Going Further E-Book Preview

Table of Contents Introduction Part 1: Backgrounds Gesso is a (girl’s) Best Friend Neutral Background Collages Creating Watercolor Backgrounds Palette Knives, Stencils, & Modeling Paste Part 2: Writing & Lettering Chipboard Letter Fun! Secret Codes & Layered Words The Power of Pen & Paper Working With Your Handwriting Part 3: Journaling with Photos Photos + Journal = Fun! A Digi-Hybrid Revolution Part Four: Lovely Layers Color Blocks Create Your Story Mini-Collages Inky Words & Swirls Part Five: Projects Those Bits We Forget About Make Your Own (Handmade) Mark Playing With Color and Fabric Your Art as Embellishment

Introduction I have loved art journaling since I began, back in 2006.

While I began as a visual journaler, drawing life as it swirled around me, from heaters to parking meters, and presents, I soon began drawing from my mind. Adding a bit of watercolors. Pasting in ticket stubs and photographs and collage elements. Laying down layer after layer of media until, one day, I realized I was a mixed-media artist, working in her favorite medium — daily life.

Along the way, I’ve had to teach myself everything. I learned acrylics from books and YouTube videos and my own experiments. I added embellishments or lettering with ideas from the journals of others. I figured out how basic composition worked by making hundreds of bad pages (that remain buried in a storage box to this day!). I proud to say I’m a self-taught artist.

This usually means I do things differently from everyone else. For the longest time, I didn’t even say gesso right! Doing things another way has given birth to a library of techniques I regularly employ in my own artistic practices, and while I’ve shared a few via my YouTube channel and tutorials on my blog, Journal Girl, I’ve never before offered a book of techniques.

You may have learned some in classes, sure, but never all, and never all at once.

Over the past year, I’ve found my Calling, you could say. I want to share my ideas and techniques and thoughts about art with others. I want to make my work more accessible. I want you to create wonderful art that makes your heart sing, because when our hearts are signing, our lives are masterpieces of joy and contentment.

Everyone loves getting their hands on a new art journaling book. I hope that this book, comprised of the lessons from my weekly journaling club, Journaling Deep, will not only inspire you, but get you back into the studio and creating, happy, full of ideas, and joyous.

Part One: Backgrounds

Ah, the blank white page…

How it torments us all!

It can be hard, when you sit down with your journal, to get started. An idea may already be brewing in your head, but the blank page asks so much of you that you can’t help but find yourself petrified, at times, wondering how you’re going to translate those thoughts in your head down to the page.

But then the Inner Critic jumps out and starts dancing across the blank page, teasing you with ideas and then shooting them down before you can even grab your paintbrush. He throws out taunts and tries to get you to close your journal and walk away — he feeds on the energy of defeat. Don’t let him win!

Just getting something down can help jump-start your creative joy. A single brushstroke of blue paint, a spray of ink through a cute stencil…there are so many ways we can start! So if you’re out of ideas or the ones you have just aren’t doing it for you, this chapter explores a plethora of techniques you can easily adapt to your own style in your journal!

gesso is a (girl’s) best friend

Let’s start off by creating a clean slate.

Sometimes, when we try something new, it just doesn’t work. A couple weeks ago, I was at a journaling meetup with friends and spied Dina playing with stencils in a way I’d never considered before. Lacking in my own motivation, I decided to borrow a few of her delicious stencils and try the technique myself. And while I had fun, and giggled and spread paint and didn’t think (one of the best things you can do when playing in your own journal; not thinking is so enjoyable after a day full of thinking and deciding and stress), when I got home and looked at the pages to continue working on them, I found I didn’t like them. I didn’t like them one bit.

We all have pages like this. The ones we turn to a wince. The colors that clash horribly. The drawing or pattern that just doesn’t work. Whenever I think of turning to one of these pages, I think of a sickly mustard color — think of that color. What is your face doing? How does it make you feel?

(And if that happens to be one of your favorite colors, swap it for one you really don’t like!)

One of my core values when it comes to art journaling is to learn from every page, even the ones you don’t like. So I sat down, looked at my page, and found those little parts I happened to adore, and thought about why I liked those parts and not the others. I loved the magenta paint stenciled over some distressed Azurite blue hue. I liked a bit of the yellow peeking through. But most of the page, I felt, was hopeless and not me.

To be honest, I haven’t gessoed pages in a long, long time. I used to use gesso on each one, but when I found the paper I currently use for my journals, I found that it accepts both wet and dry media so wonderfully, I didn’t want to start with a layer of gesso. And so my tub of creamy, near-

frosting-like gesso sat unused and neglected, so sad in the corner with the other mediums I pull out once and awhile. It took me a little bit to realize I could simply cover up those parts of the page I hated! Why hadn’t I done that before?

This may be second nature to you. You may use layers upon layers of gesso. And yes, that’s what I’m talking about, in a most basic sense. But I also want you to use this as a practice to examine your style and thoughts about art journaling at the same time.

1. Find a page you’ve already done and really don’t like, or a page inprogress that you feel hopeless about. Create a little chart by putting the colors and color combinations you like together on one side, and the ones you didn't like on the other.

What colors did you use?

Are there patterns or images on your page? How about layers?

Which parts work or don’t work for you?

2. Circle those parts you like with gesso. Consider drawing shapes, such as scallops, hearts, stars, squares, etc.

3. Fill the rest of the page with gesso. Remember that your original background will show through just a bit, which is always a good thing (then again, I am the Queen of Layers!).

4. Going back to your little chart, paint over the gesso with those colors & combinations you liked (this will keep the page from clashing with itself and you happy since they are colors you love!). Add more patterns, doodles, and collage bits.

6. Write or doodle on the page. If you want, you can label the liked bits from the beginning with what you wrote on your chart for future reference.

Consider pasting or taping your chart into your journal near this page so you know what to do the next time you find yourself disliking a page.

I ended up not liking my page, so went back, moved things around, and tried again! Here's another example of a Rescued Journal Page.

Considering what you both like and dislike about a journal page can help you to become more confident with what you’re doing since you can always start over while preserving what you did like about the page — you can be messy, adventurous, and unsure, falling into the process without having to think or fear disliking the end result.

I want you to let go of fear right off the bat so you are more open to trying new things, and have a way to cope if you end up, like me, disliking what happened. Now I not only have a record of a new technique and how I made it work for me, but I have something to remind me what not to do on my journal pages so I don’t end up visualizing that ucky yellow bleh color when I turn to a half-completed and abandoned journal spread.