Step 2 to bBecoming an Artist
To build confidence, creating a journal is the perfect venue to express your art. Some of you may have kept a diary when you were younger. You may have kept it under lock and key but your parents or sibling probably sprung the lock. This was where you poured all your hopes, dreams, anger, and thoughts. Others may have started one later in life. Or you may never have created a journal. Journals are great, they help you sort out your life, they can leave a legacy for you, and they can feed your creativity. Why? Because no one is looking at it, unless you decide to allow them.
How to start:
1. Find a bound notebook, the paper you like, a sketchbook, even cloth. Decorate it so you own it, and you know it is yours. You can even embroider it.
2. Treat it like a new friend.
3. Buy or find colored pencils, markers, paints, scraps of paper, material, photos, anything you want, even cuttings from magazines.
4. Put all of this in a special box only for your journaling.
5. Now sit down in a quiet space, look at your page and start.
Ok, I hear you saying: Start what? I have no idea what to do. Here is how:
1. Draw a line, any line, run it around the paper
2. Take a different color, or take paint, draw circles
3. Now start to fill in spaces. Don’t just fill in with markers, fill in with bits of fabric or clippings from magazines.
4. Don’t think about staying in the lines, paste over them, combine them. Stitch on them, add a photograph.
No one is looking, so be as stupid and silly as you want, but DO NOT erase anything. Just add something to it. Do not try to create a masterpiece, just be free.
Keep this up for a month as your goal. At the end of the month go for another month. It does not have to be every day, but you should try. I am making an embroidery for stitching an icon for every day in the year 2022. I made a circle and sectioned it off into 12 segments. I put the month at the top of each segment and then each night I stitch an icon or word for that day. I love doing this. It makes me think creatively and it relaxes me while I am doing it. You can dedicate one page for an entire month if you like. Or you can divide it into weeks or days.
Here are subjects to help you:
1. Childhood, what was it like, how did you feel growing up
2. Siblings, Parents, Grandparents, Friends, Pets; express how you feel about them
3. Something you are angry about
4. What makes you happy
5. Favorite time of year, a favorite activity
6. Travel: postcards, pictures, etc.
7. Dreams
8. Just doodles
Here is a sample of a page from my journal.
