Art, Illustration, Writing, and Design
What’s an Insight Book?
It’s art and writing, collage and doodling. It’s improvisation with yourself. You start out with nothing in mind, then a line or a color triggers an ‘ah-ha!’ and you put that down. One line (written or drawn) leads to another.
Anyone can make one. Non-artists surprise themselves by making art.
When you’re done, you hold a book in your hands. Your book. Your insights.
“I was lucky enough to take part in Wendy Wahman’s workshop on Insight books last month. Not only is she a talented author/illustrator and a great presenter, but she did something that, in the middle of an intensive writing residency, was pivotal. She encouraged us to play. The result was a beautiful book and a wonderful sense of inner peace.”
– Mureall Hebert, Whidbey Writer’s MFA Residency
“This was a great exercise for Residency – getting out of my head and putting my hands to work, working with the random arrangement of lines, listening to the shapes, finding the colors of the text. I took the text I'd written in my book from our workshop and put it into lines and verse for a poetry class a few days later, and it is a wonderful start to a piece called Forest for the Trees. It is always exciting to me when work can cross genres, and when a bigger piece is born from a seemingly small prompt.
And, I hope this becomes a habit.”
– Samantha Claire Updegrave,
Whidbey Writer’s MFA Residency
Wendy Wahman © 2022