Transcripts
1. Introduction: In terms of mental health, I think journaling can be so helpful. Sometimes, there's just so many thoughts running around your mind and you think about things and you get into a spiral. It helps when I organize my mind and my thoughts and spew it out onto paper. I'm able to sort out my feelings from there. Hey, everyone. My name is Amanda, and I have a YouTube channel called Amanda Rach Lee, where I teach people all about art, and drawing, and creativity. For me, journaling has been such a powerful tool in my life. It has also helped me with my mental health and finding ways to express myself in a private manner. It's just what's in your head and allowing yourself to just create without the pressure of it needing to result in anything large, or perfect, or good. Just what's in your head is good enough. So for today's class, I'm going to be taking you guys through three different exercises that you can do in your art journal, and I'm also going to be showing you guys some of the extra fun, creative, artistic stuff that I like to play around with when I'm doing my journal spreads. If you feel like you're not an artist or if you're not good at drawing, do not worry. Even if you just doodle something and it doesn't end up perfect, like we said, that's part of the journey. So embrace whatever you create on your paper. I encourage you guys to share any of your spreads in the project gallery. I'd love to create a place where a lot of people can get inspiration for their spreads and see what other people are doing. So I think we should start journaling now. Thank you for joining this class. I hope you stick around to the end, and I can't wait to see what you guys create. Let's get started.
2. What is Art Journaling?: For this class, I'm calling it Art Journaling. I know that's a pretty vague term, but to me, art journaling encompasses a lot of things, and you guys are free to interpret it in any way that you want. But I think one of the main things that we're going to focus on is just making sure that you're journaling your thoughts, so there's going to be a body of text, and then in terms of the art part, there are some artistic elements, whether that be doodling, using stickers or washy tapes or printing out pictures, and including those aspects that go along with whatever journaling prompts that you are using. I get a lot of comments from people saying that they're in a dark place and they don't know whether it's a good idea or whether they necessarily want to record this dark place into a journal. But I actually think it is important and it could be valuable to look back on, especially as you go through the process of healing or it could be a nice accompaniment to therapy even, to go through all of this and have it again as a time capsule to look back on and see your mind where it was at at certain points in the year. But obviously, whatever you feel comfortable in your journal including, it's totally up to you. I think journaling is mostly to track your progress as a human and whether you're going through struggles or mental health issues or not, it's just interesting to see what you are thinking about or what your values were on a specific time in your life. I think a lot of people, when they're journaling or when they're thinking about writing diary entries, they feel like they need to write out the whole history or have some or all of the dark parts of their life into their journal. But even just small things, maybe small things that make you happy or small things that happened, are worth recording in your journal, and I think those everyday things add up to a nice thing to look back on, and whatever speaks to you when you're sitting down to journal, I think is worth writing down and including. Aside from my notebook/journal that we're going to be using, I'm also going to be using various pens and markers. I have a bunch of them. But whatever you have, if you have different colors you want to use in your spreads, that's perfect as well. I also have some brush pens so we can play around with some calligraphy. I also have a lot of different stationery items. My personal favorite being the washy tapes. I love using washy tapes especially for art journaling. It's the perfect opportunity to use stationery items that you wouldn't normally use because you can incorporate them in creative ways. I also have some other fun things like stamps that we can play around with and a lot of different scrap papers. What I like doing with these is ripping them up and creating little sections on my journal spreads, and it creates that scrapbook feel. I'm the biggest culprit of buying stationery that I never end of using, and what I found with doing art journaling is that it's the perfect opportunity to utilize all those things that you have tucked away in your stationery drawer or even just random papers that you have lying around. I've used paper bags from when I was shopping or traveling. I've also used ticket stubs, stuff like that. This is the perfect opportunity to use all of that. The first exercise that we're going to do is journaling about your current mood.
