While facing a difficult project, a notebook can be an imaginary friend – a way for the mind to talk to itself so it can find out where it needs to go. The way cannot be found by thinking, only by making.

I owe so many of these ideas and methods to Lynda Barry’s books What It Is and Picture This.

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Antid Oto – italian for antidote – was one of Leon Trotsky‘s earliest pen names. I also love the Malay word for it: penawar. A few months ago, I started taking regular walks and making drawings afterwards as a way to deal with worry, procrastination, hopelessness, writer’s block, internet rage, and digital distraction. I’ll post a series of them here, one every other day, for as long as I keep making them.