Before I give your some tips on how to choose a journal that will suit your needs, let me stress that a journal is just a technical tool in which you can make art. However, the most important part of making art is… making art! It’s not about the journal, or the materials, or having the perfect studio.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing you can’t work on. Throughout my teaching and art career I’ve done art on used school notebooks, brown paper bags, magazines and catalogs. Everything works, as long as you have a drive to create. Don’t let technicalities stop you from starting to make art, ok?
So… now that you’ve understood all of the above, you still might want to buy a good journal. One that you can toss in your bag and won’t crumple or stain anything, one with some good paper and a nice cover. So here are a few tips, and some of my favorite journals.
Size
Don’t buy large journals. They take forever to complete, and are too bulky to carry with you. I like to have 5X7 journals for my everyday art journaling, and some bigger, 8X8 or 8X11 journals for when I need the extra space. Choose a size you’re comfortable with, something you would enjoy taking with you, and can complete in less than a decade, because part of the fun is watching your journal fill up! Standard journals will have 32 spreads, I wouldn’t buy any thicker than that.
Cover
I’ve used both soft and hard cover journals, I like both, but there’s no doubt that hard cover journals open flatter and are better to work in. The soft cover ones will lose their form as you fill them in, and will therefore not open as flat.
Opens Flat
This is the most important thing for me – make sure your journal opens flat! You need a journal that opens flat, otherwise it’s not as nice to work in it. For a journal to open flat, it needs to be stitched. That means that when you open the journal right in the middle, you can see the thread that bind everything together. Personally, I hate spiral bound notebooks, the spiral kind of cuts the art right in the middle, and paint gets stuck in it…ugh, I don’t enjoy working in them, and took me 3 spiral notebooks to understand that. If you look closely, or enlarge the photo below, you’ll be able to see the stitches running through the center.
Page Thickness
If you like to use paint, and don’t want your pages to tear easily, choose at least 90-100 gr paper (most journals will have this information on the cover). Most quality journals will have 180-190 gr paper, but I’m not too picky about paper thickness, I’ve tries some very simple notebooks and flimsy paper, and it’s all fine. You might have to gesso some pages before working on them, or stick 2-3 pages together for them to be sturdier, but I’m fine with that.
My favorite store bought art journals
Blank, white hardcover notebook. This is what I use in my art journaling classes. It doesn’t have too many pages, it’s sewn and opens flat, and the pages are nice and sturdy.
Click on the picture for more information, or buy the journal here.
Moleskine is a classic, I’ve had a few, but the ones I like best are the Art Plus ones, they have wonderful paper and a cute pocket on the inside of the cover where I keep some of my journaling fodder.
Click on the picture for more information, or buy the journal here.
Strathmore journals are also fantastic, they have high quality pages, are sewn and open flat, and come in various sizes. I’ve worked in the soft and hard cover ones, I love them all, but as I mentioned above, hard cover journals will stay nice and sturdy as they fill up, and will still open flat, while the soft cover ones will slightly lose their shape, so I prefer the hardcover ones.
Click here for the 8X11 size journal, and here for the 5X7 one.
These are a few of my journals:
And what about you? Is there a journal size or type you would never consider? why? and what are your favorites?
