I have long had a love/hate relationship with art, and with art journalling. I have been collecting half started sketchbooks since I was 18. I had never actually thought of what I did as worthy of being called “art” although I had a few drawings through my life that I still look at now and think, wow, I did that!
For our last holiday (2 years ago now) I bought 2 adorable little coptic bound sketchbooks from paperlion on etsy. If you haven’t tried a coptic bound book, I can highly recommend it…. they open up completely flat, so they are great to use. One for written journalling, and one for sketching in…
Beautifully covered in French maps…. so neatly done. All the pages are lovely heavy weight and hand torn, so the whole thing feels very organic.
And you’re going to laugh, but it was so beautiful, and I so didn’t want to ‘spoil’ it, that I started drawing in the back. Figuring that if I didn’t like it, I could always hide it.
There are only a few so far, but the bug has struck again and I’m hoping there will be several more.
Those first three are all in the Zentangle style. Wow. That was a revelation. I bought the Totally Tangled book last year and it really inspired me that I could give this a go. That it was very easy and freeing, that you could do basically anything you wanted, and only need a short space of time.
Then, last Tuesday night I took some coloured pencils with me as well, and felt so relaxed about sketching. Although I am still working from the back of the book forwards. One day I’ll feel worthy of using the front page!
The little 3 x 4 inch pages are so cute, each one waiting for a miniature masterpiece. No pressure, no large white expanse waiting for you, just you, and a tiny little page.
I hope you enjoyed seeing these little daydreams of mine. I am a bit nervous of putting them out there, but also finding it free-ing. Take that inner critic. I AM an artist after all!
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They are lovely and a great reminder of how important it is just to ‘go with the flow’ with these things. I’m an Etsy paper-goods fiend too!!