3. Your Current Mood: For our first exercise, we are going to be journaling about our current mood, and this can be small day-to-day reflections. I feel like a lot of times we just go throughout our day without actually asking ourselves, how am I feeling, and this is the time to write it down. Even if you don't necessarily feel a particular way, you can write that down in your journal. I have a couple different questions or prompts that might help you guys out when you're journaling. You can even write down those actual questions and answer them in your journal. The first is obviously how do you feel today, and then the second one is, what is something you did today that made you feel accomplished, a small accomplishment, something that made you feel happy, and then also something that you've been enjoying recently, whether it be a particular feeling, a TV show, a song, a movie, anything. I think this first exercise is just about your current state of being as a human. So you can use those journaling prompts when you're creating your spread or feel free to answer other questions or just write out your thoughts as well. Whenever I create a journal spread, I always like to start with the large features and then go into the smaller details and fill in the space that way. I'm going to start off with some calligraphy and fill up the major parts of the composition in the journal, and then I'm going to go into some photos, and then I'll come back and check when I'm adding the smaller details. Right now, I'm reflecting on how I've been feeling this week for me. It's been the beginning of summer and I'm very much someone who gets affected by the weather, so I feel like my mood has been slowly moving along with the weather. I've been feeling a lot happier with the weather as the days get nicer here. I think I'm going to write about that. I went on a walk recently and that also helped in terms of clearing my mind, and I think that'll be a fun thing that we can include in our journal spread. I tend to weighing in things a lot with my journal spreads, so I don't really have an end goal or an idea of how the spread is going to look like. I try to go with the flow and see where it takes me. If I put something on the page that triggers another idea, I follow those instincts. I think the beauty is seeing where the spread ends up, especially when you don't have an idea at the beginning. Depending on my mood, I'll do different things while I'm journaling. Sometimes I'll put on a TV show in the background, maybe something that I've seen already so that I can listen to the show and focus on the journal spread. I also listen to podcasts sometimes, or just some nice relaxing music. I feel like it really depends on my current mood, but I definitely have some journaling playlist that I like to throw on a lot. Right now I'm writing out the question prompts. You don't need to necessarily write out the questions, but I do feel like it adds a nice title, and I'm using a marker, writing it in a very organic way and creating different sections. So for this side, I'm writing how I felt this week, and then on this side I'm going to write out something that I did or something that made me feel happy. I also have a Polaroid that I wanted to include on the spread. These are the main large features that I was talking about that I'd like to start with. So making sure you have space for those, and then I'll add the smaller stuff like the actual text and various other stickers and washi tapes afterwards. Even though I'm starting out with lettering and calligraphy, I'm pretty much using the same marker for most of these titles. If you are looking to create a consistent looking spread, my biggest thing would be pick a color or too and stick with that color palette, it creates for a nice look. But obviously, if you want to go for multiple colors, feel free to do that as well. I just feel like sometimes I get overwhelmed by the options. Pairing it down helps me to know what direction I'm going in. But as you can see, I have my two main sections here and then now I'm going to fill it in with my body texts, which is me journaling and writing my thoughts. As you're going along, if you want to throw in any washi tapes or stamps or more photos, feel free to do that. I'm not really worried about the placement of any of these things to too much or what it's going to look like in the end. I'm just creating and I think reflecting, especially since I have my prompts and stuff that I want to think about and write about. It can be very relaxing and therapeutic. When I'm placing washi tape I don't really have a formula of where I'm putting it. As you can see, I've used it to stick down the Polaroids. I think using washi tape to stick down any photos or any sticky notes and all of that is a cute idea, and also functional because you need to stick it down anyways, so you might as well make it look cute and decorative. But I'm also still focusing on those main areas. As you can see, I'm focusing on this main sentence that I wrote down. I've been taking walks, so I'm building out from that, and going from large to small. So large being the "calligraphy lettering", and then medium being the washi tapes and the sticky notes, and then the small would be us writing down afterwards. I'm not really thinking a lot of how I want the spread to look. I'm going with the flow, as you can see. Initially, I started out in this corner, and then this area is now inspiring me to fill it out more, so that's why I'm going where the wind takes me. But I am, in terms of composition, keeping things in mind. As you can see, there's almost invisible columns and that helps keep things more organized. But it will also help maybe motivate you to think of other prompts that you might want to fill in for different areas of your journal spread. I always find journaling, especially when it's about my current mood or how I am feeling, very meditative and therapeutic just because it's something that I can turn off my brain for and just think and write down exactly what is going on. It's also satisfying to see where things end up on your journal spread, especially when you don't have a specific idea in mind for the spread. Like I didn't know that it would turn out this way, but I'm actually really enjoying where it's heading and I like the color palette we have going on. But I didn't think that this was where is going to go from the beginning. As I'm filling out this spread here, I'm getting more and