What could this book hold?

Like a lot of mixed media artists, I make and buy far more journals and sketchbooks than I fill. There are shelves of them in my studio. Some are bursting open and overfilled whilst others have been sitting there for years, still empty, because somewhere along the way I decided they deserved something extraordinary.

That is the trouble with a beautiful empty book. It seems to ask for a beautiful, important idea before you are allowed to begin, and so it stays safely on the shelf.

I have come round to thinking the question is the problem. Not "what shall I make?" but "what could this book hold?"

A book isn't a precious object waiting for the perfect idea. It becomes precious through use.

What do you put in an art journal?

Almost anything. A scrap of paper, a quick sketch, a thought, a photograph, a piece of fabric. There is no right or wrong way to use a handmade book or journal, and often the freedom to follow your instincts is all you need.

But instincts need somewhere to begin. When I am stuck, I find it helps to give a book a sense of purpose rather than a plan. I established the following four purposes for my journals; think of them as starting points rather than rules.

Who am I? Pages that explore identity

Who we are is often revealed more clearly through the things we choose than through the words we use. Look around your workspace.

• What do you collect?

• Which objects have earned a permanent place on your shelves?

• What colours and textures do you find yourself drawn to again and again?

When I look around my own studio I see my grandfather's old typewriter, vintage photographs, tins filled with nature finds, antique beads and weathered postcards. Individually they might seem ordinary but together they tell a story about the things I have loved, noticed and carried with me.

A book can become a place to gather those clues and use them to influence your art. You don't need to write an autobiography or make a literal self-portrait; you only need to notice what has a personal significance for you.

What has shaped me? Pages that hold memories

Memory rarely presents itself as a neat story, told chronologically. It comes in fragments, triggered by the senses: the feel of an old concert ticket, a familiar scent, a song you used to sing with a friend in the car at full volume.

One of the joys of a handmade book is that these fragments can sit beside one another without needing a chronology. And they don't need to be beautiful. Some of the most valuable things you put in a memory book might be completely ordinary, or even ugly. A supermarket receipt. A scribbled note. A recipe stained with cooking. The value isn't in how it looks, it's in what it unlocks.

I keep a book of insignificant things I remember from childhood. How I chipped a tooth opening a pen knife with my teeth. The route I walked to infant school, avoiding the ‘witch's house’. Holding rags to all the places our car leaked when it rained. These are the things that don't normally get recorded anywhere, but they are the things that form us.

What is missing? Pages that make space for absence

Some books help us remember. Others help us live with what is no longer there.

An absence might be a person, a place, a relationship, a tradition, or a version of ourselves that no longer exists.

A sample of prompts from the book

What is missing, yet still shapes your life?

How could you suggest it without depicting it directly?

What does absence look like in your own visual language?

A book is particularly good at holding this because it can hold ambiguity. You don't have to explain what happened. A colour, a piece of handwriting, an empty chair, a page left deliberately blank, an empty pocket where something used to be. The book doesn't have to bring resolution. Its purpose might simply be to give the absence somewhere to exist.

Where might my work go next? Pages that develop you as an artist

A book gives you somewhere to experiment without the pressure of producing a finished artwork. You can test a composition, play with colour, combine materials you have never used together, or repeat an idea in different ways to see what happens.

What makes this useful over time is the noticing. Perhaps you keep favouring particular colours, layering transparent materials, obscuring parts of an image. Those recurring decisions are clues to what makes your work yours.

If the page is still blank, start here

For the next week, collect twenty small things you are instinctively drawn to. Don't think about making art and don't choose things because you imagine they will look good together. Simply notice what catches your attention and gather it.

At the end of the week, spread everything on a table and spend some time looking. Which colours appear again and again? Are several objects connected to a place or a time? What have you collected without consciously deciding to?

Then make a page from what you have found. Not from the objects themselves, but from what they revealed: the colours, the textures, the imagery. You will create a page that says something about you because it’s based on those choices you made over the week. It doesn’t need to explain you. It only needs to hold some of the things that feel like you.

I wrote Don't Fear the Blank Page for anyone who loves handmade books but finds themselves wondering what to actually do with them. It takes these four themes further, with prompts and two practical exercises. You can have a look here.

Warmly,

Jane

P.S. If you try the table of curiosities, I would love to see what surfaced. Tag me @janechipp.

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