Illustrated Journals for Mindfulness and Creativity

1. Join the Journaling Course: If you're looking for a way to connect with your inner creativity, express yourself in a unique way to create beautiful illustrations and paintings and promote mindfulness. Then this course is perfect for you. You'll learn how to create beautiful and personalized journal pages that reflect your thoughts and emotions. Throughout the course, you'll be introduced to simple painting techniques that even beginners can do, including gouache, watercolor, acrylics, and pen and ink drawing to create stunning backdrops for your text. The reference photos are provided to for you to try out. By the end of the course, you'll have gained a deeper understanding of the therapeutic benefits of creative journaling and how it can help you connect with your inner spirit. Enroll today, and let's begin journaling 3. What Is Mindfulness?: Now what is mindfulness in this course are referred to the concept of mindfulness. This is an important idea and one of the reasons why I do journaling, it might sound very vague and you're not quite sure what it means. You probably are enjoying some sort of mindful creativity already. But let's have a look at this for a moment so we can appreciate the importance of journaling and also how we should go about it to get the best out of it. Let's have a look at the idea of mindfulness in a bit more detail. What is mindfulness? Journaling? Mindfulness is the practice of being present in the moment and aware of your thoughts, emotions, and surroundings without judgment. Pay attention to your thoughts and feelings. Observe them without reacting or becoming overwhelmed by them. Mindfulness helps you become engaged in the present moment rather than being distracted about all your worries. Journaling is a powerful way to develop mindfulness. Writing down your thoughts and feelings in a non-judgmental way, you become more self-aware and you develop an understanding of yourself. It can help you identify patterns in your thinking and behaviour so that you can make positive change in your life. It is also a way of reducing stress and improving your focus and concentration. And this results in more calm and relaxation mindfulness term link is a powerful way to develop a positive relationship with ourselves and the world around us. Practice mindfulness regularly and you will approach your challenges and difficulties with more calm and not so much stress. Mindfulness journaling will help you appreciate the small things in life and cultivate a sense of gratitude. So it is a powerful practice that can help us live more fulfilling and meaningful lives 4. How to Add Writing : Now as I mentioned, one of the important aspects of keeping a journal for me is having some text as well. I like to write something in the journal. It might simply be about the subject, but ideally, it's something a bit more meaningful to you. It's your private journal as well. Now, I'm using a general theme for my journal and that is quotes by Marcus or really as things that are meaningful, that will remind me of important ideas. But you can also write about your personal experiences, about what's happening that day, about what's bothering you, about what you thinking about at 3AM in the morning. Maybe the kids are keeping you awake at night. They all sorts of things that are solved. Or at least you can find some comfort by putting them down in writing, creating something that you can focus on instead of just having it all running through your mind and making the matter even worse. Now there's a famous book written by Julia Cameron called The Artist's Way. I recommend you get hold of that book and read it if you haven't done so already. In that book, she advocates what she calls the morning pages. Basically, you get up in the morning and the first thing you do is open your journal and you just write a kind of free form writing or just a brain dump as it's sometimes called. You just write. You get your thoughts out, whatever they may be, you can jump from one topic to another. It doesn't matter. Just get out all of that accumulated thoughts and concerns, everything that is keeping you confused and not knowing which way to turn, just get it out in writing. She advocates also doing this, the old-fashioned way of pen or pencil instead of typing it all out. I think I agree with that because I do find that even digital art is not as engaging as the old-fashioned way, using something like a pen or pencil, brush, pastels, whatever it may be. A manual physical activity is more engaging and that's important to break away from the digital now and then when you are creating your art, the same thing applies to writing. Typing rollout may be fine for writing a book or correspondence through emails, that sort of thing. But this is a special moment. Basically. This is your time to get out ideas and thoughts and also to commit this to paper. That is very important. And by combining this with your illustrations and your painting and sketch, and you're tapping in to your creative problem-solving brain, your visual stimulation that is going to help you boil things down and settle these issues. Calm you down as well, and create something beautiful out of what perhaps started as a chaotic