In my latest journal, the Allround Book, I mixed my morning art into my regular journal. It looked really cool but it also was really impractical, which is why I have decided not to continue that way after the journal was full.
I also knew I wanted to try out new things and practice different kinds of art that have been on my list for a while but I never really got around to. The cool thing about doing art every morning for 30 minutes is that you can practice a certain aspect steadily for a certain period of time without it affecting your regular art practice. For the longest time I have been doing mostly patterns as morning art, some flowers and a few portraits, but I wanted to try something new.
Now it just so happens that I have a long list in my mind of things I would like to do more of, but that I just never (or hardly ever) do. Things like sketching from life, abstract collage, pencil drawn portraits, working with coloured pencils, botanicals etc. etc. So it seemed both interesting and practical to start using my morning art for things like that. I thought about it a little (while I was still working in the journal) and decided to use some thin Seawhite Eco sketchbooks for this.
These sketchbooks only have 32 pages and come in three different sizes, A6, A5 and A4. My idea is to fill one of those sketchbooks at a time with a different type of art or technique or subject or theme, or whatever I want to explore. The point is to fill the book one half hour at a time and then move on to the next. I don't put any demands on myself as to how long these books should take to fill completely or how the art should look. It's just a daily practice after all.
For my first endeavour I have decided on an A5 size sketchbook:
As you can see it is a very simple sketchbook with a kraft cover. The pages are staple bound and the paper is a wonderful allround paper that I really really love. Seawhite is by far my favorite sketchbook brand (and no they are not paying me to say that, but they definitely should!).
For my first 'project' I have chosen to fill it with mixed media collages! Collage is something I really enjoy, but just do way too little. Now I can do a little bit every morning until this book is full. I like making attractive layouts, combining different materials and imagery and just seeing what comes up.
Here are the first five collages I did:
Playing like this is a really fun way to start the day. I use anything I have at hand, ranging from paint pens to washi tape and from all kinds of imagery to stencils. There is no rhyme or reason to why they look the way they look. It's all very intuitive. Somehow that seems to work for me.
I have no idea how long it will take me to fill this first book, just like I have no idea yet what I will do with the next one, but neither of that matters. What matters is that again I have a new experiment to play with every morning.
Hope you are doing something interesting wherever you are and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day!