Adventures in Art Journaling

Well Spring is finally here in Toronto with warm weather, sunshine and spring showers. Though I am outdoors more, I still turn to my art journaling as my main mode for inner solace.

You may be wondering why I am such a big art journaling fan. It all started back even before I was training to be an art therapist, I discovered the inner beauty of creating from the inside out. Spilling thoughts, feelings and “random” images into my art journal in hopes to understand my inner world with a little more clarity. The kind of clarity that only visual imagery can evoke.

This is one of my early art journaling images done with metallic pen and marker. I did a series of these exploring my essence in my early 20’s:

Below is an image I created as an art therapy student 20 plus years ago, which to this day, remains significant to me.

Though in the early days I dabbled in my art journal with mostly drawing materials, eventually I discovered the depth that layering added to my inner reflections. I journaled to explore, to review, and to prepare. When I was pregnant with my first child. I art journaled about my experience, imagining and drawing out the essence of this life growing inside of me. My husband even did his own art journaling about our emerging baby.

Above: one of my art journaling pages made during my first pregnancy.

Art journaling kept me grounded, helped me tune-in to my needs and of course helped me relax. And, art journaling continues to offer these gifts to me, whether I am spontaneously creating something in the moment or art journaling in response to a prompt inspired by another art journaler, Art journaling always manages to give me peace of mind though creative expression.

It has been a beautiful journey of self discovery all these years. And though most of my journaling has been in response to the moment, I have found that having structure, prompts, and ways of using art materials differently (such as when I taught in 21 SECRETS and when I was a student in 21 SECRETS), has opened up another side to my creativity, allowing for an Inner art excavation of sorts. Opening myself to trying new ways of working with my creativity has been amazing, When I challenge myself in this way, out of my comfort zone, but still through the safety of creative self-expression, I am never disappointed. I don’t mean to say I always “like” what I make, only to say that the lessons learned from challenging myself this way are worth it.

How about you? What keeps your creative practice alive and interesting? Do you step out of your comfort zone enough to try new things and keep that creative fire burning?