more ideas and they're not necessarily even the journal prompts that I started out with. The initial question was, what have you been doing recently? Or what did you do today that made you feel happy? Or made you feel any emotion? I wanted to talk about the walks that I've been taking, and then I had this Post-it Note that I stuck up here and I thought it'd be a nice section for me to include songs that I've been enjoying listening to on my walks. The journal prompt at the beginning wasn't about songs that I've been listening to, but I thought it would be a nice thing to write down, especially because music does depend on your mood and it does affect my mood. When I'm taking walks, a nice walk playlist would be fun to write down in this journal spread and I also have my Polaroid that I'm going to label and date for the scrapbook aspect of this spread. I have most of my body texts, a couple paragraphs down here. There is some blank space here that's small, and this is the perfect area for me to throw in some doodles and I wanted to share some of my favorite things to doodle, to fill in space like this. Because oftentimes when you're journaling, you'll come across an empty space which is too small for certain things and too large for certain things. I've compiled some tricks over the years of ways to fill an empty space. One of my favorites are just being these; I call them like accent lines, and especially when you want to accentuate a certain thing. So for example, this Polaroid picture, I want to emphasize it. So I'm going to add some little lines, almost like a starburst around it. Then I also like adding these little star shapes near it. This is why I mentioned at the beginning that you don't necessarily need to be good at drawing because I'm not drawing anything that's super-complicated. Just little doodles. I have music notes near my playlist that I was talking about earlier. You can also just do some wavy lines that go along with the mood of your journal spread. I like to fill in the empty space, not only because I like the look of a full journal spread, but also I think it forces you to come up with creative ideas or solutions. Sometimes when you have those empty spaces that you aren't sure of what to do with, you come up with ways to fill it in that you might not necessarily have in the past. That's how I come up with different ideas. I think sometimes you create doodle ideas that fit each space and then you can use it for future spreads and keep them in your arsenal. So I know I've been focusing on this one side, but I'm going to try to connect the two spreads because I'm doing a two-page spread. You can always see stop if you just wanna do a one-page, but I wanted to connect them. So I'm using the doodles as a way to connect the two sides and make sure that there is some continuity in terms of the color palette. Another thing you can play around with is actually printing out different pictures or patterns from the Internet, especially if you don't have a lot of scrap paper or a scrap of paper around. I've printed out like patterns, checkerboard patterns, polka dot patterns, and then use those in my journal. Especially if your notebook has a pocket in the back like mine, you can keep the extras in there and use those for future spread so that you're not wasting paper. Also, the good thing about washi tape is that it's removable. So if there's something that you don't necessarily like and you've stuck it down, you can always take it off and reposition it. I think there is a struggle with the journal and community of what to keep private, but also what to share with the community because in general, it is a very, very positive and supportive community, and sharing those struggles with other people can sometimes help you and help you connect with other people who are going through the same thing. I've seen journal spreads that have inspired me to work on myself in other certain ways or different journaling exercises. But then at the same time, I think you need to balance what to share and what to keep to yourself. I have a lot of different journals and they all serve different purposes. Sometimes I don't necessarily feel like doing like an art journal spread and I just feel like spewing out my thoughts. So I have like a booklet where I'll just chicken scratch some thoughts out and that's totally valid as well if you don't want to do any of this extra stuff. But I think there's beauty in both aspects of the journaling and community. Currently, I want to say three different journals that I am using. I'm hesitant to call them journals because they use them for very different purposes. Like I have my more planner type of journal. I have, like I mentioned, the one where I just chicken scratch out and spew out my thoughts. Then I have one that's sort and that's where I usually do this kind of stuff, in there I know a lot of people will include it all until one journal, but I tend to like to split things up a little. There are different types of notebooks as well that have sections. So if you want to include, like our drawing stuff with your planner spreads, that's a type of notebook that might be interesting for you to look into. I don't think everything you put into your journal spread needs to have a specific purpose or needs to be functional. As you can see, I have many things in here that is not necessarily functional, like I don't need to have doodles or I don't need to have washi tapes. But, it made me happy and in the moment I felt like I wanted to do that so I was following along with my thought process and my creative process in that way. It was therapeutic for me. I'm done my journal spread, as you can see, what I like about the way it turned out is that it does look nice and there is that decorative of element. But I also feel like I left a lot of space for the actual reflections. Like on this side, there's a lot more texts and I spoke about how I felt this week. Then over here I wrote about what I've been doing, songs I've been listening to. Then as I was talking about while we recruited the spread, I allowed myself to take the spread in whatever direction it was going in. So initially I didn't think I would have like a playlist or all of these doodles, but it felt right in the moment. So that's what we ended up with. So this is my spread for exercise number 1. I hope the first exercise was helpful or relaxing for you. But for the next one, we're actually going to be writing about what we want.
