Be ready to fold origami-style if you want to include large media clippings in your art journal
Passionate Artist Journaling
Art journaling has been around a very long time and is practiced across the globe to great effect. There have been very famous art journalists and many working in obscurity. (Obscure might be best) The cost to get started can be very low while the payoffs are investment grade. Those accrue and compound. To share or not for sharing, conventional design or idiosyncratic; you get so many choices with art journals. Zero pressure, lots of fun and tons of benefits.
Really, I don’t know what I was thinking. I was searching for a topic for this month’s newsletter when I heard a little voice suggest “art journals.” “Why not”, I thought. Perfect. I’ve been creating my own art journals since 1990. I love my art journals, cherish them. Everybody should love art journals and I’m happy to tell you why.
Come to find out, almost everyone already loves art journals. I know this because there are countless geniuses online currently writing boatloads of words about art journals. They have chapter and verse about how to do exercises anyone can follow. But don’t, please.
And so yes since you didn’t ask, I forged ahead with my own plan to write about art journals. You’ll forgive me if I forgo the getting started exercises. Like one blogger already posted: “The first rule of art journals is, there are no rules.”
Your Personal Best
For the entry level “art journal” lowercase there is woefully little to report by way of history. More likely a curious online searcher is bombed into submission by countless bloggers on the topic of art journals
Cathy Malchiodi PhD,, art therapist, and visual artist writing in Psychology Today, credits the art therapist Lucia Capacchione with first introducing “visual journaling”. The essence of Capacchione’s 2018 approach to art journaling, as reported by Malchiodi, was primarily therapeutic, especially for clients suffering from trauma.
Today the bar is lower. Set aside the trauma and step into the light of mark making untethered from stricture or straitjacket. If you can get marks down on paper a page a day, you’re there, you’ve won. The benefits will accrue even without the magic of “making an intention.” (Author sticks finger down throat)
My favorite book on art journals is actually a collection of artist journal pages representing a worldwide cross section of artists. “1000 Artist Journal Pages” is overwhelming in its scope. But the essence of art journaling is always the same: make words and pictures come together on a page that says “you.”
You’ve decided to give artist journaling a try. Why not? The benefits are there regardless if you're a little tiny bit creative or the undiscovered second coming of Picasso. This is the artist journal way to your personal best. Start with stuff; stuff to mark on and stuff to mark with. Keep it simple or go for broke (Yes, literally when it comes to art supplies these days).
A very near and dear artist friend of mine allegedly spends at least $50/month on art supplies. What a lightweight. Dawn DeVries Sokol, in 1000 Artist Journal Pages, includes a whole page on art journaling supplies with a country by country breakdown. Scrapbook, collage, paint, paper, ink, journal and bookbinding supplies. The sky’s the limit.
But really we’re mostly all on a budget here and the baseline is, k.i.s. (keep it simple) Several folds of printer paper with a chunk of charcoal and a pen will get you started. But pretty is as pretty does. And Marshall McLuhan is still God in some circles.
How about this for a starter list of supplies:
a journal with moderately heavy weight paper (I prefer Moleskine’s Art Collection sketchbook because I hate warped pages),
a couple of Pigma Micron ink pens by Sakura
a handful of oil pastels by Mungyo (they so creamy good)
a bottle of “block out “ white acrylic paint
a couple of short handle acrylic paint brushes.
It’s a start. And it’s plenty enough to learn your preferences. Total cost: about $60. If you fainted, keep in mind about half that cost is the sketchbook. There are cheaper options without resorting to printer paper.
You’ll also want some collage materials. (Collaging from print sources seems somehow de rigueur in the art journal universe.) Go ahead, lift crap from popular sources. Or, as Austin Kleon succinctly puts in his book of the same name, Steal Like an Artist. (My personal favorite source is Popular Mechanics circa 1945-1963.) Grab scissors (check your junk or sewing drawer for this need) and off you go.
Journal away. A couple noncritical caveats are in order. Wet art materials, especially acrylic paint, may cause pages to stick. Proceed with caution and a can of matte acrylic spray if this is a concern or simply use only the front of each page (such a waste really). You can also interleave with parchment paper. And, big caveat - this is only for you. You’re under exactly zero obligation to show your journal to anyone at all. I have a dear friend, long dead now, whose catchphrase was, “Just have fun.” Sage advice from a guy confined to a wheelchair and urinary catheters while suffering from MS.
