I have seen a few old books repurposed to be used as an art journal and have always thought it was very cool. I altered a board book years ago, but obviously a regular book is different again. Usually people glue the pages together in groups of 2-4, depending upon their thickness. All that gluing was making me hesitate.

As I was sitting at my computer desk, where I do most of my art journaling, when I noticed my old 2011 experimental journal that I never completed. Most of the pages are pretty plain. I was trying out stream-of-consciousness drawing for the first time and well, most things don't look very impressive the first time you do them.
(If you want to read more about stream-of-cosciousness drawing and my second attempt, go here. It is a post about a booklet I sewed up especially for the drawings and my beginning. I think I want to make a little video of how that booklet turned out. It was pretty cute, and a bit of a surprise.)
Then I had the thought, what about using my old A4 art journal to repurpose? I have been working in a 20cm (8") square journal for the past year, I wouldn't mind bringing an A4 (12"x8") into the mix again.
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Art Journal spread in Process |
I began to change things up by painting over some of the old pages with the old drawings. Mostly I have kept the drawings, but with paint over and around.
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Art Journal pages in progress |
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old art journal pages |
Here you can see how plain the pages were to start with. No backgrounds, no paint. Just writing and pen drawings with some colour.
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Repurposed art journal pages |
Here is the spread that I finished. It isn't that it's some amazing art journal spread or anything; I don't really judge my art journal pages anyway. For me it about the experience of seeing how to change it up and what happens.
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Art Journal pages in progress |
Here you can get some idea of what it looked like before. It was just writing all around the drawing. Obviously I have already started painting it in the photo.
Here was what I wrote in the journal when I first began in 2011. It was experimental then, and it is experimental now.
3 comments:
holy cow, zom! i LOVE this!! very, very expressive - and smile making...
i never glue pages together - i find that ridiculous. and i don't prep the book ahead of time, i work as i go. if i had to gesso and glue a bunch of pages together before hand i'd never work in old books. that would bore me to tears.
i sure love what you're doing here...
xoxo
Your ability to draw the human figure is amazing. Have you ever thought about sketching your ideas for refashioning....a way to plan out your ideas before you begin...like a fashion designer?
Jeanie, thank you! I have done a little drawing to plan, but mostly my sewing skills aren't to that level yet. But now thinking about it, it would be fun to see what happens even if I don't feel like I have the skills yet to realise it.
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