How to Choose a Journal for Art Making

I’m gessoing my first Art journal, finally!

I finally found a book that has the proportion and look that I’ve been searching for. The third time I went in to the paper store Bokia in two weeks I found it. It’s perfect – for me. This was my criterion:

Size matters
It’s A4-size with simple black cover, easy to bring around and to store in the book shelf. I’ve looked at note books and photo albums, but most photo albums are huge and can’t even lay down on a shelf without sticking out. And most of them seems to have black pages. Black could be fun, but for my first one I wanted strong white pages.

Binding
I like that it’s spiral bound because I’m adding allot to this book (glue, picture, paint and so on) and it needs to be able to expand a lot.

Paper
Ordinary paper to write on won’t work for me, even if I gesso it twice – I’ve tried this already. The paper needs to be more like cardboard than drawing paper to not become wrinkled. And this book has everything I wished for… I was so happy when I found this book, my very first art journal, I could’ve singed!

Here is one of my first art journaling pages:

I made this one before I bought the journal itself. It’s made on watercolor paper that I covered with my favorite colors, some magazine clippings and a lot of my handwriting. I like it.