Title: Journal it! - Perspectives in creative journaling
Author: Jenny Doh
Info: 160 p. - 2012
Rating: 7.5 / 10
Notes:
In this lovely book 19 art journalers share their thoughts on journaling, some of their techniques and of course their journal pages. This books includes people like Julie Fei Fan Balzer, Debra Cooper, Jill K. Berry, Roben Marie Smith and Zom Osborne.
The styles are quite diverse and that makes this book a joy to look through. There's plenty of inspiration for everyone who's the least bit interested in art journaling. It would be hard not to find at least one style that speaks to you.
As for techniques the artists show, the book seems more directed to beginners than experienced journalers, they are mostly quite simple and straightforward. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you are an experienced art journaler or mixed media artist you may not want to buy this book if you want to learn something new or revolutionary.
I think the same can be said for what the artists are saying. If you've read a couple of art journaling books or visit a lot of art journal blogs you've probably heard it all before. And yet...I couldn't help be inspired by this mixed group of people (there were even a couple of men involved, which is rare for art journaling books), simply because they show so many different styles and ideas. I like books that have more than one artist in them, because it proves the point that there is not one way to journal and also that there is no wrong way to journal.
The layout is quite beautiful too, but it does have a drawback. Every chapter (every new artist) is featured in a different colour lettering. This looks really nice, but certain colours are harder to read than others, especially in artificial light. I think it would have been better if the actual text had all been black on white instead of read, yellow, green or whatever other colour was chosen. I do see the attraction, but a reading text should really have a better contrast than was now the case sometimes.
All in all this book is an inspiration first and for beginners I think it would be a good place to start with instruction, especially because most of the techniques are simple. I would definitely recommend it!