hey friends elizabeth here from plant based bride back again with another video and
today i am super excited to set up my bullet journal for february 2022 with a dark academia
inspired aesthetic i've wanted to do a dark academia theme in my bullet journal since it
popped off on the internet and became a really popular aesthetic but i've really struggled
with figuring out how i wanted to actually execute this theme and what aspects made the most sense to
include in brainstorming what i could do for this theme it occurred to me that it could be really
cool to revisit that interactive flipping window thing that i did in my november plan with me last
year if you missed that video you can check it out i'll link it in the card and in the description
box but in that setup i created a window so that you could flip between the inside and the outside
scene it occurred to me that recreating that interactive window idea but in a completely
different style could be really cool especially for anyone watching who maybe enjoyed that idea
back in november but didn't necessarily vibe with a style of the art that i did on those spreads
and you all know me i love a challenge i love to try to do completely different themes from month
to month and really push myself go outside my comfort zone so that is what i'm trying to do here
i decided to utilize my silhouette cutting machine to make this window a little bit easier
so i used my craft sticker paper and i purchased an svg file of a variety of windows i'll link
the etsy listing for it in the description box if you're looking to use the same window
but i printed and cut the window out twice so that i could stick it on either side of the sheet
and then i just hopped into silhouette and very loosely traced the windows shape
between the outside and inside of that thick outer line to cut out of this cardstock just
to get this general shape of the window without having to try to cut it out by hand
i also cut a hole out of the sheet that i'm going to stick this onto
and glued the paper down on both sides lining up the hole
and then peeled off the backing and stuck down the window sticker on both
sides trying to line it up as perfectly as i could if you wanted to try this at home
and you don't have a sticker machine i would imagine that an exacto knife
and a cutting mat would be your best bet but just make sure to be careful working around blades i
do not want to be the cause of any bullet journaling related injuries so be careful
once i had the window all finished i wanted to work on creating shutters so i popped into
photoshop and altered this window image changing the color and adding hinges little tabs to be able
to actually attach these shutters to the page printed and cut that out and then i did a print
and cut of the same image but without the tabs then all i had to do was get it lined up and stick
it down using those little tabs and i have little interactive shutters that i can open and close
now i'm moving on to the cover page and for this painting i'm recreating an old photograph i found
of a paris street and this photograph was taken sometime in the 1800s and i just felt
that the image was really interesting to see how sort of dirty and grungy this street felt
i thought the perspective was really interesting there were a lot of details in different areas
of the image that i thought would be fun to try to capture and i feel like paris
and london in the 18 and 1900s is very much the aesthetic of dark academia that's the
setting of dark academia so i really wanted to incorporate that grungy city cobblestone street
feel into the cover page i started by sketching out all the basic shapes using that photograph
as a reference and then went over all of those larger details using my sakura micron and also
adding in extra little details here and there to show texture on the walls some cracks and marks
darker areas at the bottom of the walls where they've been dirtied just by being near the street
some wood texture some cobblestones and brick texture and then i left the ink to dry and prepped
my watercolor so for painting this i actually only used dried paint that was already on my palette i
didn't have to add any fresh paint to my palette which was really fun and i had a little segment of
my palette that had a tiny little mound of black paint and a tiny little mound of brown paint
and i used those in various combinations with various amounts of water for 99 of this painting
with a tiny bit of an addition of some orange and yellow paint that i also had on my palette already
to add a little bit more warmth in certain areas so i'm using quite a small brush and watering down
the paint quite a bit this is made even easier because i'm using dried paint that's on my palette
i have to add quite a bit of water to reactivate the paint and that leaves me with a color that is
pretty watered down and translucent i'm trying to stick with browns and grays to really grind across
this dark academia vibe grungy old moody traveling back in time everything is just a little dingy
do
i also decided to paint my wall and my shutters just using a flat brush with
very watered down brown from my palette just to add a bit of streakiness a little bit of dirtiness
and almost a wood texture on those shutters once all that paint was dry i started working on the
interior scene i had a lot of ideas for this and initially i wanted to hand draw and hand paint
these paintings and then i realized that sometimes you can do too much and i feel like painting these
myself would have been a step too far at least for my own capacity this week so i decided instead to
find some old paintings and some high-res images of gold frames and used photoshop to pop those
images in the frames printed them out cut them out and glue them in just to give a feeling of an
interior space at this time and then i added some of my tea stained paper stamped february at the
bottom and added some washi tape just to give it a bit of a layered textured feel the way that i'm
using tea stained paper other scrap papers washi tape in the setup is very reminiscent
of how i create spreads in my reading journal and i've really enjoyed exploring more of a scrapbooky
vintage feel in my reading journal over the last year so it was really fun to incorporate this into
my main bullet journal for a month and i think it really does lend itself to that dark academia vibe
flipping over to my next spread and starting by gluing down some scrap paper tea stained paper and
cleaning up the edges with my scissors i'm also cutting out all my weeklies i'm creating tabs as
per usual for those of you who are interested in the tab dimensions this time i made my tabs one
space shorter so usually my tabs are two by two spaces for the diagonal sections and four spaces
tall this time i made them three spaces tall just so that i could fit all my tabs in a shorter space
