Carol’s Humble Art Journaling 101 -Symbol-Searching from the ‘Deep Within’

 

 

 

All it takes is some paper and something to make marks and color with.  This art journal page was my search for what symbols might show up in my art as personal symbols.  You draw a circle, make a mar swirl from one corner to the other and keep going until you fill it some way, whatever happens happens.    Be playful and curious and spontaneous.  I then sought out shapes and signs and symbols and voila!  There it was… one of my main symbols that shows up in a great deal of my art-making….eyes.  Doodling is a great way to start out and build from.  I used cheap felt pens to color in and then sat with the page a while and found that it is true.  I am an eye-watcher. 

We can say we are not creative but we are creating every day in some way.  Art journaling is used for art therapy and you will find that releasing expression in this way can help you figure self out and to figure out problems and solutions.  It is a way to access the Deep Within.  For me, arting is communion with my spirit.  My art is a way to meditate, to pray.  I get lost in it and it gives me comfort when comfort is needed.   

Art journaling allows for play, for experimenting, for risk-free, cheap, ways of expressing self without giving the whole secret away.  It helps us focus on things we should focus on from the Deep Within.  It can be as expensive to do as you wish, or as cheap.  I suggest cheap to begin with and as you go along, you will discover new products to try and always new ways of expression. 

 Art journaling is risk free.  Nothing is precious... there is always another blank page.  You can do one in five minutes, you an spend hours… it is all up to you and how it takes over you and you fall into that deep meditative, sweet, peaceful place you go to when you are creating. 

If you find this year has robbed you from some of your focus, you can learn ways to keep focus through art journaling.  Sometimes all a journal page will be is a to do list, a grocery list, and want list, a way to remember things.  Have you ever picked up something of your past and you are taken right back there?  That is how these pages will affect you in the long future, too.  When we are fully engaged in arting, we can think through things more clearly.  We can take things to heart and they will take root in your soul.  

Give symbol searching a go and see what shows up.

©Carol Desjarlais 4.3,.21

 

 

Carol’s Humble Art Journaling 101 : Gathering For Art Journaling

 

 

“To make time for art, you have to believe that it's possible to make time for art.”
― L.K. Ludwig, Creative Wildfire: An Introduction to Art Journaling - Basics and Beyond

Start, right now, gathering up some art supplies that you may even have around the house.  Use old photo albums, use envelopes, use boxes or bins, but tart looking at paper products in a new way.  You will find tons of paper products that have color, words, images, things you can tear, things you can use for collage, things you can remake into something you can use in your art journal. 

1.      Choose a theme for your journal.  It does not mean you have to stay with that theme, but it gives you another stimuli for each blank page you will meet.   Right now, I am working in five different themed journals.  At some point you will find another journal, make another journal, seeing books as another source of your Art Journaling adventure.

2.     Get some Gesso from Walmart or somewhere cheap (sometimes dollar stores are your best friend).  Gesso up a few pages and get them dry so you can start right in.

3.     Get some kids’ craft paints and watercolors because, to begin with, anything absolutely goes and you are experimenting.  Grab a couple of sharpies with different nib sizes.  Use your kids’ felt pens.  Of course, you can use gel pens and any kind of markers.

4.     Start keeping some old magazines and newsprint, maps, bits and pieces of shapes and colors and cut out some objects to have handy. Save ticket stubs, menus, napkins, receipts, labels, stamps, advertisements, ribbon anything goes. 

5.     Grab some Mod Podge, and glue sticks, and any glue but school glue (because it is not waterproof and will come unstuck). 

6.     Get a small box of Charcoal pencils at WalMart or your Dollar Store. 

7.      Later you will find you want to try spray inks, India inks, stamps, stencils and the like.  I even use spackle for dry walls and you can get awesome texture and lots of pages use out of a small container. 

8.     Grab some old credit cards or the plastic cards you do not have use for.  They work magic for smoothing out gesso and pages and things you stick on a page, like collage bits and pieces. 

9.     Grab a small spray bottle for spraying water and a piece of toweling or some kind of rag.  Scott Toweling is not only a brush cleaner, a water-mopper-upper, it can also be used for printing. 

