I wanted to talk to you today about my great passion art journalling. What is art journalling? I’m on a couple of Facebook groups for art journalling and people ask – some newbies come on and say “What actually is art journaling?” and of course there is no one definitive answer, but in answering one of them it made me think about what I think art journalling is!
Using art and creativity and expression for self-care
And for me art journaling is about using art and creativity and expression for self-care. I think that’s probably the end. So I use it to process my feelings and my experience and just the playing with materials and having my fingers – I said to somebody – fingers in the rainbow and they said “Is that, is that a technique?”. Maybe I need to make this a technique! So I put my fingers in the rainbow, and I have glitter and paint and sprays and crayons and whatever.
Calming, peaceful, relaxed
I like wet materials. I just really enjoy that. I find it calming and peaceful and I feel relaxed afterwards. I can’t think of a time when I don’t want to do that. So it’s not hard for me to do it. I live on my own so I have the pleasure and the privilege of taking over the whole kitchen table with my art supplies and nobody to complain about it. But maybe you can find a way in another room somewhere or whatever. I’m not gonna tell you – you can figure it out. And you can easily access your materials. I’ve gotten off topic. So back to the art journal.
It might be in a book
It can be in a book. It often is in a book. There’s something about it being in a book that means it doesn’t have to be finished products, that have a purpose, and need to go up on the wall or something. Although I do art journal on individual papers and I do stick them on the wall. You don’t have to. There’s something about it being in a book, where you’re just going to turn the page and there’s a fresh new page to start the next day, or the next time or in the next five minutes if you haven’t done something wet like me.
For me it has to have words
So art journalling for me involves words, but it doesn’t have to do for you. And involves expression of my feelings and experience. But it doesn’t have to for you. I did a Facebook poll recently to ask art journalling friends: do they do it for the products and the techniques or do they have more of a focus on expression of feelings and experience and two-thirds lean towards expression and experience and i was really excited to hear that! Because I love it and I think it’s a tool that can help so many people.
Ready to try it yourself?
How about you have you tried it? If you still don’t really know what it is, try going on Pinterest. You can look at my Pinterest page and I’ve got a whole huge board for art journalling in fact I have another board just for videos about art journalling – or just google it and you’ll see a whole bunch of different things. I’m probably going to post again about journalling in fact I think tomorrow or soon I might do – show you some of my art journalling. I’ll flip through and show you some of my favourite pages or maybe just all the pages, I don’t know yet. we’ll see.!
