Let the editing begin

Finish Me! Art Journals - Editing

As you get to know your Finish Me Journal, there will hopefully be pages you love, and no doubt, pages with elements that you're not so keen on.  That's OK, part of the fun of this project is going to be responding to things which are natural favourites and especially those which present unlikely challenges!

I don’t know about you, but if there’s something I don’t like, then it bugs me until I do something about it. I’m not just talking sketchbooks here, the same applies to life in general! However, when it comes to sketchbooks, fixing things is easy. I’ve often torn pages out of books or glued two pages together to lose or hide disasters. This time though, let’s be a bit more positive in our resolution.

My tip today is to go through your book and find something you don’t like and paint it out. I’m using gesso, but you could use acrylic paint, even emulsion if that’s what is to hand. A couple of thin coats and the offending whatever-it-was is gone for good.

So that stage is easy, but does come with a word of caution. Don’t zap everything you’re unsure of, or that you think might be difficult to work with. This can be an ongoing process!

You might choose to paint a page out entirely, but it can be more creative to leave some of the original. On this page, I voted to leave a margin of text close to the spine. This'll work not only as a visual reminder of the origin of the page, but also as a border to whatever is to come.

Many of the books have pages cut from vintage maps. This one is from a National Geographic atlas. The places on the map didn't have any relevance to me, so I've decided to use the format of the map to guide the editing. 

I've used the grid lines on the map to define a checkerboard (which I love) and painted alternate squares with gesso, this time keeping the gesso quite thinly painted so a ghost of the map still shows through. You could use the grid lines, or maybe your map has contour lines which would create a much more organic effect.

Happy painting!

Laura

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