Art Journaling 101 with Amy Maricle

 

I am taking an online course from artist and art therapist Amy Maricle of Mindful Art Studio. 

Art Journaling 101 walks you through ways to jump right into creating, beginning with defusing the inner critic by writing out what our critic says to us and making a drawing of it.  

I call mine the Hobgoblin, and I imagine it to be a cranky, snide gargoyle.

Afterwards, we turned our attention to embracing our Muse.

Through the course, I've been eager to watch each short video and create more pages because the process is so easy.  

It's inspiring to have an instructor outline a technique, then invite you to make your own variations.

Amy demonstrates a variety of techniques for creating backgrounds as well as ways to fill the backgrounds with drawings and writing.

We created backgrounds in watercolor, 

both splashy and smooth.

Instead of facing a blank white page, now there's an inviting field of color on my art journal pages.

Amy demonstrated a technique using 2 colors of Caran D'Ache Neocolor II water soluble crayons with gesso. I incorporated a layer of music sheeting for more texture.

She shared a simple technique for filling a page with acrylics.

Which provided the ideal surface to write a quote.

I recommend taking this inexpensive course because it inspires you to jump into creating right away.  

Sometimes, the hardest part of art making is getting started and deciding what to do.

I created all of these pages in a span of one afternoon. I tucked the activities into an otherwise busy day, and felt uplifted by the process.

Here's a link to the class: Art Journaling 101.

Happy Creating!