4. What You Want: For this exercise, we're going to be journaling about what we want. The last exercise we were focusing on, in the moment, how we're feeling in the moment, what we're doing in the moment. For this, I am picturing almost a vision board goal setting type of spread. This doesn't have to just be physical wants like traveling, or activities, or material items. It can also be about your mindset or self-improvement like how you want to feel or what you want to let go of, or what you want to gain. Those are the journaling prompts that I'm going to keep in mind when I'm creating this spread. Just like the last one, you can pick and choose what you want to include in your spread, or if you have some of your own that you want to include as well, that's perfectly fine as well. For this one, I wanted to include more picture since we are doing a bit more of a vision board feel. I'm someone that really believes in manifestation, and the journal is the perfect place to manifest all the things that you want in your life, whether it'll be physical or mental. Sometimes it can be hard to think about what you truly want in life. But just like we've been talking about throughout this entire class, even small things are okay if you just want a bit more time to yourself, or if you want a type of food or a cup of coffee, that's totally fine. Again, whatever is in your mind is valid and don't feel like you need to police what's going on on your journal spread. Since we are going to be vision boarding and including pictures, I tend to go on websites like Pinterest and search stuff up that I want to include, and I'll print them out in various different sizes. Before I start this spread, I thought in general terms what I wanted or what I wanted this spread to be about, and I printed out a couple of pictures I thought would go along with that theme. Obviously, I can print more as I go along depending on where I see the spread ending up. But I feel like having some images as starting points is always a good idea. I always start from the big moments on the spread and go into the finer details. We'll start out with these and build out from there. Whenever I'm using a lot of images for collaging, or for scrapbooking, I always like to think of it like a puzzle. I'll print out a couple more pictures than I end up using, just so I can have options and I can slide them around the page until I see what works and what fits with how I'm feeling. Right now, I do want to travel to a couple of places, so I have some pictures of some places that I wanted to travel to. But also, not even just different places around the world. I have some nice sunset pictures, they represent the relaxing mood that I want to feel amongst the chaotic business in my life. Even if you have pictures that represent a feeling, but not necessarily a physical thing, that could be something you can include in your spread as well. As I was choosing pictures, I did pick pictures that have a similar color palette, but not limiting myself to too much. But now that I see them all out in front of me, you can see the ones that do go really well together. This is the puzzle piece thing that I was talking about. You can move things around until you have a layout that speaks to you, and of course make sure to leave places to write as well. I will use either a washi tape or sometimes this glue tape roller adhesive that's really handy for sticking things into my journal. But it does depend on your spread, if you want more of a scrapbooking, more natural field, only using the washi tape does look really good. But if you want a more clean finish, then this glue adhesive is a good way to go as well. Also using some craft paper since we are going for that scrapbooking vibe, I think ripping out paper and including it in a very natural organic way, can be a nice, fun touch, and also ripping paper is just fun. Maybe it adds to the therapeutic experience of journaling. Right now I'm thinking about the different sections that I want to have, and I'm keeping in mind those prompts and the questions that I want to answer to myself on the journal spread, so I am leaving sections for that. I don't really have a specific destination in terms of the spreads, so I am just placing things and seeing how it feel in the moment. If there are any problems that arise, our problem-solving will come up with a creative solution. These threads are my favorite to look back on. I always see my journals as a time capsule, but especially when I'm talking about goals or dreams or things that I want for the future, it's always fun to look back especially after a bunch of time has passed and to see where your life ended up and what you ended up achieving or what parts of the vision board were accurate. It's always fun, and even as I look back in my journals, at the beginning of this class when we looked back at the ones from four years ago, it was interesting for me to see the things that I was thinking about and dreaming about at the time. Depending on this spread I think you can determine how much time you want to spend on these initial layout phases. Obviously, if you feel like writing a lot more, leaving a lot more space and using a lawless photos, is an option. But sometimes I have days where I