I spent a bunch of time when I was having a bit of a creative block just making papers. I thought I would share the types of papers I made for the backgrounds in this art journal so you could try your own. I made some pattern pages with my stamps and some black ink and stamping them all over some printer paper. It is always nice to have some black and white images to use in journaling as a neutral. I made a whole bunch of pages by drawing or scribbling on printer paper with crayon and then coming back over with India ink. It was fun to see the different effects you can get using resist. I also cut up some old art works (on paper) into strips to incorporate. I love getting the textures of the brushstrokes, and it always feels good to use something that is otherwise just sitting in a stack on the shelf.

I don’t love everything about all of these mini journal pages, but there is something beautiful when you put them all together into a little book. You can start to see similarities in subject matter, style, and color palette and it gives me a bit of insight into the type of things I am drawn to over and over. I don’t always get as much creative time in a day as I would like to, and so I used to try to maximize that time by attempting to paint a “masterpiece” every time I sat down at my art desk. Of course this wasn’t a super feasible approach and often proved frustrating. I learned to give myself a lot more freedom to play and experiment and I have also learned that there is just something about volume. If you become prolific with your creativity, you can’t help but improve. You will see overlaps and themes and uncover what has been in your heart all along and was just waiting to be given an outlet. Something super freeing for me was when I heard an artist say that you have to paint 30 bad paintings to get a good painting. While I realize that is not a hard and fast law, it just speaks to giving yourself grace to improve and practice and not feel the need to be always creating a finished product. I hope that helps someone today!

And, as always, thanks for stopping by!