Week 26: Halfway There!

Wow, Friends, we’ve hit the halfway mark! I don’t know how it feels to you, but this year is just flying by for me. I guess, in part, because I’m trying to catch up in so many areas, but never quite seem to.

Regardless of many prompts you have or haven’t done, if you wrote about what you wanted to get out of this for our first prompt, where we made our journals and this journey our own, take a look back…

How’s it going for you?

Let’s take some time to write about what we’d like to get out of this going forward…

I promise to keep showing up. I’ll keep making art to share with you, and keep encouraging you to take time to art and establish a healthy habit of creative self-care. I’ll keep making other art, too. Maybe I’ll finally find time to finish my first pattern collection… I’m pretty hooked on the idea of seeing more of my art on fabric.

I”ll also keep reminding you of how much a difference reclaiming my creativity and making art on a regular basis has made for me. I regret allowing myself to believe that there were too many other more important things to do, though I knew how positively it impacted my mental and emotional health. When we’re not exercising creativity in a way that is meaningful to us, we can’t be as healthy as we could be.

If you’re new here, Welcome! As mentioned above, our first prompt was to make our journals, and this journey, our own. You can find the whole prompt here. Feel free to move through the prompts in any order you’d like. If you’d like to start from here and keep up with the one per week, or start from the beginning in the same way. You could do more than one prompt per week to catch up. Or visit the prompts as you have time. I do encourage you to try to make art at least once a week, or at least on some regular basis. If you’re not sure what the 52-Week Art Journal Journey is, click here for a video introduction on YouTube.

Before today’s art, take some time to journal about what you’ve gotten out of participation in the 52-Week Art Journal Journey so far, what you hoped to get out of it, and your why for being here and going forward.

If you need to be reminded that perfection is not only an impossible pursuit in our art journal, but counterproductive, to revisit Week 2: Let Go of Perfection.

Is it difficult for you to let go of focus on your arbitrary concept of “good” of your product, to get lost in the process? The process is what’s important.

If you’d like to take some time to practice expressing emotion in your art-journal art, revisit Week 3: Drawing Emotion… Yes, Really. You can also check out Week 12: Multicolored Feelings.

Have you ever purposely used art to express, process, and release emotion? Would you be interested in an art-journal workshop on the topic?

If you’re stressed and need to vent, but want to turn the ugly words into something artistic and beautiful that can remind you that emotions are valid and need to be acknowledged but not given the driver’s seat, like Week 3 above, but more specific and active, revisit Week 4: Making Ugly Beautiful.

Yes, this is a favorite process of mine when I feel like I may explode, or have words I don’t know what to do with for thoughts that won’t stop spinning and bothering. And I encourage you to use it as needed.

If you haven’t been here long, this halfway point is the perfect time to check out things you’ve missed. Or revisit a favorite.

Though, if your time is limited, you’ll want to do this week’s small art, as we’ll be using it in next week’s prompt.

Today you’re going to need some painter’s tape, or masking tape. It has to be a tape that can be peeled off after we’re done with what we’re using it for. We’re also using watercolor paint again, so, yeah, a round-tipped paintbrush and container of water round out today’s needed materials. 

Then we get out the watercolor paint.

As I have in previous videos, I’m using my inexpensive basic 8-color Crayola set I got at a local not-just-a-dollar dollar store. Because reclaiming your creativity doesn’t need to cost a lot of money. I won’t deny that adding to one’s art-supply stash is addictive. I’ll share a list of things I’m looking at next… and next next, and maybe next after that next because who can afford all the things… if you’d like to try any of them out with me. Or, if you’re familiar with using them, I’d love to hear your experience with them.

Paint blobs with clean water. Then have fun letting your colors blend. I used just the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) but I still enjoyed myself into creating a bit of mud.

And that’s okay.

But we don’t want too much mud. Unless you do?

Experiment. Have fun. Get lost in how the colors swirl through the water, how they dance and intermingle.

When you’re happy with the amount of color on your page, set aside your journal to dry. We’ll be removing that tape next week… after some other fun.

Thank you for joining me for another small-art and writing prompt. I appreciate the opportunity to encourage you to establish a healthy habit of creative self-care through art journaling.

If you decide to share any of your work, though it’s more appropriate to call it “fun,” I think, to encourage others to take time for creative self-care, be sure to tag me (@melindavanry on Instagram; @melindavanrydesign on Facebook) so I can enjoy it, too. You can also use #artjournalwithmelinda

There would be a list of supplies here, but it was getting a little out of control, so I decided to make it its own post…