Art Journal FAQs

What type of journal do you use?

I make my own art journals. They measure about 4.5×6 inches (11×15 cm) and are filled with watercolor paper. They’re simpler to make than it looks; the only special materials you need are chipboard, an awl, and waxed linen thread. Check out the tutorial I use here.

In the past, I’ve also used thrifted books or handmade books by other artists.

What supplies do you use?

I use many different kinds of paper for collage, from graph paper to security envelopes to vintage book pages to other things I’ve collected over the years. For adhesive, I use a regular glue stick.

When adding color, I use a variety of mark-making tools, acrylic paint, tempera paint sticks, and acrylic ink.

What is your process?

  1. Lay down some collage
  2. Scribble
  3. Add some paint
  4. Add some drips

I always let the wet media fully dry before adding new layers.

How do you take and edit photos of your work?

I take photos with my phone in natural light, placing my art on a white foam core board. I used to edit the shots with A Color Story, but it stopped being usable. Now I use Snapseed. Both apps are free.

More questions? I’d love to hear from you. Reach out through my contact page or on Instagram!

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Bird by Bird

I just finished reading Anne Lamott’s insightful (and wickedly funny) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I hadn’t actually heard of her before picking up the book in a little library in my neighborhood — but her words found me at the right time.

I’m deeply curious about other creatives’ practices, and the writing process is still somewhat of a mystery to me. How can anyone take a feeling or experience, something so big and complex and nuanced, and capture it in something as limited as language?

But this kind of question can ensure that we never put pen to paper. Perfectionism, really, is the antithesis to play and exploration and learning. Lamott gives you permission to write badly: one of her first pieces of advice is to “write really, really shitty first drafts.”

You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper,” she says. If you write and it turns out laughably awful, you are still doing something right. (Kind of like making ugly visual art: if you’re creating, you’re on the right path. Make ugly art, or terrible first drafts. Just don’t not create.)

The only thing to do when the sense of dread and low self-esteem tells you that you are not up to this is to wear it down by getting a little work done every day.”

Lamott also speaks about writing as a lifelong journey, with no fool-proof formula: you can only show up, pay attention, create terrible first drafts, seek feedback, learn from your mistakes, and try again. Writing, like any other kind of creating, is a process, one of self exploration and expression — and it’s the work (the verb), not the work (the noun) that is ultimately most valuable:

You’ll find yourself at work on, maybe really into, another book, and once again you figure out that the real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.”

(Emphasis is mine.)

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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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Digital Collage: Grandma Cordie

I’ve been exploring digital collage, remixing my own art and photography into new creations. (I even did a recent collaboration with Max Devereaux.)

I still prefer analog collage: it’s a more intuitive process, and I enjoy the serendipity of using what I find on my desk. There is also nothing that can replace the process of touching and interacting with physical art; it’s a much more emotional medium for me.

Digital collage, though, allows me to play with composition, use text in new ways (I don’t like printing out exactly what I need or want for an analogue piece, preferring to communicate with my art and not dictate it), and even incorporate and manipulate photos that have significance, like this one of my great grandmother.

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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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