vertically because i am going to cut away the bottom portion of these weeklies to reveal the
art underneath this is another technique that i first tried in my november plan with me and i've
really enjoyed having these cutaways ever since so of course i wanted to try that again here i do
find it really interesting how the age of social media that we live in currently is really creating
all of these different niche aesthetics and lifestyles that are branching off of each other
and it's really cool to see people finding community connecting with people online from all
over the world who have similar interests similar styles similar reading tastes or music tastes and
dark academia as an aesthetic as a concept first appeared in 2015 on tumblr and was a reaction to
donate's novel secret history which i have not read yet but i believe it will be right up my
alley considering i am a big fan of dark academia vibes in the books that i read it started as
essentially a book club and an aesthetic that referred to types of books specifically a gothic
dark vibe focus on educational institutions literature art poetry with that sprinkling of
darkness and mystery over the years this has shifted into more of a day-to-day aesthetic
inspiring how people dress the types of books people read and how they live their lives
it's also been posited that the pandemic has played a large role in the popularity of dark
academia exploding as many students the world over have been forced to learn from home and
are yearning for in-person education studying in the stacks sitting in the quad discussing poetry
with your fellow english majors so many aspects of a traditional university that feels so far
away right now there is no one true definition of dark academia and for that reason i would
be really interested to hear how you define it what are the aspects of dark academia as
a concept that jump out to you most or what are the parts of it that bring you in the most that
you're most interested in or attracted to as an aesthetic what draws you to dark academia the most
and what are the aspects of dark academia that are in your opinion the most essential
adding my monthly calendar here keeping it super simple
and then popping down to the bottom of the page where i am attempting
to recreate the london skyline again i found hand drawing from i believe the 1800s
that i tried to generally recreate along the bottom here i think dark
academia has quite a bit of a focus on european architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries
so i definitely wanted to incorporate at least a little bit of that aspect into this setup
i'm also adding a drawing on the right side here i found a photograph of the statue and
did my best to recreate it again starting with a pencil sketch using the photograph as a reference
and then going over that with my sakura micron in zero zero five which is quite a fine nib
to add all of those details
again once all of the ink was dry i'm going in with those same two splotches of dried paint
from my palette brown and black with varying amounts of water to make them darker or lighter
to fill in these buildings along the bottom again trying to stick with those two shades
in different combinations and different values to make this image more cohesive and also more
representative of the time because in that time period the architecture was so often made of just
a few materials and if you look at representations of those time periods the buildings are
pretty exclusively gray and brown and those colors are of course so overwhelmingly representative
of dark academia as an aesthetic i'm also going to fill in my sculpture with watercolor
using black with different amounts of water added to get darker gray areas and lighter gray areas
i'm also adding some washi tape to these spreads again just for that more layered textured feel
that for whatever reason in my mind is closely associated with dark academia it's sort of like
a messy desk covered in a bunch of papers and letters and an ink pot that's spilled across a
notebook and a cup of coffee that sort of ties into that messy academic feeling i'm setting up
my weeklies here as well of course using my faux dutch door rolling weekly if you're not familiar
with that i'll link my video in a card and in the description box you can check out the dedicated
video where i explain how this setup works and how i use it and as you can see because i did
that cutaway along the bottom no matter which weekly i'm on i can see my little london skyline
along the bottom of the spread finally flipping to the last spread of this setup i'm doing a
quote page on the left side and a final little drawing on the right for the quote this month i
decided to pay homage to edgar allan poe i feel like he is possibly the epitome of dark academia
gothic vibes and the quote i chose was and all i loved i loved alone there's definitely
a bit of a bereft sadness and romanticism to dark academia so i felt this quote fit perfectly
working on this final drawing here i decided to combine a bunch of elements that make me think
of dark academia into a single little drawing so a stack of books a teacup glasses a pot of ink with
a quill sticking out of it and a small cracked statue i wasn't happy with how my shading turned
out on this little statue so you'll see later i actually redraw the statue and glue it on top
and of course i used more paint for my palette for this drawing
i did incorporate a couple new colors in this drawing that i haven't used anywhere
else i mixed a nice dark green using some dried up green and black on my palette and
i used some dried up orange paint with lots of water to make a nice soft peachy tone
and with that drawing finished we have come to the end of this setup so i'll do a quick little
flip through of all the spreads i created this was quite a challenging experience not the least
of which because i pinched a nerve in my neck halfway through the setup and it was very painful
to finish but even working through the pain i am quite happy with how things turned out it
definitely gives me a dark academia vibe it feels very earthy and old in exactly the way i'd hoped
so hopefully all of you enjoyed this setup as well give this video a like if you did and leave
an emoji that says dark academia to you in the comments if you made it all the way to the end
before i go i want to take a quick second to thank my patrons for their support extra special thanks
to our newest patrons katie tracy lynn altheria ariane andrea april victoria carrie montselicious
lucy aprilius askingbaard93116 brandy flb3ra jamie and julia welcome all of you to the squad we are
so excited to have you if you at home want to join the squad feel free there's a link in the
card and in the description box down below and with that i'm going to get going thank
you so much for watching this video and i'll see you really soon in my next one bye friends