Patchwork poems

And piecing them together

I keep a poetry and short story sketchbook at breakfast too. I write by hand in a small book, 3 x 5 inches when closed, similar in size to my illustration/art sketchbook that I share here each week. The art sketchbook has paper robust enough for heavy use with my watercolor pencils, inks and paints. The writing book pages are lighter weight so my drawings in these books are typically ink line drawings only and very sketchy indicators of my image idea - primarily I write in the “poetry sketchbook” and plan my artist books there. In my art sketchbook I sometimes tryout a larger version of my image idea that relates to a poem or story in my poetry sketchbook. More about that in a minute.

Here’s what one of my poetry sketchbooks look like on a table, with my morning coffee and my fountain pen.

And here's a link to a video flip through of my poetry sketchbook.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Jz2krrE1KVU?feature=share

Below you can see the original poem and doodle in my poetry sketchbook, the larger book, along side the smaller colorful finished artist book page. The finished artist book when closed is about the size of a credit card.

From all of the various poems written in my book a few were chosen to become part of an original artist book (a few pages were shared above). Months are spent doing the illustrations, handwriting the poems, and handcrafting the artist book. Here's a look at the little poem book in one of the stages of construction.

When the handmade original artist book was finished then that artist book got scanned, digitized, to become an illustrated poetry book for children I’ve titled Patchwork Poems. This book will soon be on an ebook site for children called Storyberries (Storyberries.com). Since you follow me here you can get an advance copy of Patchwork Poems via this link https://www.blurb.com/b/11318282-patchwork-poems

As I said above I often start a poem and an image idea in my poetry sketchbook and then tryout a larger drawing of the image idea in my art sketchbook. Here's an example of that: on the left you see my handwritten story and a wee drawing at the bottom. The book on the right is my art sketchbook and you see a larger version of the wee drawing …

…here's a better view.

I’m not ready to put this story and illustration into an artist book form yet. I’m certainly not ready to make a printed book. I’ll want to recreate the drawing again in color and this story wants to be collected with other stories… and yet I can hardly wait to share this particular story itself!!!

So I've decided to share these “farther along but still not quite “there” yet but really darned fun” stories, poems and artworks here for my paid subscribers… in a kind of book of the month club but in my style! I do hope you'll join me! Here's the first illustrated story - the illustration for the story is in the photo above.

The Kokopelli Story