Personalise your sketch book

I bought a few books full of wonderful creative ideas, excercices and inspiration. One's a book with drawing exercices, which I love especially. I've been wanting to do more drawing and sketching for a long time, and last year, I bought a great book about learning how to draw properly. I still haven't managed to work through the whole of it, though I made a start, which really convinced me about the method and approach tought in the book. The new book has a more fun approach, and it just made me want to start drawing right away. I have the week off, and will be away for a few days, so it's the perfect time to start reading the book and doing some of the exercices, and start drawing.

Of course, I needed a new sketch book for this. So I went to my favourite art supply shop in town, and bought one. It' a prober sketch book, suitable for different medias, with thick, good quality paper. I love the square format and I wanted one that is not too big, so that it's still convenient enough to carry around.

But of course, those black blank covers want a bit of personalising, and a touch of colour. The great thing with acrylics is that you reallycan paint on anything with them. Use a masking tape so that you won't have to be careful about going over the edges. (There's nothing more obstructive to the flow of creativity than having to be careful all the time about not making a mess).

Apply a coat of white paint or gesso and let dry. Use a hair drier (or heat gun) for speeding up the drying process. If necessary, especially if you want to use light and/or not so well covering colours, apply a second coat. Let dry.

Use your favourite colour and apply as many layers as necessary. Allow time to dry in between. Use tissue / household paper, bubble wrap and other things to create patterns and textures. Let dry. 

To add some more patterns and details, you can use stamps, stencils etc. for example.

Of course you can go on and add more layers, and paint some subject or pattern in different colours on top. You can also add other embellishments, but remember that if  you stick on things that are three dimensional, such as flower stickers or rhine stones, they might fall off when you intend to carry your sketch book around with you in your bag. (Of course you can always add another layer of paint at a later stage. Just stick some masking back on and continue your little art piece.)

When you're happy with the result, remove the masking tape. Et voilà, your personalised sketch book - makes it even more fun and inviting to open it and start getting creative :).

I actually thought about painting a She Girl on it, but I really like it as it is, so I think I'll just leave it. At least for the moment :)