Using art journals to document, experiment, and inspire your art practice
What’s an art journal?
Sketchbook, visual journal, visual diary. Call it whatever you wish, it’s journalling with a visual element. It’s a place to capture (visual) ideas, experiment, document what you want to use or remember in your art practice.
What goes into an art journal is a personal matter. It might be entirely visual, using a variety of wet and dry media (I use markers, crayons, chalk pastels, paint, and collage). Or it might include notes, long handwritten musings, printed elements.
For me it’s also largely a private matter! I don’t feel I have to share what’s in there (unless I choose to). I prefer to feel free to make ugly experiments on my way to finding things that please me, alone. In that sense, my art journals are not performance pieces.
There’s no “right” way to use art journals. Mine shift and evolve constantly, responding to my needs and wherever I am in a creative cycle.
But here’s the thing about using an art journal regularly…..
Keeping an art journal has accelerated my development at an artist
As a self-taught artist I have worked very hard over the years to learn everything I can to make better art. Ive attended workshops, taken online classes, and most importantly, spent countless hours drawing and painting. Every bit of it was helpful in some way and I loved noticing the incremental changes in the quality of my work.
Looking back now, I can see that when I began using art journals is when I began to make big leaps - taking bigger risks, developing technical skills, and (crucially) understanding more clearly what I want to say as an artist. By documenting my discoveries large and small, I found they were more rapidly integrated into my practice.
Three ways I use my art journal
I imagine people use their art journals for all sorts of purposes - it’s personal, right? But these are the three I can tell you about because they’re what’s helped me move forward the most. They are:
Experimenting and exploring
Documenting stuff
Getting inspired
Experimenting and exploring - with colour, composition, new materials
This one’s the most obvious, so I’m going here first. Art journals are excellent playgrounds for experimenting with new materials, and finding new ways to use old familiars. Colour and composition both lend themselves to fairly limitless exploration, from the technical (how opaque is this new paint?) to the creative (how far can I push the idea of negative space on this page?).
Watch the way Vermont artist Jane Davies experiments with colour and layers, creating a “mood board” in her art journal >>>
This is a great way to generate combinations for new work, or get a low-risk preview for drastic changes to WIPs!
Documenting stuff I want to remember or reference later
I think of my art journals as compact, colourful filing cabinets filled with ideas, notes and references, filed away for later when I need them. This is really the heart of art journalling for me.
Let’s say I’ve just stumbled on a good combination of colours as I work on a painting. I know that a week from now I won’t remember how I got it, or I will have covered it up. So while I’ve still got the paint on my palette, why not make a note of it in an art journal?
Or a new tube of paint arrives in the mail (because, Covid), and it’s a hue I’ve not used before. Let’s test it out! How opaque is it? what does it look like mixed with white? with grey? how does it compare with similar hues? Document all of this in an art journal. Refer back later. I do this a lot! My colour journal stays on a shelf directly under my work surface, where it is at hand for quick reference.
Build your own composition reference book!
Here’s another way I recommend using an art journal to “document”:
Print examples of paintings that attract you. Note specifically what you like about each piece - is it the composition? use of line or shape? colour?
The point here is not to try to copy people’s work (you won’t succeed at that, anyway), but to notice what you like. You’ll start seeing patterns (I noticed that I always respond to sloping horizon lines). You’ll make notes to yourself, like “try unbalanced two-shape composition?” or “make dramatic variations in line weight”.
You can use these notes to spark an idea on a creatively rainy day. Which leads me to….
Getting inspired by art journals
Some days I’ve got an abundance of ideas. Everything’s flowing, I like what’s happening, and I’m making happy discoveries as I go (which I might just note in an art journal 😉).
Other days it’s hard, and that’s when I turn to my art journals for help.
Perhaps I’m boring myself to tears making the same old marks - a flip through the journal where I’ve recorded interesting implements and marks might inspire a fresh move.
Or maybe I’m ready to start a new series, and vaguely remember that there were compositions I wanted to explore - a quick visit to my art journal reminds me what I’d had in mind at the time.
In fact, even when I have no starting point whatsoever, I can usually find a spark somewhere in an art journal “file cabinet”.
And sometimes working in the art journal is an end in itself:
“Feeling too tired to put out paints but wanting to at least make a few marks before the day's completely gone.
Honestly, this week I thought I'd be bursting with creative energy… It's not turned out that way though, and I'm feeling a bit disappointed and stuck.
I do know this temporary… Meanwhile, this sketchbook is my best friend.”
How many &#%!@?! art journals does one artist need?
Lots of people like to work in a single book, concientiously finishing one before beginning another. This works particularly well if your goal is to create a chronological record - a visual journal documenting travel, for instance. I’ve used small, portable art journals to do travel sketches for years, and I do tend to work through them one by one.
In my studio, where are there no baggage constraints, I have three or four journals on the go at any given time. Why? Because I like being able to find exactly what I want quickly and easily. And truthfully, it’s darn fun to start a new journal!
Right now I’m finding it useful having journals separately serving several* purposes:
Colour journal: I record colour discoveries as I’m painting; a page for each WIP showing colours used so I can return months later and know what I was using; test new paint for opacity and see what I can get with tints and tones; and mood boards / colour experiments / colour ways. This journal stays close to my work area because I add to it and refer back to it constantly.
Composition and mark making journal: Composition is a weak area for me so I’ve started collecting and pasting in interesting examples when I find them. I also experiment here with marks made with a variety of implements, and record discoveries as I find them for future reference. Right now I’m photographing interesting compositions in nature, and add in the best ones to this journal.
What I love journal: Current fave! Brilliant idea suggested in Louise Fletcher’s Find Your Joy course, where I document examples of what I love in my own artwork, other people’s art works, marks I love to make, materials I love to use, and everything else I love in life that can inspire and inform my work. This is also where I can be more introspective, adding longer notes to the visuals, as I go deeper into understanding my own creative voice.
Dry media noodling journal: Where I can play at a moment’s notice with charcoal, pastels, graphite and coloured pencils. This one is less about documentation and all about nurturing a looser, more playful style.
* See that? Alliteration. Considered becoming a poet once.
One final treat before you leave
I hope I’ve given you some ideas for your own art journalling, but there are so many different ways people do their visual journalling, and it’s so fun to get a peek at what they’re doing.
That’s why I’ve curated a fabulous collection of art journals for you on Pinterest. Do have a look!
You might enjoy the other art-related boards I’ve assembled as well. If you, why don’t you follow me there? I add new pins almost daily so there’s always something new to see.
