Altered Book Art Journal Tips (Something from the Studio)

hey friends i had a patron ask me some questions about choosing and using and prepping altered books and if there were any tips i might share well here is a little example of some of the altered books i have used in the past decade and so i'm going to share a couple things that come to mind from some that i've used and moved on from and some that i am prepping now and what it is that i chose about them and maybe some things that i learned okay let's start with this one which i believe was my very first altered book experience and it was part of a workshop class that i took and the instruction was to get a used or or new you could use a new one but a children's book we use that has like the chip board so they're really thick those pages are like cardboard and then they usually have a sort of plastic kind of um you know like layer over top and you can actually on some of these books peel that plastic off and still have the image beneath so you can play with different chipboard books or you can take a fine sandpaper and sand some of that so that the page gets a little bit of grit to kind of hold the acrylic paints that you might be using in it or you can be like me and just not do any of that and go ahead and just start painting on it and go thick and let it be what it is it's totally up to you in what you want to play with this one i was doing a mix of different mixed media techniques and then collaging things in keeping it relatively simple and i just wasn't all that concerned about um you know like longevity and i'm certainly not selling it it's a very personal like altered book that i was working in at the time so i don't know like there's a lot of collage pieces in here um and i would have used like a gel medium or maybe modge podge at the time when i did this to glue those in here i can tell it was a gel medium because there's a nice layer over top and then acrylic paints and i don't you probably could use my nail and scrape some of that up actually it's it's pretty good on there so you know so you can prep a chipboard if it has a shiny surface if you want to with a little bit of sandpaper maybe trying to peel some of that off or you can just have at it and start with your matte paints and a nice thick layer of acrylic paint and go from there the really nice thing about the thick pages is it takes the wet media fine there's no warping and it's also not too big so you can end up filling it pretty quick if you want to so children's chipboard books are really a great way to kind of break into altered book ideas then at some point i decided to use like a regular book this was a nonfiction book kind of you can even see a little bit of the ghost of the words from the next page you know through it was there was no images in it i had a friend who used a lot of these type of books and i wanted to give a shot myself because i love i love books and i i love them i love the way they feel in my hands i like the size you know and i wanted to try something that had a lot of words because i was going to play with words and different art journaling techniques that utilize white space and words and just kind of see what happened using one of these sort of books as an everyday art journal now one of the things i'll say that's really helpful with any type of altered book is to look for a book that has a sewn signature preferably this may not be a sewn signature so this might have been early on in my days with altered altered book journaling and as you can see i didn't finish it and there's reasons for that i ended up not being crazy about the paper first of all it didn't hold a lot of the media very well it was good for collage it was good for putting in calendar pages which is how i was using it at the time it was good for pulling out words if i was in a season when i was really wanting to work with words like i was gluing things in taping things down so it definitely got some use but one of the ways i made the book work for a while is that i took pages sometimes since they're thinner pages and i glued them together so this is an example of one of those pages i made a nice thick page i put a layer of mod podge or gel medium between just kind of brayered it out and then i had a thicker page to work with a little more substance than the way the pages in the book work another thing that people do and this is a tip i learned from a friend is that when you have a book like this that has hundreds and hundreds of pages and you know you're going to glue things in you can skip some pages and rip some pages out okay the thing i'll say about that is if you are using a book that has a sewn signature and you rip some pages out you may have some pages in another spot that are going to come out as well so you kind of want to be mindful of that it was a pretty good binding for a glued binding and then i would rip some out and that would it would allow for things to be glued into the book without it becoming like super thick and sometimes you'll see people who do art journals and altered books and it's like they're just kind of like overflowing and that's totally cool if you're into that you know that's a lot of fun to kind of see how much you can just fill one and see what happens but in this one i can i see that i did glue quite a few of those pages together to give myself that thicker that thicker page to work on so it could hold some of the things i was doing with it and the paint that i was wanting to put on it okay so what else i don't know if there's much else i can say about this one but with an altered book it's a lot of fun because you can let like here's a collaged piece over top but you can let the words underneath show through and certainly if there's illustrations you can let those show through as you'll see in some of the next ones i share this one i just brought because this is an idea that i never totally followed through with but it's a fun idea and it's using a magazine so if you have a pretty decently made magazine or catalog or something like that you can just