only want to stick things in my journal and not write so much. It does depend on where your mind is at the moment and what you want to spend your creative energy on, like right now, I'm feeling really inspired by this scrapbook feel, especially with the ripped craft paper. I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with layouts and layering the washi tapes and the papers. I think it'll make me feel even more inspired as I'm answering some of the problems that we are going to answer. I'm creating this spread right now off the cuff and winging it. But if you did want to spend some time beforehand, really thinking and reflecting about what you do want and what you want to include on your vision board, that can be an important part of the journaling processes as well, that pre-creation. It can be interesting to really funnel those thoughts and put them into a concise amount of information that you want to put on to a vision board and almost organize them, if that makes sense. Some fun things that we didn't play with in the last spread were some stamps. Stamps can be a really good tool, especially if you aren't big into brush lettering. Stamps can add that scrapbook feel. But are super easy. All you need is an ink pad, and then of course some stamps. It does give off a different vibe from the brush lettering, which I still love, but I do like to combine them here and there depending on the spread. I think all these exercises that we're doing, even though we're creating separate spreads, they do connect. Obviously journaling in general, it's all coming from your mind. There will be overlap in terms of, depending on what you're feeling, it'll seep into your vision board. I think that is also interesting thing to look back on. Even at the moment when you're done, you can look back on your spreads and see some common threads throughout what you're writing and what you're feeling despite the journaling prompts being different. I don't know if doing vision boards directly translate to you achieving exactly what you write down. But I think in a general sense, knowing what you want or manifesting what you want or just writing down and organizing your thoughts about that, can get you in the right mindset to set yourself up to be on the path to creating that future for yourself. Right now I'm writing down the main prompts. I have a couple of different ones, I have, I want to visit, I want to feel, I want to try, I want to go up. I was figuring out whether I wanted to do one last prompt if I could fit it in at any point, and I think I'm going to do what I want to keep. Just because I put what I want to let go of, so I thought alternatively, I would challenge that other question and do the opposite. I'm letting go, I'm also keeping something. I've finished stamping out all of the prompts. Of course, if you don't want to stamp, you can also just write them out. I just wanted to, again experiment with stationary that I wouldn't normally get to experiment with. But of course, you're free to use whatever you want, and now I have spaces to answer those questions. It's almost like a workbook now. You can answer them, you can doodle in them if you want to, answer the questions with a doodle or a picture, that's also okay. As I'm answering the questions and writing in my journal, I'm taking the questions seriously and reflecting on them. But also for certain ones like what I want to try, it doesn't need to be something in terms of your personality or your mindset. Like I'm writing, learning new language. Depending on what you're feeling, you can really reflect on the question, or you can think about it lightly. For these questions, some of them I'm going more in depth, but other ones I'm just doing a single sentence like for the I want to let go of, I wrote down, I want to let go of people's expectations of me, but then for other prompts, I expanded a little bit more like for, I want to visit, I wrote where I wanted to visit, but then also why I wanted to visit, why I've been feeling like traveling might be like a refreshing thing for me in this time. You can answer the questions as in-depth or as not in-depth as you want. It also does depend on the space you allow for yourself. If you feel like particularly chatty, make sure you leave enough space for yourself to answer your questions, or if you want to do more, you could do like a single sentence and do more prompts in terms of quantity. There isn't as much empty space as the last spread that we did, but there is still some more. Just like last time, I'm going in with the same marker that I've been using, and just doodling or adding random lines. This particular spread that we're doing was way more scrapbook feeling. In this instance, it's really like you can't make any mistakes, because anything that you do, it'll look intentional and like it was meant to be there. I'm done with this spread. Here is my vision board spread, outlining what I want in my life, what type of person I want to be. I really like the way this one turned out. Now that I'm looking at it, there are some common threads throughout the past two exercises that we've done, which I think it's a nice link. For the last exercise, we are going to be thinking and reflecting on who we are as people.
