Making time for art journaling
I first posted about this idea in 2019. It’s worth revisiting.
“But an art journal is more personal. It’s about you and your headspace. And anything goes. ”
Art journaling feeds the soul.
It’s a satisfying tactile and spiritual experience.
It involves making deliberate creative choices.
Art journaling is about reaching for splashes of color; the sharp sound of scissors cutting against paper; adding a smear of adhesive; a spray of glitter and fixing a sparkly sticker to a page.
It’s about creating meaning to a moment or a feeling with an inspirational quotation or a beautiful image.
Art journaling is self-expression.
Art journaling is self-love.
It’s the space you give yourself to create the day or release the day.
It’s about slowing down and focusing your thoughts.
Art journaling is meditation.
It’s a hushed silence brimming with possibility.
It’s a peacefulness that you set aside for yourself.
Art journaling is your thoughts, your feelings, expressed in visual form.
Art journaling is that thing someone said to you yesterday that you can’t stop thinking about (even a day later)—-that thing, expressed in images and words.
Or, it’s images and no words, because sometimes there are no words. Just a feeling.
Art journaling is taking that feeling and adding a few daubs of paint and pushing a paint brush around on a page.
Or, maybe it’s about getting involved with your whole self and plunging hands and fingers into paint because that’s what the feeling needs.
Art journaling is about the journey and not the destination.
Lemons: a journal spread
“When life gives you lemons, build a spaceship and check out the options on another planet.”
Pictured: Collage of a fierce looking woman in a red dress, walking down a ramp out of a lemon spaceship.
The pages may not always be perfect or pretty. Or polite. But that’s life.
On the pages of an art journal, no one gets to tear you down or judge you. Not even you.
Art journaling is whatever’s on your heart tucked into the pages of your journal.
An art journal is not a sketchbook where impressions or plans for future work are stored.
An art journal is not a scrapbook with pictures or quotations. It’s similar to a smashbook with a series of images or restaurant business cards or postcards or museum itineraries or a pressed flower, tucked away as a memento of a weekend getaway or trip.
But an art journal is more personal. It’s about you and your headspace. And anything goes.
What are you thinking, feeling or experiencing? How can you put those emotions and thoughts into the pages of a journal? It’s not about judgment. It’s about an experience.
What will you need to make this exciting creative trip?
To get started, you’ll need to gather materials. A blank journal or an old book; stickers; paints; brushes; pens; markers; crayons; scissors; collage elements like magazines, newspapers and tear sheets and glue or adhesive and colour sprays.
Do you feel more comfortable creating in silence or do you want music to accompany you on this creative journey?
Silence your phone and take a break from the Internet. Set a timer to ensure you stick to your allotted time in case you need to return to family or work responsibilities at a set hour.
Your art journal is an uncensored space for you to create and experiment with shapes, colours, textures, materials, images and quotations.
Art journaling is so many things.
To paraphrase Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, art journaling is about making choices to discover the sacred jewels that lie within.