take one of those they're really great for like a travel altered book and so that's what i i started this one for my idea with this one was to have people that i knew do pages in it all right and i actually only had one page done maybe two but this is one i'll show you this is one my mama did so i started this little altered book and was gonna have friends in that do some things in it and i may you know pick it up and use it for that in the future too so with magazine pages of course you have this slick kind of magazine material so you'll you may consider either doing gesso if you want to which can be white or clear or black for a background to thicken your page or just use some of your acrylic paint it gives it a thicker feel a little more substance and then it will hold whatever you do over top if you're doing mixed media so that's a that's a pretty much a tip that repeats itself through the use of different types of alter books but you can see here how this is covered over but there's this faint implication of the imagery behind that's kind of fun you could use those as jumping off places if you're not you know if you're somebody who has a hard time with the blank page and where to start here's one where i applied paint and then left to this little quote so you can leave little messages if there are words you can leave those out you can do that like black out poetry stuff that people like this is a combination of paints over top of imagery that was beneath and so different things start to happen and then you start to see different associations and imagery and can go from there and use that as a jumping place and then i have some books here these are some of my favorites perhaps let's see this one there's i have a video flip through of this one at some point never totally filled the whole thing but this is an old book on trees that i picked up at a thrift store or something like that a couple bucks it looks like and i loved this book i made it a studio book it was my first like i'm dedicating myself to an altered book book and it was sewn signatures okay so what that means is it was bound with the sewing and then it had these glossy thick pages it was old imagery old photographs there is a little bit of a sheen to it this is kind of like a satin rather than a high gloss these pages that there are people who don't like a gloss or a satiny kind of finish when they do their work because you can sometimes scrape off the acrylic or it doesn't stick totally or they're worried about prepping it i have not had a problem with it i just start with acrylic paint used thickly like this this would be like a start page as a palette page it's nice and thick on there and then i might come back over and paint over top and it's no big deal i love to use some like picture books like this and use the imagery as a jumping off place i have another video of this one as a meditation example um using the photograph that was there and then just really needing to just be with my paints but not having the energy to think or even wanting to just go into an associative sort of space you did a lot of mixed media pieces in this particular book utilizing some of the inspiration from the trees that were in the book i love trees anyway so if you're going to pick a book that has images finding one that has images that really speak to you that just kind of like feel like your sort of visual interest is obviously going to be a better place for you than picking something that has imagery that you're just not you don't like or something like that um so if you are going to utilize that image underneath consider books that inspire you a little bit in some way even if it is kind of old like retro sort of vintagey photographs or what have you you know and then you can do like you do with any of your art journals you can do whatever they call these tip-ins or tape-ins that works for me and just kind of play and go from there so most of this book is there's a little bit of collage but not a whole lot there's a little bit of words that i left occasionally but mostly it's imagery um and it was a series through the better part of a year or two that i would just kind of come in and out of this and let things happen and not needing it to be thematic not needing things to be finished it could be just one little creative practice session and then moving on or it could be a whole spread and become like a finished painting or it could be like this like this is a gesso page clearly over top of a photographic image but i just loved the way that alone looked and then coupled with this other page that was more about this kind of abstract thing i did and and then my own thoughts from that particular day or session or prayer or whatever so that is um i like the size of this too because you can easily pick one page or you can do a larger spread so if you're somebody who feels like you really liberate yourself or feel free in your art practice with a bigger spread sometimes picking a bigger book can be the way to go this is a similar one it's got the kind of glossy pages the sewn signature i liked the shape the kind of square sort of shape it's not finished but i did do a few spreads in it i don't know if there's any tips here from this one again it's another mix of like various images mostly i'm painting over top of the whole page here the lovely thing about altered books when you use a book that begins with a little bit of a substance to the page and a little bit of a certain kind of quality is it's a little thicker and then as you add paint the pages themselves like they take up this space that is just i don't know it's just beautiful to flip the pages to feel the art beneath your fingers as you turn the pages so that's a lot of fun this is another one art books finding art history books for cheap is really pretty easy to do in thrift stores or what have you or used bookstores and again they often have glossy pages sometimes not very good photographs but you'll immediately have color on the page that you can begin with so using art books themselves or art history