Art Journaling, What It Is and Finding My Style

It seems there is some discussion about art journaling lately and what it is.  There was an interesting vlog on YouTube by Rhomeny's Realm and it started me thinking. Here is the link to her vlog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df_eZeR9xtU
I would love to hear your thoughts on what an art journal is and get some type of discussion going.

To me an art journal is like a writers journal.  A writers journal is a place were someone writes down their thoughts, ideas, notes.  It's not a diary that documents your life.  Although it probably turns out to be somewhat of a document of your life because you are writing things down in chronological order.  But the things you write down aren't always necessarily about you.  They could just be random thoughts about anything.  So I think a writers journal is like an art journal because in art journaling everyone one says there is no right way to art journal.

I have been art journaling for about 4 years.  I started art journaling and found out that it was what I was looking for all along.  I scrapbook on and off.  I love taking pictures and I loved making scrapbook pages.  The problem was, I enjoyed the artistic process of scrapbooking and never got many pages done.  I would design pages in my head and then go look for the supplies.  I could never find exactly what I wanted so ended up designing my own titles, stickers, everything that goes on a page.  I love color.  So I would carefully choose colors.  Match them up to the pictures.  Look for patterns.  It was a very long process but I loved it.  I was jealous of the people who could sit and scrapbook several pages in a couple hours.  How I longed to have completed scrapbooks but I had a certain vision of what I wanted and the process took so long. So on and off I would scrapbook.  Doing a couple pages here and there.  Just enjoying the process not worrying how many books I got done.

I was looking at one of my favorite scrapbook sites, Scraptime with Christine Urius, I had been watching her podcasts and following her blog.  I saw a little sign that said Art Journal Every Day.  I clicked on it and it brought me to Julie Fei Fan Balzers sight.  I began researching and was hooked.  I never really thought of myself as an artist because I had no "real training".  I took some drawings classes and did different craft projects with my kids and friends but never really though of myself as an artist.  I felt like my daughter was the artist in the family.  She has an art degree and had been doing art most of her life.  So anyway I decided I wanted to try art journaling.  It was a slow process.  I had no idea what I was doing.  I found some videos on YouTube and Ustream and started watching them.  I found blogs and read them.  And one day I went out and bought a sketchbook and started doodling.  I had seen all the blogs about zentangles and doodling and thought it looked like fun.  So I doodled for awhile.  I found it very relaxing and really enjoyed it.  After awhile I started feeling like I needed something else.  So I went out and bought another sketchbook and some inktense pencils which I had seen on a video by JournalArtista, Paula Phillips on Ustream.  They seemed like they might be fun and it would be nice to work with some color.  I had only been doing black and white doodles.  I really enjoyed  this.  I experimented with all kinds of colors I slowly tried other mediums.  I ventured into acrylic paint which I also loved.  Oil pastes, portfolios, gelatos.  It was all great and boy did I have a lot of background pages.  I also had a lot of pages with doodles, pages where I practiced drawing faces, just lots of different kinds of pages.

My next obstacle was, how do I get past the background pages.  What do I journal about.  I had been watching a lot of videos but didn't want to copy anyone.  I wanted to have my own style but what was it.  The art journal got put to the side for awhile.  I started watching more videos for inspiration and slowly got back into my art journal.  I tried a lot of different mediums, techniques.  I came across the Challenge 2012! group in March of 2012 and something about that group inspired me.  I actually finished an art journal page!!  Then I finished several pages!!  I spent more time with my art journal not daily but more frequently.  I had filled a whole book with some finished pages but mostly backgrounds and doodles.  I got to the point were I had a few journals going.  Just different things.  I started to Gelli plate.  I really liked this because I love color.  I also love working with stencils and designing my own stencils so this gave me incentive to create more.  I started keeping a leftover journal when doing my gelli printing because I was cleaning my brayer on paper and had a hard time throwing those out but wanted a place where I could keep the leftover pages of paint and stencils.  I use the leftover journal now for everything.  Not just gelli printing.  Anytime I have something left over it goes into my leftover journal, I clean off my stencils, stamps, brushes extra stickers anything.  I got the left over journal idea from Paula Phillips aka Journal Artista.  She has some videos about left over journals. 

The funny thing about the leftover journal was I found myself using it for inspiration.  I might see a page with certain colors on it and it would remind me of something and I would start a page and finish it.  I would see prompts on different websites and then go through the journal and find a page that would go with that.  I suddenly found myself creating more art and going through my old art journals looking for inspiration.  One of the artists I follow started doodling and I went back to my old doodle journal and got some inspiration from that.

I realized this is what art journaling is all about.  An art journal is somewhere you create, practice, doodle, take notes, write down stories, have pages of just color and no words,  pages full of words, stamps, water color, acrylic, charcoal pencil etc. etc. etc. An art journal is a place to keep your ideas about art.  Whatever they are, whether finished pages, pages with just color or pages with words.  It is a journal that inspires you to be creative.

When you start to art journal it may not be clear what your path is.  But if you stick with it you will find you have created a lot of interesting art (even if at the time you really don't think it is art).  You will look back at these journals and see your progression as an artist and you will go back and look to them for inspiration.  Art journaling is something I have done over the past four years.  Sometimes daily.  Sometimes I would not pick up my journal for weeks or a few months.  But I always ended up going back to it.

So what about my style.  I'm not quite sure but right now I would say I am a leftover artist because I am inspired by my leftover journal and that is where I find I am completing the most art projects.

July 2013 Creative Dare - Mixed Media Mondays Mean To Me...

Mixed Media Mondays has been a great find for me.  I've found lots of inspiration from Tracy and everyone else who watches and belongs to her facebook page.  My favorite Monday was the "Express Yourself" page.  I really liked that page.  Daisy's are on of my favorite flowers, they remind me of my mom.  She loved daisys.  Also blue is my favorite color.  It's just my favorite page and holds a lot of meaning for me. 

I was watching the video and looking through my left over journal (a journal where I put left over paint, clean my brayer and stencils, anything I don't want to go to waste goes in there for later).  A page with blue and yellow paint caught  my eye.  Similar colors to what Tracy was using.  Hmmm, that would look good with the daisy on it.  So I started following along.  I filled out the boarders with some blue and green alcohol ink and things progressed from there. My page started to tare away so I reinforced it with washi tape.  I added some daisy stickers because I'm always trying to use up supplies that have been sitting for awhile (lol, years)  I decided to write the title in my own handwriting because I am trying to do that more too.  And the best thing I got out of the video was to use a charcoal pencil.  I had never really used a charcoal pencil much and now I love using them.

This was also good for me because I have been hesitant to work along with someone else and use there ideas.  When I started art journaling for some reason I felt that everything I did should be unique and I needed to be creative and think up my own style.  Well unless you learn new things and try them out you hit a brick wall with your creativity.  So these Mondays have inspired me to try new things and find my own creativity!

I'm Going Red White & Blue Crazy!!!

So if found this drawing for a large Gelli plate on the Gelli Plate facebook page and now I can't stop.  I got out my red white and blue paint and my Gelli plate and have gone crazy making prints.  I even tried my first Gelli tape.

 

This is my first gelli tape.

I used clear contact paper, acrylic paint and glitter.

 

Here are the regular Gelli prints I did. 

The ones I posted for the drawing and three more.

 

 

The picture above is lefterover paint and stencils.  I like these almost as much as the prints.

 

 

And a journal page made with all the leftovers.