2021 Reading Journal: Update #2

I’ve been enjoying the time I spend working on my reading journal. There’s something different about sitting down with a pencil pouch full of colorful pens and the printed-out sheet of book covers than simply hopping on Goodreads to update my reading status or adding book stats to a spreadsheet. While I like keeping track with both of those options, I like keeping a reading journal too. It’s a fun, creative outlet I get to do for a few days every month. I also get to test my artistic ability by trying to recreate something from the books.

The best part, though, is flipping back through and seeing all that I’ve read. Even leafing through pages from earlier this year is such a cool feeling. Look at all those books I read! Look at that cool thing I drew!

Here are some of the pages I worked on this summer that I’m happy with.

Okay, so even though I’m not a fan of the Caraval books, I really love the covers and design of the books. So here’s my tiny tribute to that by mimicking the font of the books. I did not trace a pencil outline first!!

This was such a hard page because drawing the Titanic is not easy at all. There are so many tiny details, but I like the way it came out.

Okay, so this page looks terrible to me, but I don’t hate it completely? It’s weird. I tried to do the Ravkan Double-Eagle symbol and it would have worked except making things symmetrical is hard. So I tried several ways to make it symmetrical and made a mess. I don’t 100% hate it, but it’s not like this stellar art piece or anything. Also drawing anything with wings is ridiculous and stupid. (Note: if you actually try to read my terrible handwriting, there are spoilers on this page for Rule of Wolves.)

This might be my favorite page I’ve done this year. I just really love how those waves came out (another stupid, ridiculous thing to draw) and the tiny little ship atop the one crest. Plus, I just really love this book.

This page just makes my heart happy because it’s so colorful and fun.

I wasn’t sure how I could do a fun page for this duology, so I kind of a did a weird mash-up of the bone necklace symbol on the covers of both books. I like it the way it came out.

This page makes me smile even if it doesn’t fit at all with the scary, spooky, horror-leaning genre of the book. I just love the little bees and honeycombs, which do play a part in the story!

I said the Race to the Bottom of the Sea page is my favorite, but I also really love how this phoenix came out. I love the outline and the colors to match the books and that those feathers don’t look terrible!

I thought about recreating the cover for Renegades on this page, but while looking up images for inspiration, I saw an alternative cover (for the paperback?) and I really liked the mask and the city so I decided to do that instead. I love the way the colors look together.

This one was hard to figure out. Apparently crowns are also not easy to draw, but I wanted to do something that encompassed all three books. I like the end result, even if the red/blue combination on the crown still looks off to me. I’m probably just being too hard on myself.

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