Awhile ago I discovered art journaling. Essentially, art journaling is like keeping a sketchbook, except each page is a finished piece. Plus, it’s mostly a mixed media type thing. Most people use actual sketchbooks for their journal, some use composition notebooks, and then others make their own journal from different types of paper, which is always so cool to look at. For me, I just used an old day planner I kept from 2009. It’s a staples planner, sized 6×8, which I think is just perfect for me.
When I first began journaling, I would gesso the pages and then paint over them with acrylic or shade the pages in with color pencils before I layered my fashion model images from magazines. I also tried images transferring using gel medium, but I found that that was quite time consuming. The whole point of me starting an art journal was to do a piece of art everyday, by not taking up so much time. The prepping seemed to take forever, so much so that I began to prep the night before. But then I did my first collage.
I really like collaging. I only say this because it surprised me. I was never really into collaging. When we had to do it in elementary or middle school, I never really liked it. I just didn’t get it. And I probably still don’t get collaging, but now I see it more like scrapbooking/smashbooking. It’s all about playing with different types of paper and color, and getting the right layout so that it all looks interesting. Since I work relatively small, I find that creating a collage spends just the right amount of time that for the past few weeks, that’s all I’ve been doing in my art journal. I’m very much inspired by Hannah Claire’s art journal entries on her site, Monster Serenade. She uses fashion magazines and catalogues and sometimes the main image or focal point of the piece are just a page from a magazine. She thinks it’s a lazy way to art journal, but the way she adds lyrics or a saying to the image seems simple and sweet. I’ve definitely tried that out, though I think I prefer chopping images up and mix-n-matching pieces of paper to make a layout.
Above is my most recent page. I did it for my introduction assignment for this art class I’m taking on Coursera. It’s called “hello my name is…“
Below, you can see all of my other pages to my art journal so far. Hopefully, I can update you on my progress after I’ve made a page. Watch out for that! (:
