Awhile back I purchased a  planner* from gouletpens.com and I didn’t do anything with it. I snagged it for about $4 off their clearance rack because it was for the 2010 and 2011 school year. The pages while tough enough for a lot of use for I was planning I felt needed a little heavy duty treatment,  so I started gluing pages together, every other page. This gave me a very heavy weight page.

I then applied a coat of gesso and watercolor crayon to each left hand page. I used a soft brush to really blend the colors into the gesso. Each page has a soft tint of the watercolor crayon. I then used tape that I’d masked off painting (it's got random colors all over it) with to cover up dates and calendars on the right hand page, leaving me with a nice framed grid on the right hand page.

I cut no pages from the planner. I know it’s strange but I really like that stressed out thick spine look. I also plan on adding a lot of collage to the left page. The right page may get some collage but I plan on mainly writing on it.

The other thing about this journal? I’m drawing in it with sharpies and nothing else. It’s the reason I wanted to glue pages and gesso them, so that I wouldn’t get soak through.

So far the journal is a combination of collage, sketch and writing. I always work in spreads so this journal is really working well for that.

Here’s what a spread in the book looks like with no sketching, collage or writing.

And here are a few finished pages:

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I was the sort of art student who loved the “outsider” art tacked to the walls in the basement of the official art shows in college. It was raw and rough. I liked the look.

There came a time when I grew up and I realized that even some of the most rough and rugged art looks great or even better when framed. It’s true. A frame sets art off from the wall, enshrines it and best of all emphasizes it.

Case in point, take a look at this image I painted of a sunset. It’s a small 5×7 inch painting. Alone on the wall it looks lost, even with the clean taped edge.

Stick that same image in a mat and wow, it looks so much better. As much as my 19 year old self would grumble at the added expense, this DOES look better, even in JUST the mat. Now imagine if I framed that image?

A friend of mine calls this effort, I call it extra work and added expense. But I’ve come to realize that IF I want to sell my art I have to appeal at least in part, to the buyers of art, not to my inner 19 year old rebel. Part of that appeal is handling my art in a professional manner- matting it up and placing it in a Krystal Seal bag or framing it when necessary.

I really do think that it looks a lot better when matted and those Krystalphane bags really do a great job of snazzing them up, giving you a good idea of what the piece will look like under glass.

Plus take a look at the prices on the mat and Krystal Seal bags I linked, those are pretty cheap.

I’m at that point in a painting where I want to dump a gallon of black gesso onto its surface and start all over.

Here’s the thing, I go through that with every painting. It’s a given that I hit a stage where I just hate it, hate the colors, hate the texture, hate how rough it is, and think it’s never going to get to a point where I’m happy with it.

Then I push through it, add another layer of paint, maybe some glaze, more white here, a little green here, maybe a little yellow, and soon enough it shapes up to  be closer to where I want, and then a little closer until I’m happy with it.

The problem starts when I don’t push through that barrier. If I let it go and stop working then I lose momentum and soon enough I’m staring at that crappy unfinished painting on the easel that lack clarity and mojo.

I’ll press on but I need a break from the painting but tomorrow I’ll be back at it.