How to let go of the need for perfection using art journaling

How do you let go of the need for perfection? After doing so many faces and many of them I was attempting to get life like I became a little focused on perfecting my art work.  I decided I needed to let go of my need for perfection.  So here is how I did it. By playing with the concept of abstract in my art journal so I did not need to worry about perfection. In life not just art,it is very easy to get bogged down in needing what we do to be "just right".  Even the reason behind me making this video brought out my inner critic.  As this video was for a YouTube collaboration with other artists, my inner critic was telling me that I had to do a really good bit of art to not look out of place in this group of artists.  For some reason my inner critic (we all have one) was telling me that in order to be noticed/liked/succeed in this collaboration what I did had to be "amazing" Sound familiar???.  So when I noticed my inner critic was telling me my art is not good enough if it is not perfect, it was time for me to silence it, to let go and just have some fun.  For me that meant ignoring my inner critic, not thinking too much about what colours I used, or what brush stroke I used, or even whether or not I blended the paint in, worked a treat.  This journal page is beginner friendly so why don't you watch how I did it and try for yourself.

This is a very short post today.  If what I have said today resinates for you why not leave me a message, we can chat some more about it. You can tell me your thoughts on the matter or ask any question you have.  Either way it would be nice to hear from you all.  Although this video is part of a video hop, it does show how I let go of my need for perfection, if you feel like this is too fast and you would like a slower more in depth version please let me know. I hope you take a peek at the video, checking out all the other video hop artists is optional, though I will say it can be fun. If you have any questions just ask.  Take care T x

documented life challenge week 3

Finally, at last, I have finished my week 3 journal page. I have definitely thought too much about this page it has taken me almost 2 weeks to do.  It has gone so well, compared to my other pages, that I found myself worrying about ruining it. So here is a run down of how I did it.  The art challenge - colour wheel.  Journal Prompt " I found I can say things with colour and shape I couldn't say any other way"- Georgia O-Keef.

I have just discovered that I have not taken photos of the start of this page but started half way through, oh well, you will get the idea.  First I started by covering the entire page with Gesso.  Then on the left side I used acrylic paints and painted using black and white paint to establish a grey and colourless storm background.  Then on the right side I used blue acrylic to make a more colourful storm/rain scene.  I also added a little bit of dylusions ink spray in turquoise to represent the dripping water and stickles turquoise to make it reflective.   I then bled some of the colour onto the left side.  This part of my thought process was inspired by Lorraine Bell .   The pictures start where I decided to draw my dancer freehand on a separate bit of paper cut her out and stick her down on the colour side

 



 Once stuck down, I coloured in my dancer.  As I wanted to use colour I used my favourite colour RED, it made sense its the most contrast  colour to Blue I had and I wanted my dancer to stand out.

 

I then spent a long long long time wondering, pondering, hemming and hawing as to what I was going to do with the Quote I had in mind for this page.  It has taken me longer to decide than it took me to get my page to this stage.  I finally decided I just have to go for it and get on with it. 

 

 

 

The word life proved a little problematic lol I was inspired to do this quote by watching a YouTube tutorial by Einat Kessler I liked her idea of using white oil pastel.  However, I did not have any.  I decided to buy some cheap ones and also bought cheap pastels too.  The white pastel rather than the oil was much better at being white on the page, however the pastel was rubbing off :( I wondered about fixing it but did not have anything to fix it with.  I had read about hairspray as well as purpose fixative and also heard about steam fixing but decided, oooh I know I will try using glossy accent as this will give it some texture too.  Alas it did not work as well as I had planned.  It dulled the white to a grey.  So As I had bought an ink paint pen on the same day as the pastels I thought aha I will use that to outline it, it kinda worked but it just wasn't standing out like I wanted it to.  I had also bought another type of white pen so drew round the letters again edging the white ink pen.  This again kinda worked so I had to think of something else. So I used stickles crystal to add a little more sparkle in only specific areas.  I then left if there before I just made a huge mess lol

 

I was about to leave the page for a spell, again, while I decided how to proceed with the rest of the lettering.  However, I then gave myself a good shake and went for it and finished the rest using sharpie pens black and red and the white ink paint pen and what you see below is the finished results

 

 

So there you have it, the chaos that is my creative process.  I have to say I am rather pleased with this page.  It makes a nice change.  I am slowly learning to let go my idea that my page has to be professional looking.  I just need to let go and enjoy.  I am not saying I will be able to do that right away as it is hard to let go my need for a pleasing looking finished article but I will let go more often until I am more comfortable with this process.

Thank you for reading this post.  I hope it has been of interest and help to someone. It has certainly helped me :)

T

 

 



original documented life project week one 1st January 2015

I mentioned and showed the unfinished first page in my previous post (it is still unfinished), however I did not really show how it came from a blank page to what it is now.  So I thought that I would post a few more pictures of the process to go along with the explanation. I have also been going off on a few tangents, again, so I needed to get back in some sort of order.  Therefore it made sense to start at the beginning and go from there.

ok so the documented life project week 1 The theme of January is about the blank page and how to deal with it.  I am particularly bad at staring at a blank page and being afraid to do anything, so this month is a very good start for me, especially as I am relatively new to art journaling.  I am certainly new to this project and excited about developing my artistic skills again.  As much as I enjoy using my craft skills and being creative with it I have neglected my painting and drawing skills. so..........

book paper is my challenge and so I covered the double page with different types of paper I could find that was close enough to being book paper as I did not have any books handy I could use pages from.  So the closest things I could find were scrapbook paper that had lovely writing effect, a printed page of music I had from choir practise, a page from an old diary and a page out of a note book I had scribbled dance moves on and a couple of envelopes, one of which came all the way from Germany from Valerie when we did an artist trading card swap back in the days when we there was a gang of us active on the docrafts forum  You can find her fantastic blog here , where you will find some fantastic art journaling inspiration. 

 

 

Next I used Gesso and covered the paper, over the top of that I painted burnt umber and wiped off and spread about with a babywipe to give the distressed antique look to the page

 

 

Next I used acrylic paint to put on some colour, unfortunately my mixing did not really go according to plan, I think the undercoat mixed with the colour and made it a little muddy looking, rather than the colours I was going for, but that's ok I went with it anyway.  I think used my one and only stencil and dylusions ink spray (turquoise) to put some patterns onto the page.  there were a couple of accidental splashes so I used the other end of my paintbrush and dragged it through the ink to make a pattern rather than leaving the splosh.  I am not completely happy with my page so far but that is ok, it is all learning and I have learned a few things that I will hopefully not repeat. As you can see from the picture below I added some sprays from a brush with white acrylic paint, using my finger to flick the paint onto the page.     

 

The page is not complete as the prompt is "be your own goal keeper".  I have not put on my goals but they will be added at a later stage when I am inspired as to know what technique to put my goals on with.  The quote that came to me from the prompt is -  " In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves.  The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility" - Eleanor Roosevelt.  Of course a couple of my goals will have to be to not leave projects unfinished and be more organised lol

 

I hope you have enjoyed reading my basic tutorial on how I did my first art journaling page for the documented life project.  Hope you come back for my next instalment.