Art Journal Scans

These are the first two pages in my art journal. I won't be sharing all my spreads, because this is my journal, after all. This art is intensely personal, in a way no other art I create is. But I wanted to share the beginnings, in hopes that Suzi Blu will see these spreads, since she's the one who inspired me to do this. I think that raw art journaling will be good for my soul. I can't thank her enough for inspiring me to finally do this.

The first spread is self explanatory. I've decided to keep an art journal for myself. The exercise that Suzi gives in her video suggests that you get a picture of yourself when you were five years old, and that you dedicate your art journal to that five year old. Great idea, except that I'm 1300 miles away from my childhood photographs, and didn't want to wait for my mother to maybe dig one up for me to use. So, I improvised. My journal is not just for myself, it's also for my husband. Not that I expect his approval of every spread. Rather, I think it will bring us closer. As I get to know myself better through art journaling, it can't help but impact our relationship, and I'm betting for the better. Anything that frees me up, personally, will free me up in our relationship, too. So, I journal for him.

The second spread describes how I was feeling over the course of a couple of days. I think I was supposed to take all week, but I just couldn't wait to get my hands dirty with paint and pastels. Two days is all I could last! And two days provided a unifying theme. I felt blue, sad, depressed ... and I felt lost. Both pictures represent the feelings I was having. I didn't need pages of words to convey the emotions. I'm a paper journaler from way back; what took me two pages, and two words in this spread could have taken four or five pages and hundreds of words in a verbal journal.

I didn't feel the need to create another spread today, because I'm still feeling blue and lost. I don't need to recreate that picture.