Art Journaling

My friend and I enrolled in an online art journaling class in April. Overall it was pretty dismal. I wasn’t inspired by the artist’s final pages, and none of the techniques I tried pleased me in the least. I’m fascinated by mixed media, though, and didn’t want to give up on this. I’ve been following The Documented Life Project for awhile, and just as I decided I wanted to give that format a go, both Cheri and Alexa published posts about their journals. My reasons for starting the project are a bit different than theirs. I already keep a daily diary of activities to help me in my Project Life spreads, so daily documentation isn’t the motivating factor. My interest is in the mixed media aspect, and I’ve decided to do it a bit differently. Instead of using a Moleskine planner, I’ve created my own using a Dylusions journal I already owned. And for now, I’ve decided not to add the “tip in” pages until I know if I’ll need one. (A special thanks to Cheri, Roben-Marie, and Lorraine Bell for all their help in getting hooked up to the FaceBook page for the DLP.)

I created a template for the left-hand pages with a piece of lightweight cardstock and gessoed the first couple of spreads before starting the work.

Here’s the first week:

One of the issues I had with the art journaling class was that none of the pages were my “style,” which we all know is basically clean and simple. So for this first week, I stuck with some watercoloring, and wrote out some of my goals for the journal. The prompt for this week was to add a small photograph. The prompts are another reason I like this project; they give me a focus for the week. I kept my dates the same as my daily planner since I’ve been using that format since January. It’s off by two days since the new prompts from The Documented Life Project arrive on Fridays. That’s OK, it’s easy to be two days behind!

I was a bit more adventuresome with the second week, layering a variety of stencils I inked with Tim Holtz Distress Inks. The prompt was to make a wish list, and I listed three. I ran out of room for all the places I’d like to visit on my Bucket List!

I’ve already learned a bit in the process. I neglected to gesso one page and had to perform surgery on the journal for Weeks 3 and 4. But so far, it’s satisfying my need to play around more, a bit outside my comfort zone.

ETA:  I’m entering this in the Simon Says Monday Challenge which is J . . .  for Journal and July in this case.