10. Hit up thrift stores for ribbons, and bits of jewelry pieces, bits of papers.

11. Never pass up the place mats from restaurants, tickets, old cards, old magazines.  Your eye will begin to watch for bright splotches of color on things.  Get an old shoe box, etc., to keep your bits and pieces in.  I use an old binder with plastic pocket sheets.  After all, art journalists are hoarders of all bits and baubles so try to keep things organized to some degree because this can become a magnificent obsession. 

Remember, anything you can stick down, stitch on, clip glue staple glue gun, or attach is free game.

This journal entry is simply watercolor and let dry and then use a fine nibbed black pen to go around the blocks and shapes of colors that happen to turn out.  It is done wet on wet, which means I gesso’d the page, let it dry and then sprayed some water on the page and dropped water color blobs and let it run.  I let it dry well.  Then I drew around the shapes I found.  Happens, I can do journaling right in the center circle.  The trick is to just let it happen... intuitive art is fabulous for a starting place on a blank page.

Oh, by the way, Do not ever be shy to take a photo of your page(s) and share them in our private group.  Everyone is at their own level.  Everyone has a soul that needs expression.  We share not to get accolades (which will happen, anyways) since we are artists and we need inspiration all the time like a sugar addict needs sugar. 

Happy Gathering!

©Carol Desjarlais 4.2.21

 

Carol's Humble Art Journaling 101: What Is An Art Journal Anyways?

 

 

 

Art Journaling is not a diary.  It is a place to express your feelings, desires, your daily life, with marks, with writing, with any kind of coloring tools, with collage, and there are no rules.  You simply begin and starting adding things until you feel done.  A blank page is a brand new beginning and every emotion can show up as you get page by page done.  NO RULES!

Somewhere, we need release of our joys, our sorrows, our angers, our love, our passion, our everything to do with the heart of the matters.  We can mix and match paints, pens, cut-outs, and bits and pieces that allow you to experiment and explore what your heart says to do. 

There are all kinds of art journal ideas online, through google, through Pinterest, through just opening up your creativity, once and for all, and having your say in page after page of what is beautiful to you.  It can be shared or not shared.  It is a safe place to just simply express yourself, perhaps, in a new way.

You can use words, images, and color.  You can use any pens, pencils, paper, junk mail, printed text, writing, pretty papers, bits and pieces of found images.  You can use bits of maps, parts of old cards, tags, tickets, napkins, lace, material.  You can draw, doodle, paint, stamp, sketch, or paint with any painting tools you have from kid’s watercolors to acrylics.  You can choose a topic or not choose a topic for each page.  You can glue extra notes on to a page.  You can use journals you buy.  You can make your own.  You can use and repurpose an old book ( note:  spiral books are best so you can take out a page that you do not like without destroying things).  You can use composition notebooks, you can use folded watercolor or mixed media paper.  You can learn to make your own journals.  You can use stickers and tiny bows, and anything you can find at a dollar store.  You can use paper doilies.  You can use anything as a ‘substrate’ (the surface paper to paint or work on).  You can use tapes of every kind.  You can add photographs.  You can print out papers and pictures, words and ephemera you find online as long as they are free.  You can make an art journal out of index cards you punch holes in and use 0 rings to hold together. 

You can do some art journaling every day, or on weekends, or here and there.  You can do topics or not do topics.  You can do it monthly.  You can do it in a day planner.  You can overlap ideas and kinds of art you do in a journal.  Anything goes.  I love to use the Walmart black spiraled sketch books and I glue in whole sheets of watercolor paper or mixed media paper, sometimes.  I cut things out of magazines.  I add poems I like.  I used mine a lot for experimentation of art projects or art ideas.  You can draw designs, you can draw faces, you can draw landscapes, you can draw flowers… anything goes.  You can used mix media which means you can use anything that strokes your fancy at the moment.  I will be adding ideas all month so you will progress more and more and learn to love art journaling as expression. 

April is going to be a fabulous month for those who you who finally jump in and start expressing that which might even be inexpressible any other way.  Heaven and earth are the possibilities.   No rules. Grab a sketch book, a kid's story book, any book you can transform into your Art Journal.  Yes, you can buy expensive one, but for a first try, try not to use a book that is too precious.  We are going to learn to make merry messes. 

©Carol Desjarlais 4.1.21