Week 42: More Mind-Quieting Lines

Welcome to Week 42 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, with one small-art and journaling prompt each week for one year.

If you’re not a big watercolor fan, you may be glad to know that we’re taking a break from our watercolor-mixing, but if you like your art to be relaxing, we’re sticking with the type of art you can get lost in.

Lines. This is far from the first time we’ve used lines for grounding and refocusing creative self-care in our art journals this year. Thanks to creative.stressrelief on Instagram, we have something new to try this week.

You’ll need a black pen. I’ve used both a Sharpie and a Micron pen. A plain old ballpoint would work just fine, too. The final effects are slightly different with different-sized tips. If you think you may want to add watercolor later, make sure whatever you use is waterproof. Unless you want to soften your lines and add a gray cast to your color… that actually sounds kind of interesting… If you try it, let me know. I’d love to see it.

If you decide to share on Instagram, tag me… melindavanry… or with my new handle better.with.art. Click the name to check out and follow.

A different type of blob

We start out drawing… blobs. So, yeah, I did stay on another part of the theme from the last two weeks. But these are larger and less… circle or oval… more… knobby. And they’re empty inside… Well, actually, let me step back. FIRST, we you may want to draw a frame or border around the edge of your page. It just works better that way. And, although they were used in the example I loved, I preferred mine pages that didn’t have blobs that shared a flat edge with the border.

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

I did feel like my ability to line up my lines improved as I went, but I will always be a bit wobbly making lines. My art will always be a bit wobbly. So instead of just trying to bring my wobble under control, with each new thing I try in my art journal I have to get over a particular idea of “perfection” and just enjoy making, getting lost in the process.

Like my wonky pumpkins from two weeks ago. Wonky pumpkins are my favorite type of pumpkins. And the way I naturally make art is perfect to make perfectly wonky pumpkins. If you missed it, you can click here to watch Beautiful Blobby Pumpkins.

In my art outside my journal I keep learning how to use how my body and brain work naturally to inform my personal style. Instead of chasing things that don’t quite fit, that aren’t genuine, even if they seem… “better.”

If you’re struggling with wanting things just so in your art journal, click here to watch Week 2: Letting Go of Perfection.

Enjoy the process

I hope you have time to experiment with this this week, and maybe add it to your collection of art activities you use to calm your busy brain, and quiet the loud spinning thoughts.

This is ideal for that.

At least once we get over focusing too much on getting all of our lines just so.

How often does wanting to get things just so trip us up? In art… In life…

Let’s journal about that this week.

There are things in my life that I feel uncomfortable when they aren’t a particular way.

Some of these are reasonable. Objectively reasonable. Others, not so much.

Some make life easier. Make tasks more efficient.

Other things are just preferences.

And still others are rooted in negative experiences. In trauma.

We need a certain amount of order in our lives.

There are things that may be different for each of us, that make life work better.

And there are some things we can too easily let ourselves get tied up in knots over, that aren’t of vital importance.

So as you enjoy relaxing into your lines, after you quiet the other thoughts, take some time to think about order in the chaos.

What are things you need to have order in in your life for it to function more efficiently… or comfortably? And what are things that make life more complicated or difficult than it needs to be because you’re chasing them, or trying to enforce them?

Which brings me back to something that regularly comes up: BALANCE.

We try to fit so much into our lives. And life brings many things that need to be fit in.

What are some systems you have put in place to make prioritizing and completing tasks and responsibilities simpler or easier?

Where might you need to work on this?

And, on the flip side, are there things you’re clinging to that aren’t necessary but in which you find some type of comfort? Even if they’re uncomfortable also, because it’s easier to stick with discomfort in things we know than to jump into the serious discomfort of something we don’t know. Even if we know that new thing is better for us.

Maybe you just need to focus on getting lost in the lines while you’re making your lines. And you can figure out your journaling after.

Take time for creative self-care

I really enjoyed this tunnel-making… when I could stop thinking too much about lining up my lines correctly, but at the same time thinking about it enough that I wasn’t creating chaos, because that stresses me out, too.

I don’t know what you’ll have to deal with this week, but I’m glad that you’re here, and that I have the opportunity to remind you that taking time to make art isn’t a waste of time.

If you’re someone like me who needs to make art, taking some time each day, or each week if that’s what you can manage at this point, to make art helps us, heals us, builds us, makes us more capable of dealing with all of the rest of it.

We’re wired for creativity. Made in the Image of the Creator. Maybe physical-art-making isn’t your outlet, but if you’re here and have read this far, there;’s a high probability that you’re an artist… whatever you think about your skill. You need to take time to make art.

Whatever type of creativity that works for each of us, we need to be expressing it in ways we find enjoyable, and in ways we find meaningful, or we can’t be as healthy as we could. So take some time; draw some blobs and lines.

I’ll be back next week with another small-art and journaling prompt. If you’d like more inspiration, check out or revisit past prompts by clicking here.

It’s hard to believe there are only ten more prompts of the 52-Week Art Journal Journey. I’m proud of myself. And I’m grateful that at some point you decided to join me. Thanks for the opportunity to remind you to take time for creative self-care.