ART JOURNALING
Art journal / Sketchbook inspiration
Lets make art! To guide and inspire beginners, I picked up some of my favourite pages from a sketchbook full of mixed media art, collages, pencil sketches, doodling and stamping in this page. You'll find more tips and ideas on a complete flip through video on Youtube.
A regular spiral binded sketchbook is good for beginners to start creative visual journaling - or an art journal - as you can easily remove the pages that you don't like and save the ones that you love.
The thicker the pages the better but even a basic, affordable sketchbook with 110 gsm pages is great for collage art. You can also apply water color, gesso, spray inks and acrylic paint, if you don't mind that the pages will buckle a little bit. To keep the pages neat, you can use thick water color paper for painting and glue down the painting or parts of your painting to your sketchbook.
The easiest way to start using your sketchbook is - to make a sketch. Sometimes the sketch is all you need, but you may also notice it evokes new ideas in your mind and the sketch starts to grow to something else that you didn't expect at the beginning. That's the essence of a creative process.
If you're new to art journaling, this type of experimental sketchbook may be ideal to you. Set your creativity free and let your intuition show the way! If you end up with a creative mess, that's ok. It's the intuitive, creative process that counts, not the end result.
Feel free to "steal" ideas. If you go to Youtube or Instagram, you'll find that inspiration is abundant. We're all inspired by what we see other people do. Even if you copy something that somebody else did, you'll learn something and it'll help you find your own style.
Do you need to write in your art journal? That's totally up to you. You can add titles, quotes or actual journaling about your thoughts, feelings or life. Text element is not only words with a meaning - text is also a visual element. It's common in contemporary art to use words, numbers and alphabets as visual elements even if they don't convey any obvious message in themselves.
You don't have to be an artist to have an art journal. If you can't draw, you can print out, cut out or stamp anything or everything you need. You can still be creative in what you add to it or how you put everything together. For example, you can print out the face you can see above and doodle flowers or add whatever you want around it.
Making mixed media collages is one of the most creative form of art. You can literally turn trash to treasure using old books, magazines, photos, fabric, pieces of your own art etc. in your collages. If you've never tried creating collage art, maybe you should start now!
If you like to see the rest of the pages of this sketchbook, you can see a flip through with an explanation on Youtube.
There's a playlist of video tutorials as well.
More paper craft ideas and inspiration:
© Auer Media 2021