Time flies when you’re having fun! And boy, am I having fun with my 100 day project — 100 days of art journaling — especially since it’s a low-pressure commitment to show up at the painty table for a minimum of 15 minutes every day. Many days, I end up spending a lot longer, as I fling paint around and make glorious messes…or rather paintings…in my art journal.
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If you’ve been around for any length of time, you know that I love art journaling. It’s my calling, my passion, the thing that gives me life. You’d probably also know that my favorite way of creating is intuitively. I rarely have a plan when I start to create…no image of a finished painting in mind. Instead, I just jump in and see what happens.
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Welcome to part 2 of this tutorial! I hope you’ve had a chance to watch and make your collage art dolls; if you haven’t, you’ll want to do that first. I’ll wait!
So, now that you have your cool little collage doll, it’s time to add her to an art journal page. Since this project was a way for me to connect back to my artist’s journey, I decided to use some of the elements I noticed in my very first art journal {see this post for the flip through of my first art journal}.
One of them is collage. I don’t use collage too often in my work, so I decided to use some of the painted papers I had pulled out while making the doll to see how I could incorporate those into my art journal.
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You know those old art journals, back from when you were just starting on your art journey, that you keep hidden away in a dusty corner because looking through your initial attempts at painting feel cringe?
Pull those out. Flip through them. Feel the cringe. And then feel the satisfaction and pride of seeing how far you’ve progressed!
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If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you probably know that I almost always paint intuitively. It’s very rare for me to plan a page in advance. But, I also like to challenge myself, because that’s the best way to learn and grow!
So for this particular piece, which I did for an Instagram challenge called Seek, Gather, Create, I went in with a bit of planning. I knew some of the elements that I wanted — maps, a moon, some masking tape — based on the challenge prompts. But instead of putting it all together intuitively, I decided to come to the page with a broad idea of what I wanted to paint.
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I started junk journaling in December last year, and I am IN LOVE! There is something so freeing about creating art in a junk journal — it invites experimentation and play, you don’t take yourself so seriously, and at the same time, you put more of yourself into the art. It’s — strange!
I never really thought I pressured myself in my art journal, but now I see that I approached my journals as Art. I took myself more seriously, by which I mean I was afraid to experiment, try new things, make messes, and play. I knew what worked, and I stuck to it.
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If you’ve spent any amount of time in the mixed media art world, you would have a lovely stash of collage papers and ephemera — from old scrapbook paper to text pages, brown paper bags, vintage paper, music sheets, and even your own handmade collage papers or gelli prints.
And like any mixed media artist, you would constantly be on the lookout for interesting projects and uses for your stash of collage papers.
So, gather together some of your favorite papers, bring out your art journal and a few favorite colors of paint, and let’s create a sweet little mixed media collage art journal spread.
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If you’ve been around here a hot minute, you’d know that I love abstraction. Figurative abstraction and abstracted whimsical portraits are my love languages. I’m slowly exploring pure abstraction, but that’s a much more complicated beast to tackle! During my research and experimentation with abstract, I came across expressive abstracts, and fell in love!
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Come join me in my art studio for a flipthrough of my I Am art journal. What started as an experiment — exploring a neutral color palette in my art, working in a smaller size, even a new-to-me binding — turned into a beautiful treasure!
Going into this challenge of using a neutral color palette in my artwork, I had no expectations and no idea if I would actually like these paintings, or even be able to paint without my usual vibrant color palette to fall back on.
But this experiment increased my confidence and opened me up to expanding my color palette. The thrill of trying something new — and being delighted by it — was an added bonus!
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Painting small can be challenging, especially with portraits, which have so much depth and need to be painted in multiple layers, but it doesn’t have to be! Especially if you paint more in a more loose, painterly style.
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