Art journaling

I learned a bit about art journaling last year from a library book, and did a one-month daily art journaling challenge. This year, I read another book about art journaling, and started doing it more regularly.

The technique takes a bit of time, a bit at a time, with periods of paint drying and glue drying in between. So I have been intentionally doing only one page per week, and making it part of my Sabbath rest.

Generally speaking, the procedure is to start with a page--not necessarily a blank page--and do some arty stuff to it, then some more arty stuff, and then some more and some more, until it all hangs together (more or less). Mistakes can be torn out or painted over, or papered over. Unconnected bits can be overlapped by another layer, to visually relate them to each other.

For materials I mostly use pens, pencils, acrylic paints, the children's markers and crayons, old magazines, and decoupage medium.

As I said in the previous post, after a bit of playing around, often a theme starts to emerge, and can be reinforced, to build a meaningful artwork. Or, the theme can be chosen beforehand.

I have been incorporating some visual images from my life into my pages, like how the neighbor's lighted window shines out into the darkness after dusk.