The idea of kinetograms came to me by combining two different concepts.

As a childcare provider, I would work collaboratively with children to outline and "embellish" their artwork in order to showcase story-telling and creativity. Often, a child's artwork without context looks like scribbles. By watching and listening to the story behind the scribbles, I am able to add text and borders to "translate" the scribbles into a coherent picture with a story. The process was fun, and the resulting images had a striking quality due to the fine point Micron borders.

Ten years later, I was riding in my Jeep while my husband drove us from Cape Alava on the Pacific coast in Washington. The drive to Seattle is over 4 hours, and I was trying to figure out what to do with the time. I had been remembering the "scribble art" I had done with children, and wished I had a source for more scribbles to outline since I didn't want to create them myself. Then I realized that the motion of the Jeep could act as an original scribble source, so I put my pencil down on my notebook and started my first "motion" scribble. Over the next few hours, I had a jumble of lines.

Later that night once we were home, I took a Micron pen and drew around each line in the pencil salad I had made. I liked the result, and I've not stopped making scribbles since then.

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After creating hundreds of scribbles, I decided I needed a more sophisticated and accurate name to give them. I decided on the name 'kinetogram' (although 'seismoglyph' was a top contender).

A kinetogram is art created by movement. The Greek root 'kine' means motion or movement, and one of the definitions of 'gram' is "that which is drawn".

The majority of my kinetograms are produced in my Jeep and on fast ferries, while holding a colored pencil and letting the natural motion draw a pattern. The result is a unique pattern that represents the turns, bumps, and jumps of the trip.

I use Faber-Castell, Caran d'Ache, and Prismacolor pencils on LEUCHTTURM1917 notebook paper. For the outlining and shadowing, I primarily use a 12 point Micron pen. Some images are digitalized and colored using fill/bucket tools with The GIMP software.