Summer to Summer

Just about a year ago I began this art journal.

It’s a monster of a thing at around 100 pages.

I bought two of these books because I was bewitched by the delightfully bright covers, this one in magenta, another in cherry red.

It took almost a year to doodle my way through this book from cover to cover.

I took a while to get used to the pages.

At first I was at odds with the paper which didn’t take ink and watercolor well.

Gessoing or collaging more ink friendly paper to the pages was bulking it up too much to be manageable.

Over the months I found the best solution was to tear out some pages and recycle them into other projects.

Some of these pages went on to become part of the junk journal I’m using for this year’s 100 day project.

I like the idea that this book seeded a brand new book, allowing ideas to overflow between the two.

Finally I reached the point at which the book felt done, ready to set aside to focus my attention on other things. There’s always an overlap with my art journals – I began playing with the second of these books earlier this year – so maybe we can expect a flip through of that one next spring!

Meanwhile, here’s what (almost) a year of doodles looks like, page by page.