Camila's Book — Lichtenbergianism

Last week I was at my car dealership having my ancient Equinox pawed over to see how much money I could give them that day. I had taken my laptop to keep myself busy, so I was relieved to see that the high tables with the stools and — more importantly — tabletop outlets were available.

When I sat down at the table, I saw this:

Someone had taken a cardboard box, one originally holding snack packs of chips, and cut it down to create a cover for Camila to have a book to draw in.

Camila drew in it.

I don’t know about you, but I think this is wonderful: Just a kid filling a little book with a kid’s drawings, and it’s wonderful. I love that she has numbered the pages, which makes it a real book, doesn’t it? Which one is your favorite? Too many to choose from, and there are only seven.

Look at page 3 — what a lovely mystic drawing! Trees hold hearts (or heart-shaped balloons?) beside a body of water with a goldfish in it. The sun shines brightly. Or page 4 — is that a slice of pizza in a jar? Or is it a box or a baking sheet?

And the K-Pop Demon Hunter on page 5 — that’s pretty masterful, actually. I knew immediately who it was, and I agree with Camila that it deserves the grade A=. As to the scribble on the facing page… I suspect a younger sibling, because the other option is our young Camila is actually a visual genius in depicting a demon materializing, maybe? (It’s been a while since I saw the movie.)

Page 6 is a mystery. A child in swaddling clothes? The figures in the upper left -— Madonna and Child? A parent spanking a child, or cradling them? Or maybe it’s a pet they’re holding? It’s a puzzlement.

And then the questions arose: Was this some clever early elementary teacher? An even more clever parent? What a great idea to give the child a space to present their work! (I felt bad that Camila — or someone — had left this precious artifact behind. I hope the staff at Southtowne Chevrolet were kind enough to keep it in case someone called looking for it.)

Here’s my point: You can draw like that, right? Of course you can, because you did. (See here or here.) It’s like Austin Kleon says in his new book, Don’t Call It Art, we are all artists when we are kids. (Every major artist in modern times has said the same thing; I said it in the A Young Person’s chapter in the second ‘here’ link above.) We would be wise to remember that, when we just scribbled and scribbled and colored without caring whether it was “good” or not. We just did it.

So do it. Make yourself a little book stapled together from some recyclable cardboard and whatever blank paper you have on hand. Make it small.

Even simpler: Make one of these little 8-page booklets from a single sheet of paper. This one doesn’t even have to be blank on both sides, so you can recycle paper that’s been printed on. I used to use these with elementary students to “write reports” or “stories” because the pages were so small that it wasn’t intimidating to fill those spaces. I bet it would work for you, too.

tl;dr: No matter your medium, make a little book and fill it up. Easy, right?

And here’s a great example, a little zine created by Backstreet Writer Danny Maldonado over at his Dreamsmith Codex, a marvel of compression and emotional impact.

Go, and do thou likewise.

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