Back To the Hardbound
After using the dollar store sketchbook and art materials for a bit, mainly to just get comfortable and play around with making marks, I sat down to assess my feelings about the matter.
My conclusion was that I did want to keep creating visual images. It wasn't bringing back too many falshes of 2014's or 2015's struggle. But I didn't want to use the sketchbook I'd bought. It was too small, somehow, or the wire binding was bugging my hand. Or maybe the paper was too thin, and more suitable for pencils, and I wanted something bolder.
So I got in the car and made the pilgrimage down the interstate to WalMart. Yes, I live that far out in the countryside.
I bought a 9”x12” hardbound sketchbook, by a student-level brand called Royal Langnickel. WalMarts with an art section generally don't have anything higher quality than student-level, but that's okay for an art journal. I mean, I've happily used a composition book before. Sometimes cheaper is better, because you don't feel like your art has to live up to its own paper.
Mainly I wanted something that would lay flat without having a spiral binding to annoy me and break up the flow of the two facing pages. I tend to conceptualize both facing pages as “one image” — and a wire spiral in the center makes that difficult.
As I did with the first (composition book) art journal in 2014, I spent some time at the beginning removing some of the pages throughout the book. This makes room and protects the binding from being stretched once the book gets bulky with use.
I also used washi tape to add in some different types of paper into the book — black cardstock, graph paper, vellum, even some transparent pink PVC. It can be enjoyable to fit your idea around whatever the next weird paper is that you forgot you added to the journal in the beginning.