2007-07-30 Monday night at AACA

2007-07-30 Monday night at AACA, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

Every Monday night I attend an AACA meeting. The acronym stands for 'Al-Anon Adult Children of Alcoholics'.

I attend because my mom was a fulltime alcoholic, and my dad was a weekend drunk and a fulltime wife-beater (but only when the kids couldn't see).

So I grew up in some pretty tricky ways.

The group gives me a while lot of insight into how to 'normalise' things for myself.

I learn best when I have a pen on a piece of paper. And I often doodle. Generally, whenever I'm at an AACA meeting, I sketch caricatures of the people around me. Hopefully, the pics look nothing at all like their owners (it IS, after all, an anonymous group!).

One of the things I'm playing with here is a concept I came across fairly recently. Someone I met at a creativity workshop saw me doodling there and introduced me to the field of 'visual facilitation'. It's a rather broad field. But in essence, it's about using visual tools to capture some of the essence of a gathering.

In this case, I'm highlighting some of the topics that came up, using 'quotes' (they're modified and simplified, mostly) that resonated with me.

It's a highly personal take on the evening. But I'm going there for me, not for anyone else. So hopefully, to someone who has no interest in the whole AACA world, this is a decent looking pic.

Here's how I made this pic:

o Black gel pen in an unlined small Moleskine.
o Scanned at high res
o Colouring done in ArtRage 2.5 (it's a brand new update, and I'm massively chuffed with how awesomely it's working. I LOVE ArtRage!), on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc.