Adriana Tonello

It’s Not All Bad

“It’s Not All Bad” is an eleven-foot long risographed accordion book featuring a collection of advice I gathered from my friends and family.

My favorite book called The Humans by Matt Haig has a chapter called “Advice to a Human,” a list of 97 pieces of advice that I found to be very reassuring. I compiled my own list of advice using my friend’s and family’s experiences that I coupled with drawings from my sketchbook that I started to get out of my two-year drawing slump.
I made myself draw ten minutes a day with a black pen so I wouldn’t be tempted to edit the ideas that came naturally. I allowed myself to make bad art because somewhere in all my drawings I knew I’d find something I was proud of. I combined multiple styles of mark-making to balance out the frenzied pen strokes with the simplicity of my linework to emulate the fluctuation between calm and subdued to energetic or anxious. The repetitive process of creating new patterns was very reassuring, thus I carried over that reaffirming to the storyline of advice.
I compiled an archive of drawings that I matched up with my responses to create a tension between the cliche text and my ambiguous drawings. The pink spot color from the risograph is meant to represent the good in any situation. I carried the tracks that are on the front cover through the whole back to create one long journey of highs and lows. Because I embraced the inevitable mistakes, I was able to revive some of the love for drawing I had at four years old.