Drawing and painting in my Art Journal, of any size, is not just practicing arting. It is a permanent way to journal what my soul is considering. I, typically, do the art, and then do the journaling around what I was thinking when the art piece was making itself known to me.
I have always been a writer, typically of poetry, but since I retired, I have starting blogging every day. It helps me sort out my thoughts and gives credence to what I DO think about. I paint intuitively, for the most part, and so it helps me express my feelings through creative expression. It keeps me in balance and always working on Self.
Saying, |I can’t draw” or “I can’t write”, is just an excuse. We can do anything we want, or need, or wish to do if we apply ourselves. Practice makes perfect. And, as for writing, you simply cut out words from text for a time until you get more comfortable with writing phrases and then lines. My printing/scripts are horrible, so I save my writing for the very last step. If you want to ‘fix ‘or ‘heal’ something about yourself, art journaling is the way. See, sometimes our ego does not want us to tell the truth about how we are feeling. Ego does not want you to face any flaw it did not incite. In fact, it could not exist if we did all our healing and balancing. It wants us to be deceived by it. It wants all the control over us, not our truths and healing truths.
Our emotions can be a stew of mixtures. There is something beautifully cathartic about getting those feelings down and out. Very often we are blocked, emotionally, sometimes actually numb. As we begin the practice of art journaling, it becomes easier and easier to express our hopes, dreams, fears, actualisations; our reasons for being who we are and feeling what we do; our thoughts and figuring out our purpose, the things that move us, the things that creates reasons for our movement through life in our Present.
Art journaling can turn negatives into positives. It is soul work, after all. You come to learning the lessons, to resolutions, to get right to the heart of the mater as intuition takes over as we art journal. Once you grasp the meaning of art journaling, and make your own patterns and kinds of art journaling as unique as you are, you come to a voice that is pure and as honest as anything you could do. You do not need teachers or classes, or inspiration outside your deepest self, in reality, although, in the beginning, you will need a model to start with. Eventually your art journaling becomes gems of absolute honesty and tells stories way beyond the bindings of whatever art journal book you might use.
Every painting I do comes from a place of deep thought. I blog along with my art journal as a way to make permanent my inner workings. I can go back and read through the years, look at my art that is saved through the years, and I see growth in more than my ability to art. I see growth and maturation and a sense of coming to my own.
It does not matter if all you can do, in the beginning, stick figures, swatches of color. Save them and you will go back and see where you started and how you grew leaps and bounds, sometimes daily, sometimes yearly. I tend to see ‘practice practice practice’ and experimentation until a leap in progression of my artistic and expression abilities. I become more of who I am, who I was, who I will be. In a way it is scripted progression through life as I blossom into color and marks and lines and shapes and characters. Each character is me in some way, no matter how bizarre they might look, or whether it is even human. Art journaling helps me prove I did not “live this life as if a dream”, to quote Richard Hooker.
Give it a go, sisterfriends. Let’s spend this month preparing for the beginning of a new year where we will begin in earnest. Spend some time googling art journaling. There are tomes of information, tutorials, examples out there to spark and interest in finding your soul voice.
©Carol Desjarlais 1.12.20
*** I can see I have made a jump in my Whimsical Portraits. It seems like I practice, practice, practice, and suddenly, there is a skill level jump. This happened with this piece. I never drew her. I just blocked in color and used Sienna to get shape going. It is almost as if my Muse took over. This is sou journaling at its best. I look at it later and hardly recognize that I did it. Every day, I do at least one art project of some kind. It is December and I am busy making rain chains, dreamcatchers, developing art lessons for my little 'Art Guys', and am always seeing the next project that I want to do. I am developing an Adult Art Journaling Course, for January ( oh, let the restrictions be gone so I can have the four adults who would have already expressed their desire to start their own Soul Journeys. As I work on a Mixed Media Art Journal, a Water Color Art Journal, and work in a larger recycled coil-bound book, I see my changing Artistic Voice and am encouraged with it. There is nothing more satisfying than this, especially right now, when I can fill the hours of the day with purpose, inspiration, and soul work.
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