I recently made myself a watercolour journal, following an online workshop with France Papillon. The journal course information is
here, if you are interested. It has a nice material cover which is loose at the moment, but once the pages are complete, they can be added into the journal cover with an elastic cord. This allows the pages to grow if other media is added to them. The pages are bound with a sort of coptic binding, so that they lie flat when you want to work on them. I found the binding a bit tricky and it certainly isn't as tight as it should be, but for a first attempt, it's fine.
I had a go at an abstract page with added doodling in black and white pen, inspired by a Youtube video (Nianiani)
here.
This iris painting was one of the six I did for part of my art journal mixed media course (Wanderlust 2021)
Here is another of the six iris paintings. (This journal was a good place to put them).
(image from Amazon)
I would like to be more confident with watercolours, particularly loose, abstract images, so bought this book to help me with that. Although I don't necessarily subscribe to some of the author's ideas, I do like a lot of the lessons.
This is my first attempt at one of them - Ancient Song - using a poetry/ballad rhyming scheme (ABABBCBCAC plus D) and choosing colours to correspond to the letters. The D was the addition of gold. I really enjoyed this and will do it again with different colours. I will also use a fine liner pen to add the vertical lines, rather than the chunky pencil crayon I chose - I think it will look better with a more delicate line. There are lots more really lovely lessons to try, so I will enjoy working my way through them.
