Week 40: Beautiful Blobby Pumpkins

Welcome to Week 40 of the 52-Week Art Journal Journey. I’m Melinda, and I’m here to encourage you to reclaim your creativity, and establish a healthy habit of creative self-care through my simple form of art journaling.

If you’re new and wondering what the 52-Week Art Journal is all about, click here for a YouTube video introduction. And don’t miss Week 1, where we made this journey, and our journals, our own.

Week 40… I don’t know about you, but I’m struggling with how relatively little there is left to this year. I’m soaking up some warmth that is blessing my area before we enter the bitter cold. And twelve more prompts, twelve more weeks of 2023… seems so small.

I hope you’ve been enjoying my small-art and journaling prompts, whenever you started, wherever in the order, and are using them to get into your own healthy creative self-care habit. I can never say enough what a difference taking regular time for art-making has made for me.

This week we’re revisiting last week’s watercolor-mixing to create interesting fall colors. Though fall still isn’t my favorite. I’m trying not to dread when it consistently feels like fall, but just live each moment as it is.

If you want to watch this week’s video prompt before you finish reading, scroll on down…

The first think we need to do is make blobs. Beautiful blobs as Andrea Nelson called them. You can check out her Instagram here. I didn’t end up sharing the art I thought I would this week, but was once again inspired by an Andrea Nelson reel.

Have fun mixing your basic colors with their complements (red + green, orange + blue, yellow + purple), and keep having fun with different amounts of each, and mixing different ones together. As we did last week. If you missed last week’s prompt, it’s lots of fun as well as relaxing. Click here to enjoy the Autumn Color Mixing prompt.

I enjoyed playing with new colors without names, but I also really liked the two oranges I mixed and started with, so decided to make another spread with just orange-based color blobs. Each unique in color and shape.

Don’t think too much about your blobs when you’re making them. Just have fun. With beautiful blobs. Forget about pumpkins, at least as far as shape goes. I mean, really, pumpkin shapes?

Pumpkins come in so many shapes.

I’ve always been the most fond of the wonky ones.

That’s what this week’s journaling is about: things we like, things we enjoy, that may not be typical

But we don’t require anyone’s approval to enjoy what we enjoy

I think wonky pumpkins are cool.

Though I admit that I can be embarrassed of some of the music I enjoy listening to. I don’t want others to hear me listening to it. I don’t want to be judged based on their opinion. But that doesn’t change the fact that I enjoy it.

On the other hand, sometimes there are things I stumble across and enjoy, and find out later are popular, are more mainstream than I realized, and I’m a bit disappointed.

But that’s okay. We like what we like. We enjoy what we enjoy.

The things that help us feel calm and relaxed vary for each of us vary.

As do the things that help us deal with our depression, or our anxiety.

Not everyone is going to understand the things we enjoy, and not everyone is going to understand things that help put mental health.

And that’s okay.

With the caveat that it’s not something unhealthy, that only works in the moment but in the long-term makes things worse.

That’s an important distinction.

Self-care is not just spoiling yourself and catering to yourself. It’s purposely and purposefully choosing things that make you healthier.

After your blobs are dry (and I hope you have some wonky ones, and all sorts of shapes), it’s time to make them into pumpkins, which we do by just adding some lines and a stem. You can embellish yours as much as you’d like, with curly vines or leaves, or make them into jack-o’-lanterns.

Our pumpkin sections are kind of rounded rectangles and triangles and/or flattened ovals… It’s difficult to put into words. But the sections need to work with the blobs, as they do in the featured image for this post. I found near the end that it could help to put the stem on first, particularly with particularly wonky pumpkins. I also found as I went that I liked my lines a bit wobbly. And figured out to work in the direction that my hand wouldn’t be dragging through previously applied ink… Yeah…

I again used my Crayola set of the eight basic colors. As always, to show that it doesn’t need to cost a lot of money to reclaim your creativity. But I will say, and you may notice in the video, that Crayola watercolors, I don’t know what the best word would be, but they degrade over time, they become… gummy… and parts dry shiny and even a bit tacky. So keep that in mind.

Since I unexpectedly fell in love with watercolors during the 52-Week Art Journal Journey, I’ll be upgrading. And that’s the thing with art supplies. We can fall into a pit of endless acquisition and end up wasting money. Most of us don’t have an endless art-supply budget. But what you’re really interested in trying out. Don’t buy the top of the line starting out. Replace and upgrade as you find what works for you.

I’ll be back next week with another small-art and journaling prompt. In the meantime, enjoy making beautiful blobs into unique pumpkins. You an also click here to check out or revisit past prompts for more inspiration.

If you decide to share your art on Instagram, tag me! @melindavanry Click here to visit and follow. I’m also excited to be launching a new Instagram @better.with.art for exclusively creative self-care content. I’d love for you to click here to hop over and follow.

Would you like to share and be encouraged in a smaller, safe environment? Click here to sign up for a weekly email and invitation to the private Art Journal Journey Facebook group.