The See-Through Journal

More than a year ago, I was sent this beautiful little vellum-paper journal. I used a few pages at the beginning of 2025, and then left it in a drawer for a while. The look and feel of it is really satisfying, but I was at a bit of a loss for how to effectively use it, given that there is no escape from the ghosting of images across pages.

It's sort of hard to see the full effect of the transparency with my own eyes versus the all-seeing beam of the scanner. Of course, when you press the journal down onto the scanner bed, those pages are as close to each other as they can be, whereas when I take a casual look, those pages are fluttering away from each other.

My first real attempt to use the transparency was more of an attempt to cover it up - chunky newspaper collage all over the page. This obscured the next page, but I wasn't amazed by the way it looked on the other side.

I also tried paint, and I do, as always, really like the texture - especially, this soft, watery grey. But I think my favourite medium to use in here so far is the humble pencil.

Pencil markings just look so great in here. Very clear and dark and rich. These lines really appear to pop-up from each page whenever you can see some sort of muddied colour or texture in some part-obscured layer beneath.

I then figured out a collage variation I really liked - a more sparse style of collage that doesn't seek to fill up the whole page, but to provide a little sprinkling of accent colours. I really like this page of yellow, orange, and black and white halftones.

This journal really seems to call out for mixed media, but I think I'm going to try going for all-pencil pages for a while and see how the layering looks. Or maybe I'll use paint and pencil, and nothing else. We'll see.