books can be a wonderful way to just kind of connect with a lineage of artistry i think and then you can use them however you want these two pages nothing really coming through from what was beneath this one there is a little bit of a painting that was on the page happening i believe a little bit of the words coming through right here but just like an impression you know of what's happening and then this was a collage of my own piece of art on top of it but again i liked the size it's not too thick it's a sewn signature it's got that nice kind of thick page to begin with and having something with color can be really you know a nice launch pad for your own practice this is the same idea this one's ongoing not much else to say about this except oh i did cover this one and you'll see some of mine i i do new covers for and this one's just a collage covering i like that this one is as well you can also do a painted cover it gives the book a different life than what it had this is a really good example of what i do in the studio to prep alter books so when i'm doing working on something else i'll often have extra paint on my palette or on my brush and i keep altered books that are in process or that i haven't started using it nearby and then i will use that extra paint to begin to put down some crazy mixed media colors and then i have something to come to later to respond to again on those days when i'm maybe not starting something from scratch or not feeling the blank page but wanting to have sort of that dialogue with my own inner imagination and what's going on so and here's an image that was on the page with a little horse i decided even with that extra palette paint to let this show through because it might be like the jumping point for this later or it might get covered up you know it might but it might create a whole scene or story that happens there you can start your pages really without there needing to be an agenda and leave parts of colors or images that speak to you and then turn them into part of your mixed media work this was another one that started um this one's filled up quite a bit i love the size okay guys altered books size matters all right you have to pick sizes that feel good to you and weight matters pick sizes and weights that feel good pick something that lays flat alright that can matter a whole lot too right and then the feel of the pages that feels good to you this one is a more of a matte page but they were a little bit thicker and i loved that about this book and i love these because when you have pages that are just started with mixed media stuff like that you can come in and just like make it a doodle page you know just come in and draw flowers or birds or you know whatever the heck you like you know faces just you know have at it it doesn't have to be so serious but it already has that kind of spacious environment that's just kind of inviting you in for whatever wants to come forth but size matters that's one of my tips okay these are ones that are ongoing so i mentioned how i keep some hanging around so when i have extra paint i can fill them up well i keep a lot hanging around you know why not right so i have regular blank page sketchbooks and i have alter books and i alternate between them it all kind of depends on my mood um and again i usually select them when i just come across something if i'm out and about and i see a little book and i like the way it feels or if i have some things on my bookshelf maybe i'm getting rid of books but if i pick one out and i'm deciding well i don't want to keep this book to read anymore but man i sure like the feel of that it lays flat look at that nice signature it has the size i could fit in my purse you know so i will i will think about it that way it's like you know i'm just kind of always on the hunt for a good good little book that could be a potential altered book and most of them that i use have had hard covers but this one i picked up for like a buck called the book of secrets which is really sort of fun to have on an art book right haven't done any actual art in this one yet but i am just adding color and prepping pages with extra paint and i love the feel of it i just that's one of the things i love about it and it has a little ribbon so that's kind of fun for an altered book tiny books if you like to work small get yourself a couple of those you know there's so many books out there that are just like like little novelty gift items that would make great altered books and here's what the sewn signature kind of looks like at the binding you know so it has like different little sections and each section is sewn and it makes it you know stronger and sturdier especially for mixed media this could be such a fun thing to fill with like a theme as a little book or little messages as a gift for somebody love that this is an art book you know i have a moleskine that like lays like this right all white blank pages and then i we have this book it's an artist's work sorry artist but i decided that i decided i was going to use the book again because it's made really nicely to create another altered book that had this real landscape type form this was a new one i actually have a video that shows you how i did this cover that's really simple to do and this one i loved and i just thought i'd point it out again because it has a different paper than many books so look for books that have unique paper inside this was a thick thicker paper obviously background colors simple things in the center that can easily be covered over and there's a little bit of a texture to it and i liked that and i could use it in a different way than some of the other books where i'm slapping down color to fill up white space finally i thought i would just show you um this is one of the oldest books i'm using as an altered book and it's one that i'm using right now i haven't done a ton in it i got it maybe over a year ago and i liked it i liked it as an idea i love the size it's really big um so it's a good studio altered book and it's an art book so it's a history a