I had the idea this past weekend to make a bit of an art reference book for myself. I started out by printing out some images of art that I like. My printer doesn’t always do the most accurate job with colors, but it’s enough to get the idea. If I wanted something more accurate, I would probably go print them somewhere else. I have also been swatching my watercolors lately to see what I have. I decided to include these in the book, and that gave me the idea to include swatches of my acrylics and alcohol markers. It’s always nice to be able to flip through and see the different colors and media that I have so I could build a color palette from that. Just seeing all the colors on the page can be inspiration in itself. I have also included different painting styles, such as pointilism and some reference material about that style movement. I’m also doing a bit of collaging in the book, just as mini mood/inspiration boards for color palettes, texture, and pattern reference. I went through the book after gluing in the images and just wrote down things that stood out to me, or the particular elements that I like so that I can eventually categorize the similarities from each of the pages.

The cover of the book I started stitching a while back and finally finished about a month ago. I like finishing the covers a bit roughly because I like the jagged edges and loose threads. My sewing machine had a bit of a time over the thick embroidery and so that added to the grunge as well!

I’m really excited about this book and I’m hoping it will be a valuable resource for my art making.

Thanks for stopping by!