Title: Your Art Journal
Course: Art

Wonderful resource for an Artist!

What is an Art Journal?

A journal is a way of keeping track of thoughts, ideas, experiences, feelings, impressions, observations, descriptions, plans, etc. It's am artistic personal account of things of importance to you.

Just as you may have had a journal to keep a written record of your personal thoughts, artists often keep art journals. Many famous artists are known for their journals - the sketchbooks of Leonardo da Vinci are probably the best known example.

art journal: a journal kept by artists, often containing both words and sketches, and occasionally including multimedia elements such as collages. Such books will frequently contain rough workings, in cartoon form, of ideas later to appear in finished works, as well as acting as a normal diary, by allowing the artist to record their day-to-day activities and emotions.

The purpose of the art journal is to help you develop and collect thumbnail or rough sketches of your own ideas and designs. It also allows you to begin a study and collection of other people's designs that you find interesting and inspiring.

Creating your Art Journal

Try starting an art journal of your own. You can use:
- a notebook
- sketch pad
- plain or lined hardcover journal
- loose pages in a binder
- if you know how, or know someone who knows how to bind books, make your own journal
- a large folder or a box to contain larger, 3-D items

Keep your own notes, sketches, and cuttings from newspapers, magazines, or catalogs to show what you consider to be good and bad design and the reasons for your choices. The style, color(s), design of each page can be used to reflect mood/emotions (eg: blue for sadness, red for anger, etc.), various materials can be glued in and layered. Basically, it is your journal so just do anything that pleases you!

Your personal art journal can become the first stage in developing an art portfolio. Creating an art journal gives you an opportunity to explore and develop a collection of images, projects, pictures, postcards, diagrams, or sketches that represent your design ideas.
If you wish, the journal may be set up with sections or categories of work; for example, thumbnail sketches, design ideas, two-dimensional (2-D) design work, photographs of three-dimensional (3-D) design work, design projects, drafting applications, and multimedia applications. You can design categories to meet your needs, or set up the design journal sequentially in a scrapbook, where you just keep adding ideas and work without having categories.

You can continue to add to your journal each year. As an expression of yourself it will become a record of your opinions, thoughts, and artistic development over time. For the purposes of this course, select your best ideas from the journal as the starting point for projects that will be put into your art portfolio.

(For further inspiration you may want to obtain a copy of "1000 Artist Journal Pages - Personal Pages and Inspirations" by Dawn DevRies Sokol. ISBN-10:1-59253-412-0)

Tips for Getting Started... and Working Past Journaling Block

Sometimes staring a blank page makes all creative ideas suddenly disappear. Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles is our own internal censor and critic, but remember this quote from Henry Ford: "Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right." The thing about art journals that makes them so special is that there is no right or wrong. If you put it in there, it's yours and it's right. If you're stuck or don't know how to start, here are some tips and prompts:
- ponder an inspiring quote or a good memory
- find a photo of someone you don't know and make up a short story or description of the person
- use last night's dream as a starting point - for written material or drawings
- describe your mood today with pictures and color
- make lists (eg: books you've read, movies you like, things you want to do, 10 things you'd want on a desert island, etc...)
- open the dictionary to any page, point at a word and use it to start a page
- sketch fantasy animals
- describe your 5 favorite smells... or 5 least favorite
- ask your self questions and answer them (eg: 'What traditions do I keep?', 'Who is my hero?' 'What am I grateful for today'?, etc.)
- use the current season to inspire you
- start with a collage... you can add to it later with more layers, or written word
- begin when you're feeling strongly about something... or just feeling a particular emotion strongly
- if you have art supplies hanging around that you've been too afraid to use or have been unsure of how to use them, this is the time! Experiment!
- if you travel or go anywhere really, you can collect things... business cards, napkins, ticket stubs, post cards, brochures, photos, etc... and add these to your journal. Call it 'A Day in the Life of...' !
- design a pattern and cover the whole page with it
- remember someone close to you who has passed away
- research something you find interesting and draw pictures/take notes on it

The possibilities are endless! You could even make your own list of tips for when you get stuck. Also, if you look up 'art journaling' on YouTube you will find many videos of artists sharing their pages and showing the supplies they use. Checking this out may inspire you, plus they often have links or web addresses to their own pages and blogs for further tips and tricks. There is an art community out there you've just got to find it!

Here are a couple videos to get you going!

What your Art Journal does for you

Through the development of your art journal you will be able to do the following:
- Express yourself through a visual medium of sketching and drawing.
- Create a collection of ideas from various sources
- Become knowledgeable about your own skills and interests as you periodically review your own work and analyze your skills, techniques, abilities, and interests.
- Identify your personal preferences and interests in, for instance, graphic designs, sketching, drawing, designing, drafting, computer-graphic software applications, multimedia applications, etc...
- Develop new ideas and try new techniques
- See progress and growth in your abilities in design applications.