picture history of painting right it has a mix of pages though it's one of it's an older book so it has like these leaflets right with the color things at different sections but then most of the pages are actually black and white and they're matte and they're a little bit more of like an absorbent paper you know like newsprint but thicker than newsprint so it's just like an older book and that makes it kind of unique to use so i started using it and then i was like i didn't think i liked it so much because it's thinner paper most of the pages and like i did this collage and there was a little bit of buckling that was happening and just for the record like i really normally don't care too much about buckling and altered books if you are someone who's worried about the buckling definitely thicken your pages with a layer of paint um or glue a couple together but you know what the minute you do this and you put a couple books on top and let it sit for a couple days the buckling mostly kind of works itself out so you don't have to worry too much about that you will sometimes get a little bit of crinkling that lingers in thinner pages like in this book but that's just kind of part of the charm of certain altered books so you have to decide what it is that you do and don't like about the books that you choose and just really try some out i i actually really like in some ways i don't like how it wouldn't handle the thickness but at the same time i sort of like buckling when it happens i like the way it feels to flip a page that's been altered um and turned into a painting even though the paper is not perfect i don't know how to explain that but for me there's something kind of cool about that so but anyway i did a few things and it's too big to just carry around all the time but i was kind of liking the idea how i could do that just just the one here and and possibly take them out if i ever wanted to but then i turned away from this book i was like i don't know i'm not totally sold on it like this just didn't have quite the same feel but then i came back to it and just recently and i am in love with this book i think i just wasn't ready for it so here i have a spread prepped because they are thinner pages this is a book that i would consider doing gesso preps so for like a full spread like this one thing that can help with is like in the center here if you do a nice little gesso line right there it's going to keep anything from bleeding onto other pages if it seeps through okay so this one i had prepped with gesso before that's ready to go for a full spread but then i can leave the back side blank leave this front side blank and i could if i ever wanted to pull them out and pull them out together and then i can also do single ones on these one sides and i that's what i'm really enjoying doing right now and leaving some of this art history stuff here because there's so much inspiration in this book in the black and white and the imagery and some of the words are jumping out at me as i'm spending more time with this particular book lately and i'm doing these quick evening study sketches so seeing this altered book not as like a painting book but as a paint sketchbook really kind of shifted my thinking with it so it's become a studio paint sketchbook and then i i don't prep these pages when i'm doing these evening pages they are i just come in with my acrylics nice and thick dry brushes and just kind of spend 20 minutes and that can be so cathartic and doing it in a book like this not having to deal with a blank page and then sometimes you find like like this one um i left a little bit again of that image here it became this shape that had this detail and and that became somehow some part of what happened with my paint i did this at an art table i haven't done it yet but i was thinking how i could just do a pattern on this page with oil pastel say it's a night where i just need to move some color in line but i don't need to be thinking and i don't need to be trying i need something that feels more effortless right that can really work well for that if you have a page that's prepped in an altered book with one color and then come in with your favorite no paint pens or oil pastels or what have you so i just wanted to share this book because i'm all lit up about it right now but i am enjoying this particular size of this book for a really nice like stay-at-home uh studio paint sketch book and part of what i love about it is the unique quality of the paper how it feels in the hands even though it's like not the most ideal supposedly and then also that it's about painting so for me there is something about what the book is about sometimes it matters but not always sometimes i pick because of paper sometimes i pick because of image sometimes i pick because of words but page quality is going to be really subjective and personal to you so try a couple get yourself a couple used books or something and see if you like glossy or matte satin or a more absorbent paper it will just depend on the supplies you have and the supplies that you're using try a couple gessoed try a couple glued together try some out ultimately just experiment and find what works for you but i think what really is very important overall for long-term use is looking for something that lays relatively flat that's really really important in my world and then also the signatures the sewn signatures really helps keep a binding book together better and then oh and then of course you can rip some pages out if you do a lot of collaging you can rip out little areas of pages and that will give you some room without it just kind of exploding with all that extra stuff and finding the size that feels good to you or if you're like me having several sizes available all the time and prepping pages in between things all the time so that you are always just ready to go whenever you get the urge to get into your creative practice

Channel: Hali Karla

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Id: bkj5vPZvlfY

Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020