5. Who You Are Today: For this last exercise, this one is a bit tougher in terms of self-reflection, but I do think a good place to start actually, if you are struggling, is to kind of respond to the vision board. When we're talking about things that we want, or when we're vision boarding, sometimes it's almost like you're pointing out things that you are lacking or that you don't have, and staying in that mindset isn't always healthy. So I think as a response to the vision boarding exercise that we just did, where we're talking about things that we want or don't necessarily have in our life at the moment, we are going to talk about ourselves and what we do have, and what we do like about ourselves. It'll be interesting even to go side-by-side and maybe I'll try to come up with prompts that do sort of, mirror the vision board, but from the other perspective. Since we did a more picture heavy spread for the last one, I'm going to try to only focus on using pens and markers and that sort of stuff for this spread, just to show you guys different alternatives and to show you that you don't necessarily need papers or pictures in order to do these exercises. So I'm starting off with some calligraphy lettering, I'm using a brush marker, and with calligraphy, associate this type of lettering. It's just important to remember to add more pressure to the down-strokes. But there's way more in depth exercises on lettering and that can be like a whole separate journal in itself. Doing journal exercises regularly can also be a way to practice these types of skills or your lettering in a more practical sense than just writing out individual alphabet letters repeatedly. For all of these exercises, I encourage you to play with a lot of different materials or styles of journaling that you haven't tried before, and I think because it's so personal and because you are already reflecting a lot, you might come up with things that might surprise you, and try new things, especially creatively, can be a nice way to add to your self-reflection, journey, and process. I like to just rip my washy tape by hand, I think it adds a certain charm to it, and especially if you're layering washy tapes like I'm doing here, I think it can make it look a lot more natural and make them blend in together. Since I'm talking about who I am today, I'm still going to section off different areas. I have this sticky note that I added and I thought this would be a nice area to write an affirmation. Something that you want to remind yourself of and affirmative sentences can be a good practice to tell yourself, on the daily, whether you're writing it down or not. So I think highlighting that is a good thing over here in the corner. I know that this type of self-reflection can be really difficult, especially if you're not used to doing this type of thinking on a daily basis. So start off small, you can even answer the question of who you are today in more general, abstract terms like talking about your family or your friends. But at the same time, I do encourage you to challenge yourself. If you do feel uncomfortable with answering this question, maybe ask yourself why? Build yourself up to it and see what comes from that vulnerability and there's really no better place to do this type of self-reflection than in a personal journal because it's all your own and it's very intimate and it's personal. I think doing spreads like this and taking the time to reflect have helped me, especially with my own mental health journey. Recently, a big focus of mine has been to self-reflect and grow, and to just learn more about myself, and obviously, as a creative person, doing that in a creative manner has been very beneficial to me. Whether you're journaling or not, doing those exercises and finding that outlet, to come to those realizations is really important. So I filled out most of my spread. For the most part, it was almost all writing. Also, my hand is getting a little tired, but, this is the things that come with journaling. I'm sure everyone can relate when I say that the spreads at the beginning are always neater and then as you're writing, and writing, and writing, the writing gets a little messy, but that's okay. That's also part of the journaling process. We're going to say that it's on purpose, but there is some empty space here, so I'm going to fill it in with a couple of doodles. But in general, I actually didn't doodle too much. I mean, obviously I still played with the stationary and the washy tapes, but a lot of the focus was on answering the prompts, and I think particularly for this exercise, that was really important to me. So I've finished the last exercise and the last spread. Obviously, for all of these exercises, feel free to take as much time as you need with each of them and don't feel like you need to recreate exactly what I've done or answered the exact questions that I've answered. The whole point of this is to just encourage you guys to use your journal as a creative place for self-reflection. If you do any of these exercises or if you want to share your spreads with the Skill Share community, be sure to share them in the project gallery down below. I'm sure a lot of people would be very curious to see what some other students are creating.
6. Final Thoughts: All right, everyone. You did it. You reached the end of the class. I really hope you guys took something away from this, whether it just be some questions to answer about yourself or some fun ideas of things to include in your journal. I again encourage you guys to share some of your spreads in the project gallery down below, whatever you're comfortable with. I'm excited to see some of the things that you guys have come up with. I hope you had fun. Keep doodling, and I'll see you next time. Bye, everyone.
Amanda Rach Lee, Artist
