Week 41: Unwind With Watercolor

Welcome to Week 41 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 with my simple form of art journaling. 

There’s been a lot of watercolor-mixing and “beautiful-blob” painting going on here this week. If you missed last week’s video, you’ll want to click here to hop back to see what I’m talking about. I enjoyed the pumpkins so much I made more. And then some more. And, yup, more. Some of which you may have seen if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

I decided to branch out, too. And my daughter joined me. 

If you’d like to watch the video before reading, scroll on down…

The first experiment I tried with the new set of inexpensive local dollar-ish store watercolors did not in any real way reflect what I had originally had in my head. And that’s okay. We had fun. Like I always say, our art journals are a safe place to experiment, and express ourselves without fear of what others will think. Don’t worry about the outcome; get lost in the process. I’ll figure out what I set out to do some other time.

I also figured that if I was enjoying the blobby thing so much, and finding it so therapeutic to paint the blobs, you may also want to enjoy some more ideas of how you can transform watercolor blobs into other interesting things. 

Or do something like what didn’t go as I envisioned: lay down some blobs of water, and then some color, and just see where it takes you.

If you need an economical mixed media art journal option to get started, click here for what I use in most of my videos. It’s also what we use for the art-journaling group at the library where I work. I love the paper, and it holds up well with wet, dry, and layered mixed media. If you use this link and make a qualifying purchase, I will make a small commission as an Amazon associate. This does not affect your price, but gives me a few cents toward supporting my sharing my healthy art habit with others. So, thanks if you do!

But back to blobs

But, at least for now, back to blobs. If you don’t want to make them into something like pumpkins, or the two other ideas coming up, you could use them, or whatever else you want, for color-mixing exploration, with or without embellishment. In the video I show a two pages of blobs-of-many-colors were made with just three colors: a red, a yellow, and a blue. 

Have fun. Play with color. Make your colors into other things or not. 

Nora and I weren’t making pumpkins, and I wasn’t thinking fall palette, and I had lots of colors that I don’t usually work with, that I haven’t had available to work with with my typical basic-eight Crayola set. Like that, the new many-colored set is about as inexpensive as you can get. Because it’s important to me to show you that it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to reclaim your creativity.

I find this blob-making more therapeutic than I expected. I love the color-mixing, too. And the casual rounded wonky shapes are so relaxing.

So. Relaxing. 

The only problem is getting into flow… and running out of page…

Sometimes I wish I had a bigger page

What are some things that you enjoy, that you wish could last longer?

I would love more art time.

And summer.

What’s something in your life that never feels long enough? What would life be like with more of it? Would there be a point where there would be too much? And what do you think about the thought that you can’t really appreciate something without knowing the lack of it?

That’s what we’re journaling about this week. Things we enjoy, that we love, that we can get lost in, that bring us pleasure, that make us feel good in some way, but don’t last.

Nothing in life lasts forever.

How can we make the most of the best?

And in doing so carry some of that goodness forward with us…

It’s one of the values of art-making.

When we take time to do things that fill us up, we can better do all the other things that need doing.

We can better love and care for the people in our lives with grace.

Don’t let too many things take up too much of your creative self-care time.

Limited art time

As there isn’t unlimited at time, my daughter an I got out the hairdryer to speed up the drying process of our beautiful colorful wonky blobs. I don’t find using a hairdryer ideal, but it can definitely be useful.

If you use one to move things along faster be careful with puddles. We had a couple of blob mishaps. But, as we do, we rolled with it. It was just another bit of wonkiness. I’d like to call it wonk, but it appears that’s a term that means something else.

Instead of wonky pumpkins, my daughter and I made small spiders with big personalities. And my colors were all over the place.

I always enjoy it when I get to do art with my daughter.

Share the joy

Who’s someone you could share art-making with?

If you decide to share what you make, without or with someone else, on Instagram to join me in encouraging others to take time for creative self-cart art-making, tag me! I’m melindavanry. I’m also, as of recently, better.with.art. I started a new account to focus on the self-care aspect of my art. My original account will still be full of my art and art inspiration. I’d love to share with you on both. Click the handle names to hop over and follow.

If you’d like a small, so far very small, safe place to share, the private and hidden Art Journal Journey Facebook group is perfect. Click here to sign up to receive your invitation and weekly creative self-care email.

I’ll be back next week with another small-art and journaling prompt. In the meantime, enjoy having fun and relaxing with watercolors. Mix colors. Make blobs. Transform blobs. Whatever works for you.

You can also click here to revisit or check out past prompts for more inspiration.

And speaking on inspiration…
The spiders were inspired (no surprise if you’ve been around here) by Andrea Nelson.
The mushrooms by Jasmin Haltilahti.
Click their names to visit their Instagrams.

I so appreciate the opportunity to encourage you to reclaim your creativity, and establish a healthy habit of creative self-care.