hand painted art journal

I tend to be very "uptight" when I paint. It took me a long time to get over my fear of having brushstrokes show and not have everything perfectly blended. I love the look of other people's "messy" work but it wasn't something I could get into for myself. I have been on a journey for about the last year to learn to embrace a more messy and loose style. It was a frustrating process in the beginning. A few months in I found a few artists online who I absolutely fell in love with and started to emulate their styles in bits of my own work. I found having someone's work to look at and study was a lot easier than trying to come up with my own completely original ideas. I think I'm now at a place where I have started to incorporate both styles into different areas of my art. I still like my perfectly blended areas but I'm also okay with splats and drips and brushstrokes too.

One of my absolute favourites is Alisa Burke. Check out her blog here: http://alisaburke.blogspot.ca/. I love her style of doodling and have taken quite of few of her online classes. One of the biggest things I have learned from both her blog and classes is to learn to let go and to allow the process to happen without being caught up in the final result, particularly when doodling. About a week ago she did a post on creating a hand painted art journal. I was all over this project because I have wanted to buy one from her online store but can't because she doesn't ship to Canada. Boo :(

I started with a Canson Mix Media sketchbook. The paper is a little thicker than a regular sketchbook so the paper doesn't buckle quite as much. Quick tip: you can iron the pages with an iron on low heat to get them to flatten out.

I painted all 60 pages of the book using acrylics and watercolours. I used different sized brushes, drips, splats and my fingers to create a variety of pages. Here a smattering of what I did in the book:

Finally I painted the cover.

I love my new art journal. I've started drawing in it and I must say it is far less intimidating to draw on a colourful messy page than trying to achieve perfection on a crisp white page.