It has been so long since I've had a sketchbook to share.
I have really gotten away from art journaling in the past year when I started to work on loose sheets of paper or tearing out pages from my sketchbook to scan. This shift is mostly great because it means that I'm focusing more on making work that I can sell and developing my digital skills with scanned-in work. But I really miss making art that lives in a book and the more personal work that comes out when I'm art journaling is so valuable to me. I made a point of getting back into it in the last month or so and it has been great.
So here's the book. It's a Moleskine cahier that I started in August 2016. When I was almost finished I painted the cover white (covering up a pink paint job that I did not like, which you can kind of see showing through) and added this rad Nefertiti sticker from Salad Days Pins.
I started this book as a place to use up extra acrylic paint but dropped that plan almost immediately when I decided to use it as an art journal instead. These first two pages reflect that original purpose, plus some extra doodling.
The pages in this book are actually very thin, so in many places I stuck pages together or added mixed media paper on top of the page to give it some more heft. The drawing on the left (of Joan of Arc, naturally) is on mixed media paper that I glued into the book.
Because I was working on so many projects on loose paper I tried to use the book as a place to keep some samples of what I was working on at the time. The painting on the left is one of a series of watercolors that I pasted in. The page on the right is heavily inspired by Katie Licht's Cut and Paste class at Studio Calico, which I was taking at the time. I am such a fan of Katie's work, so getting to learn about her process was amazing.
This is a completely unfinished page. I tried out a few ideas and didn't feel the need to continue with either of them, so I just left them that way.
On the left is another Cut and Paste inspired page, using papers that I painted. On the right is another collage using paper that I drew patterns on myself (the eyes are a rubber stamp that I carved years ago - you can see it in use in a different journal here).
More Cut and Paste inspired pages, this time with a more minimal approach.
I had intended on journaling on this whole spread, but I never did. Now, I like it the way it is.
I liked the way that these 3 pages worked as a spread. I cut holes into the blue page on the right so that the polka dots on the page behind it show through.
More collages, using papers that I painted myself. This blue, green, and yellow color scheme is different for me, but I love how it looks.
More examples of what I was working on. I was scraping layers of paint onto paper using a credit card, and then painting over it so that the layers show through in the negaative space.
More collages that didn't work out so well and a pattern that I love in pink.
More examples of current work that I glued in. This was an early study for what would become a series of abstract watercolors that are now in my shop.
One of the drawings from my Draw a Lady Daily project. I did most of them in other notebooks, but one day this was the only one I had with me. When I closed the book, some of the paint marker rubbed off on the opposite page, so I covered it with a pattern.
Trying to get back to journaling like I used to, with lots of bold lettering. And another scraped paint background on the right.
I have loved incorporating photos into my journals and doodling on them. What I tried on this photo turned out looking more like stink lines though. The stickers say "blurry & happy" because that's what I am in this photo. I'm trying to remember that I can be happy even when things are blurry.
Practicing mixing acrylic colors. And some minimalist collage.
More color mixing practice, paint pen doodling, and the Mary Oliver quote that I want everywhere.
The evolution of a pattern. I doodled the big eye when I didn't know what to draw and then decided to make it into a pattern.
More paint pen patterns.
Thanks for checking out my sketchbook! If you share your sketchbook or art journal on your blog or Instagram or wherever, let me know, I love peeking inside other people's sketchbooks. Hopefully it won't be so long before I have another sketchbook to post.