The last of the Canson Book (the journal)

My journal, The Canson Book, has come to a close. It took me about five months to fill it up and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. The low expectations were based on the paper that on first touch seemed a bit too thin for my taste, at least for a book that claims to be an art book. But the book surprised me. It held up really well to the background layers of watercolour and also to the sporadic art I did in it, so I can definitely recommend it. As long as you don't go too heavy on the mixed media side, this book will hold up really well.

Another thing, beside the paper itself, that held up really well, was the binding. It started out as a nice flat book, but well, after I was done with it, it looked like this:

Not only did I stick a lot of imagery in it, I also added in stuff with paperclips or just loose papers that weren'd attached in any way. You can see by the elastic band that I stretched this book a little, haha. But it's still in one piece and doesn't look battered at all. Used yes, but not battered. And the binding is still very much intact. I think I will someday buy another one of these, because I really liked it.

Anyway, the book is finished now and here are some of the last spreads:

 

 

As I've said before, this journal was very much a writing journal with added photographs. I really got into using my own photographs with this one. So for the most part I don't really consider it an art journal, but just a regular journal.

Here is the book all full and standing proud:

I must say I'm very pleased with it! I hope you enjoyed watching me fill up this journal. I already have moved on to another one of course, but that's for another post.

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy weekend!

Flowers up close

The other day I decided to play with the macro setting on my camera and see if I could take some interesting pictures of flowers in bloom. Well...it was immediately obvious to me that taking these kinds of pictures is an art in itself and I am not well trained in it. And also that on windy days it is hard to get the flowers to stand still, haha.

So keep that in mind when you look at these and instead just be in awe of the beauty of the flowers themselves. ;-)

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Morning Paintings #151-160

Time for a new batch of Morning Paintings.

As I'm writing this I'm nearing the end of my fourth sketchbook and when I look at these sketchbooks I'm a bit stunned that I filled them with so many paintings. How the hell did that happen? Well...one page at a time.

As simple as that sounds this practice is really teaching me about small but consistent steps leading to a bigger whole. Taking a little time in a day to paint is not all that challenging, but when you do it day after day after day, you actually end up with a collection of paintings and full sketchbooks. It's pretty exciting actually. ;-)

Here are paintings #151 tot 160:

#151 - Flowers on Green

#152 - Summer

#153 - Blue Skies

#154 - True to Form

#155 - Three Little Words

#156 - Good Afternoon

#157 - Flowers on Blue

#158 - Sunrise

#159 - Flourish

#160 - Flowers in a Field

My paintings always show my preferences of that exact moment. I simply paint what I want. In this case I wanted lots of mandalas and lettering, so that's what I did. It's nice to just sit down and paint whatever you feel like and not really care about repetition or be afraid of trying something new. It's all good.

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy weekend!

Walk with me!

Usually these days (not always) when I go on my walks I make a little compilation of the pictures I've taken with my phone. I put those on Instagram and Facebook and some people seem to enjoy them. I make them for myself too, because I often print them out later and can use the imagery in my journals or cards or collages or whatever I feel like. And as I've said before taking pics helps me appreciate the beauty of the things I encounter.

Anyway here are some photo compilations of some of my latest walks:

I don't know if you can tell from above pictures but the island is in full bloom right now. We're having one of those exuberant years when it comes to blooming flowers. The last time it was like this was in 2012. It's not as if nothing blooms in other years, there just seems to be so much more of it some years than in others.  It probably has something to do with how the weather has been, I don't know.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy taking these walks with me and I wish you wonderful and artsy day.