Art Journaling

Most of my artistic pursuits over the past decade have served to meet needs, and I have enjoyed those creative outlets.  But they often come with restrictions that take joy from the process.  When preparing a craft for a co-op class, I need to consider the logistics of working in a classroom setting, the ages of the children, ease of obtaining supplies, etc..  So when I noticed a gal was offering an art journaling class for high school students this trimester, I jumped at the opportunity to learn new things and requested to be her aide.  What I didn't anticipate was how much I would enjoy tackling the assignments myself!  It has been SO long since I've done art purely for the fun of doing art, and it feels SO good!!!!!  It's like . . . going back to childhood!  (The downside is that I get very consumed.  I spent most of a Saturday on one entry.  Oof!)

We were asked to journal about our name and its meaning.  Almost as an aside, the teacher showed us a neat way of writing that appealed to me.  I decided to use that style to fill a two-page spread.  Here is the process:

*Use a ruler to divide the page into blocks of varying widths and heights.  I recommend using pencil first.
*Brainstorm words for your topic.  Mine was my name, so I used words describing myself: interests, character traits, etc.  When I came up short, Hubby and Sonshine helped and actually thought of some really obvious words I'd missed!
*Write words such that they fill the entire space, reaching all the way to all edges.  Longer words should be written in wide, narrow spaces and short words in tall spaces.  I did all writing in pencil and went over it again in marker.  (Forgot permanent marker bleeds through, and it bled through pretty bad.  Spoiled the next 2 or 3 pages on either side.  I'll just cover them with paper backgrounds, but it was still annoying.)
*If you are a perfectionist like me, you can use a ruler to measure the width of each space before writing a word in.  Divide it by the number of letters, and measure off tick marks in pencil to see how wide each letter should be. I used mostly millimeters for the sizes I was working with.
*Doodle in spaces around letters.  I did this directly in marker.
*If desired, color spaces around letters.

This is before the doodles were added to the smaller words.

Here is the finished spread after doodles and color were added.  I like the black and white of the lower part and decided not to color there.  For the top, I used crayon and a tissue to smooth it.