Make Ugly Art

Ingrid Murray mixed media art journal page with collage, white, green, and blue tempera paint, and oil pastel.

For each piece of polished, finished art shared online, every artist has a whole pile of unfinished, “messed up,” or ugly pieces. And that’s exactly as it should be.

I, for example, don’t love the art journal spread above.

It started out with some collage and minimal marks with oil pastel and black India ink, but I realized that it reminded me of camouflage and hunting — not something that resonates with me. I added more colors and marks, still hated it, and then covered up most of it with white tempura paint. It’s fine. Whatever. I’ll turn the page and do something else.

For years, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen: make ugly art.

It’s one of the first things I recommend to emerging artists, those who are afraid of messing up (whatever that might mean) or who desperately want to be able to translate what’s in their mind onto the page but haven’t practiced long enough to know how to do that.

Purposefully making ugly art lessens the fear of creating something you dislike and is a great exploratory process.

Some ideas for making ugly art:

  • Use color combinations you don’t like or usually use
  • Scribble out or paint over sections of your work
  • Stick down collage any which way
  • Try using tools you haven’t used before
  • Use materials you aren’t usually interested in or aren’t special: tissue paper or wrapping paper, a receipt, a ripped ad from a magazine, etc.
  • Move quickly and impulsively, not thinking about what you’re going to do next

The best part about setting out to create ugly art? If you finish it and hate it, you’ve succeeded. But if you finish it and love it or love sections of it, you’ve also succeeded.

No matter the outcome, you are creating, exploring, practicing, and learning so much more about what you do and don’t like.

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Summer Greens

The best days are those where creating comes easily and the results are loose and balanced. I worked on this rich green art journal spread over several short sessions, first collaging, then adding paint pen, tempura, and acrylic ink.

Later, some black ink on another page seeped onto the edges — but that’s all part of the experience of art journaling, and the results are never a disappointment.

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Weekend Art Journaling

This weekend, I let myself play in my art journal, working with tissue paper, acrylic paint, and colored pencil. The result is an energetic burst of greens and blues — reminding me of the lushness of summer.

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First Art Journal

This is the first spread in my first-ever-completed art journal. I dated the page: September 20, 2009.

This journal was a book I bound, made with sturdy colored paper, and was large — 9.5 by 12.5 inches. I decorated the cover with green, yellow, and blue collage with red splatter, and covered that with packaging tape to protect it.

I still have the journal, and I still love many of the pages within it.

My first art journal opened fully to view a green, blue, and yellow cover. There is red splattered accents, a hand-drawn hand pointing, and in ballpoint pen: "Art Journal, 2009-2010, by Ingrid Murray."
The colorful edges of art journal pages.

My style has evolved so much over the past near-thirteen years. In that time, I’ve experimented with acrylic paint, tissue paper, candle wax, stitching and weaving, pockets, flaps, paper towel, image transfers, stamps, staples, found notes, modeling paste, India ink, stickers and the extra white space around stickers, washi tape, white out tape, sewing patterns, and magazine images.

These days, my favorite materials are vintage book pages, graph paper, security envelopes, acrylic ink, oil pastel, and paint pens.

You can see most of my old art journal pages here.

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Wisdom from the Past

Years ago, I kept a blog called My Peacetree where I explored art, healing from trauma, and the natural world. I took an extended hiatus after I enrolled in college, started my career, and settled into adult life.

But looking back, there are so many bits and pieces of those years of writing that still ring true.

Even cooler, sometimes they speak to and build upon one another:

Starting – picking up a paintbrush, a camera, a pen – can be one of the most difficult things to do in a creative’s life when inspiration has vanished. If we feel we have nothing to give, our minds ask us why we should we begin at all. And so we get discouraged, believing that we have lost our gift, and sink deeper into a creative rut.

Let me share a secret with you, darling, one that I must remind myself of again and again and again: often, the inspiration comes in the creating.

Inviting Inspiration, 2011

My experiments in art do not have to result in perfection. In fact, they rarely do. We as a society, as a world, are obsessed with success, and failure is often a threat. Not so in my art journal. Here, I can play and seek out and explore and find comfort in the tension and disharmony of my mistakes. Here, I can accept them for what they are.

I thank them for the wisdom they’ve given me. And I turn the page.

Lessons Learned in Art and Life, 2016
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