Vispo: Just About / A5 vs A4 paper as canvas

Just About, RTomens 2026

Size isn't everything, as the actress said to the bishop, but this morning I was thinking about A4 compared to A5-sized paper and how much I'm enjoying the latter whereas I used to mostly use A4. The smaller space seems to focus the mind, you know, the way you really have to look at that spot on your face but that bruise requires little examination - like that.

Hemmingway said if you include a gun on the wall in your short story, make sure someone uses it. Wise old bird, wasn't he? Well, he didn't get to be so old because he did use a gun...so...anyway, the wisdom may be applied to a small canvas on which each mark means more.

The smaller the 'canvas', the more intimate it feels to both the creator and the viewer. Obvious. Isn't it? If you share work online, viewers can appreciate the detail more easily. That's it, spread those fingers, zoom in a...look at that! 

After a few months of frequent A5 usage, A4 feels massive - all that space to cover! Us typists work with such small marks, unlike the Abstract Expressionists dragging large brushes over a canvas we tick-tack away creating letters and symbols. There's always minimalism, of course, but I've never been drawn to it. Perhaps if I used posh A3 paper and typed only one or two marks it might look more like art and I could sell my work to galleries and...etc...

Just About lay abandoned until, stuck over another piece which included ink pen drawing, I turned the pens to it and laid on the red as a fix it or fuck-it-up measure. OK, that wasn't bad - livened it up anyway. Then black outlining the shapes within the overall structure. Yes, that's better. Finally, fill in some parts totally and type over the red, which had virtually obscured the type underneath. At last I thought it was presentable.