kicking up a fuss about books, which are subsequently banned from libraries, and my favorite, a love of wearing earbuds and being plugged in to programmed music.

In my approach to altering the book, I chose the idea from the final scene of the book, in which people become living books. Readers live in books, so I created a row-house made of books. In the image below, the central house is Fahrenheit 451, surrounded by other book houses.The pages of the central book are stuffed with message tags.

Altered book, Fahrenheit 451. © Quinn McDonald, 2009

Each house represents a genre: mystery, science fiction, art and poetry. Because love of nature was banned in the story, the two houses on the left represent winter and spring, and the two books on the left represent summer and fall.

Altered book detail, left side © Quinn McDonald, 2009

Altered book right-side detail. © Quinn McDonald, 2009

The tags are all quotes about books, all  from famous people. Ray Bradbury’s own quote, “You don’t have to burn books to destory a culture, Just get people to tstop reading them,”  is there, as well as Salman Rushdie’s quote, “A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it or offer your own version in return.”

Detail of book tags, © Quinn McDonald, 2009

In the heart of the book (I chose page 98 deliberately, as 98.6 Fahrenheit is the normal temperature of the human body), there are flames on one side and a matchbook on the other. The matchbook has a burning match on the cover, and the inside “matches” are the spines of books that have been banned in the past.

Right side detail, matchbook © Quinn McDonald, 2009

The matchbook itself is surrounded by paper flames that have already consumed the page of the book.

The tags are removable for easy reading, and can be used as bookmarks. I hope the book is displayed in a way that allows people to touch it and play with it.

Banned books as matches, detail of altered book, © Quinn McDonald, 2009

I read the book when I was about 10 and just discovering science fiction. My first big literary shock was discovering that Bradbury had made a mistake, paper bursts into flame at 451 Celsius, not Fahrenheit. Yes, I stuck a piece of paper in the oven to see it burst into flame.

It took me a long while to accept altered books. The thought of ruining a book was overwhelming. But the lure of transforming a book that was scheduled for the shredder into a piece of art won me over.

The satisfaction of planning out a concept and carrying it through was really satisfying. I am honored to have been chosen for this project. And yes, I do custom altered books to honor a special event or person.

–—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also teaches people who can’t draw how to keep an art journal.

Journal Reviews: Variety for Journalers

Karen Doherty of Exaclair, Inc. in New York was kind enough to send me four journals for review. They have websites at Exaclair and Quo Vadis. They were four nice-looking, thick journals. All are about 8.5 inches tall and 5.5 inches wide. They varied from 3/4 inches thick to 3/8 inches thick.

Left to right: Rhodia, Exacompta, Clairefontaine (unlined), Clairefontaine (lined)

I tested the pages by writing on each page with a fountain pen, a thin Sharpie (the one guaranteed not to bleed through), and a Sharpie fine-point permanent marker. I also used Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils and water to test each journal. People use journals differently, and it’s good to know how each one will stand up to the use you will purchase it for.

The orange Rhodia journal (far left, the color is tangerine, not as pale as shown) has a leather-like cover. It has a comfy, cushy feel.

It has a ribbon marker and an elastic closure, a great feature if you toss your journal into a bag.The paper is lined in light blue and the Rhodia logo is on the bottom of reach right-hand page. Paper is 90g/m, 96 pages. The book is made for writing, not drawing, and doesn’t easily open perfectly flat. The pages are ultra-smooth, almost slick, which comes from hot calendering, or passing them through big, hot rollers under pressure to finish them.  Writing on the page is comfortable, although the fountain pen takes a while to dry. That makes it better for right-handed people than left-handed.

Rhodia pages are ultra-smooth

Neither of the writing pens soaked through, although you can clearly see the writing from the reverse side of the page. I wouldn’t write on both sides of the pages with a fountain pen. The Sharpie permanent marker did soak through, and left spots on the next page as well. The watercolor pencils went down well, and when I painted over them, the water didn’t soak in quickly. It did not cockle (wrinkle or buckle) the page seriously after a day, although it did at first.  When dry, the back of the page was very slightly buckled, but not enough to cause a problem. Surprisingly, once the water dried, the watercolor pencil strokes were still visible, it didn’t blend well.

The Exacompta had 100 pages of 100g/m paper. It’s a heavier paper, slightly ivory, with a laid finish. It looks mould-made, a watermark you can see on each page. The book itself has a sturdy paper cover and the page-edges are silver. It came with a removable leather-like protective cover with “Sketch Book” stamped on it discreetly. When the book is closed it looks expensive, with the silver edged paper. It has a ribbon marker, no elastic closure.

Heavier Exacompta paper is perfect for watercolor and ink

The Exacompta lies flat when open, making it an idea sketchbook. The writing inks did not soak through, so you can write or sketch on both sides of the page. The watercolor pencils blended well, with no buckling on either side of the page once dry. The Sharpie permanent marker did soak through in spots, but left no marks on any other pages.

The two Clairefontaines were very different, which is sure to please a wider variety of customers. Both are stitch-bound and lie flat when opened. The multi-colored cover one is unlined, with smooth,  bright white pages. These pages are also calendared, which gives the paper a smooth finish, without a “tooth.” (Tooth creates a slight drag for pencils, and is generally preferred by artists.) The paper is lighter in weight, I’d guess it at 90g/m. The fountain pen takes about 45 seconds to become smear-proof, although the Sharpie writing pen dries faster. The Sharpie permanent marker soaks through and leaves some marks on the third page as well. If you use pen and ink or watercolor, you won’t want to work on both sides of the pages, although there is no visible buckle to the paper when dried.

Clairefontaine Red-cover journal can handle watercolor

The Clairfontaine red-cover uses lined paper. The paper is white, and again, I’d guess 90g/m. It has a slight drag on pens, which is vital for “fast writing,” a Natalie Goldberg term that I use to describe a journal that’s comfortable to write in. I believe this is the journal used by Julia Child when she was in Paris at the Cordon Bleu. A fountain pen dries quickly, and with the flat-lying book, this can be used by either right- or left-handed people. The Sharpie permanent bleeds through and marks on the third page. The water color blends well, and there is no buckle on either side of the page when dry. A good journal for writers who may occasionally sketch.

Necessary disclosures: I paid for none of these journals, they were donated. I will pass them on to people who take my journaling classes and can’t afford a good journal.

Of the four journals, I liked the Exacompa the best. And not because of the lovely silver gilt-edged pages, but because of the weight and tooth of the papers. I have a strong preference for unlined, heavy-weight pages. And I have a strong aesthetic preference for mould-made papers. My journals have to stand up to some abuse–heavy use, being carried in a purse or backpack. they also have to stand up to fountain pens, watercolor pencils and Pitt Pens–permanent markers that generally don’t bleed through heavier papers.

—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also  manages four journals that travel the world.