It’s fun (hopefully). It’s creative. It’s intelligent. It goes anywhere. Comes with airplane mode no matter the model. And you can’t possibly spend $900 getting started. That’s just the beginning of the benefits. According to the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design website, art journaling benefits split into three categories:
It promotes mental health - make marks to get better in your brain by expressing feelings like no where else
It lets you expand your art practice and technique through experimentation absent judgement
It improves problem-solving skills
I vote for benefit #1 because I'm a big fan of not crazy. Benefit #2 comes in a close second. I love investigating new techniques and refining familiar ones.
make some love for yourself
None of those benefit claims by the College are backed up with scientific studies but it sort of stands to reason they could happen. Probably. Don’t know, don’t care, fun is fun - art is fun. And compact carry-it-with-you is awesome fun. Consider this list of (art) journalists and their contributions to the planet: Leonardo da Vinci, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring, Janice Lowry. Would we have the theory of relativity or safe sex stickers without artist journals?
For my own artist way of art journaling I’ve needed to travel the highways and byways of the genre in search of my own best fit. Once upon a time I was a firm believer in Moleskine journaling with paint, ink and collage as I've described elsewhere in this piece.
Most recently my style of art journal has veered ever more conspicuously into the land of scrapbook/moodboard (moodboard: “a visual tool that helps you communicate your design concepts and ideas”) Beige is not my superpower BTW.
My preference is for collecting what I know will trigger my flow when I’m stuck and dried up of ideas and interest. Someday in the future I’ll likely experience ennui and lethargy. Where and how can I right now load the magic bullets that will blast my psyche back to creativity?
With absolutely zero authority or academic research to back it up, here's how my current version of an artist journal comes together: I start with a 6 x 9 inch spiral notebook, college ruled. I divide it into about five or six sections. Those include: clipping service, journal, technical, swatches, receipts and reviews. My criteria for what goes into those sections is this: does the thing look like it will someday pique future me’s aesthetic interest?
The clipping service section is frequently lifted from the New York Times; both imagery and text qualify for keeping. Samples include: Jon Klassen’s Books for Children, by Rachel Vorona Cote, NYT, 12/03/23 , “One Face With Many Masks, Giillian Wearing’s Work Probes Questions of Identity, Tanya Mohn, NYT, 10/19/21 and The Artist’s Way, On the Unexpected Pleasures of a Self Help Classic, by Jillian Steinhauer, NYT, 03/17/24 These tear outs are frequently 4x larger than my standard journal page and require origami-like folds to fit and be revealed.
“Technical” refers to breakthroughs or discoveries I’ve learned from experience that future more-forgetful-me may not recall. An example: a precise number inventory of my Sennelier oil pastel preferred colors as of 11/14/22. (No. 115, red copper didn’t make the cut. No, no, no to metallic tone oil pastels - heresy.
The journal section is self explanatory while “receipts” could refer to anything from a Dick Blick invoice to a checkout chit from my favorite public library. I also save theatre tickets and video store receipts: The Americans. ANYTHING even remotely art-related I acquired from the outside world: a business card from the manager for technical services at the Yavapai College library in Prescott, AZ, for example. I had a piece in their show, Mexican Gothic in 2023.
“Swatches” are a mistake. That section is reserved for color experiments. Paint samples, straight from the tube or combinations or colors (with good notes but not, unfortunately, exact recipes) I may want to repeat. For example I acquired a bottle of raw titanium matte then mixed it with nine of my existing colors to check its ability to mute them.
Like the kids these days like to say: “I’m going to be honest with you” - the swatches section doesn’t belong. Swatches deserve a dedicated journal all their own. My current system means I paw through as many as a half dozen journals to find what to combine with hot pink to get medium magenta, for example. Not fair.
That’s about it for my art journal blueprint these days. Plus, plus - likely no one's going to want your pages for a coffee table volume. That’s the sound of creative freedom. And, your 80-year old self just might be able to rekindle some creative juices with those pages some day. Start your own art journal today. Just imagine the joy and exhilaration you’re banking come your super senior couch surfing days.