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.
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.
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 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.
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
Here they are: all 61 index cards created over the past two months as part of the Index Card a Day (ICAD) project. I used the same materials as last year: 4×6″ index cards, collaged papers, acrylic paint and ink, tempura paint sticks, oil pastels, and various mark-making utensils. Visit my Instagram to see each card in more detail.
This project continues to challenge me, pushing me to focus on creating rather than judging or overthinking. And when you create consistently, with an emphasis on process over outcome and quantity over quality, magical things happen.
Read more about the ICAD daily challenge on Tammy Garcia’s website, and see some of my favorite 2021 cards here.