mindset. Here's also a few tips I'm gonna give you to improve your writing even if you're very hesitant or bottled. Make a start. Follow these tips and I'm sure it'll be easier for you. 5. Journal Theme : Now what about having a theme for your journal? It could be just about anything. In my case, I'm creating a journal based on the Stoic tradition. Quotes from some of the stoic authors like Marcus Aurelius, this, Seneca, and many others. But you can have any theme you like. It could be your travel journal. It could be your gardening journal where you record the front plants and things like that. Could be about food, it could be about religious topic, that could be many, many things. Your own personal development, having a theme is something that can connect you to the journal a lot better and make it more of a personal thing and make you more committed to it. So come up with a theme if you want. It can be very general, can encompass a few different topics or very niche and focused, but something that's going to motivate you and inspire you. So that's all it is. Ready to give you a direction and get you thinking about more deeply about something. There it is, you can always change the theme or perhaps start another one and see where it all leads you. You might be surprised by the results 6. Materials for Water Media: In this lesson, we're going to look at watercolor media. Watercolor media is quite a broad topic as well. That not only includes watercolor, but there are different kinds of watercolors. So I'm gonna be looking at a few that I like to use. There's also things like gouache and acrylics. You will get water-soluble pencils, as you saw in the video on pen and ink. So you can bring that in as well. It will some bridges that gap. Water kind of media is also very convenient for traveling. You can store it easily as well. You can have your watercolor pen set in your pocket or in your bag. It's great for journaling, so I use that quite a lot. Let's have a look at a few options you can try out for yourself. Watercolor media forms, a large part of my painting practice for journal keeping. So once again, your multimedia pad or your cold press, watercolor paper is just fine for this process. So what I like to use, well, I think the easiest thing to do when you doing your watercolor painting is to use a set of painting pans. For example, this is a Winsor and Newton set of half pans. This is actually quite an old set that was my wife's grandfathers set of Winsor and Newton paints. And I'm going to be using these in the course to illustrate the various journal demonstrations and I'm going to be doing. And you can see very good quality. Now today you will find Winsor and Newton have a series called Cotman. And it's pretty much the same sort of thing. 12 half pounds, with my essential colors and a few extras as well. So great. It's got three trays are pretty much use the left-hand tray for the lighter colors. The middle tray for, as you guessed it, middle value colors. And the last one for the darks, shadow colors. And that's more or less the practice or follow. Make sure you always have tissue paper. Sometimes we want to clean one of the pens but leave the others or dirty like that. It's amazing how often I will scratch in the corner like that to get just the sort of gray that I need and I can always add to it perhaps. And then I've got just the right color. I need a set of half pans. As I said, this is Winsor and Newton, but you get all sorts of brands these days is another one also good value for money. This is Mongo and extremely strong pigment it covers. These are really quite amazing and very good value. But we spoiled for choice. And with this brand like some others as well, you can simply buy the replacement half pans like us and follow up the tray and you're good to go easy to transport. Even got a little ring at the back for you to put your thumb in and you can hold it while working on playing a perhaps. So quick, simple, easy way to get some color going. Now another set that I use a lot and I find very useful is to graph it and paint pan set. Alright, so as it says here, a unique blend of graphite paint with color for dramatic tonal work. Now that means values. You painting with values, and you've got a range of colors, but they all have that sort of graphite look to them. I've actually got a whole review of these in my YouTube channels. You can just look for that as well. That you can see there's some color as well, but all sort of a muted range. And it can create some beautiful paintings. And you'll see these in action throughout the course as well. But I use these a lot. I don't really want to be fussing over. Strong colors are more muted range and it gives a very pleasing result. Not all sorts of other brands as well. Daniel Smith, you can't go wrong. Some top quality artist, watercolors. Let's also my Marie Veronica, a very good student quality paints watercolor in tubes. And you can actually fill up some of your pants with these as well. I've actually put in Some tube color into this lemon yellow that was starting to get a bit empty instead of replacing the pen, you can also just fill it up with your tube, watercolor. So versatile to paint with. Watercolor that you're spoiled for choice. Once again, there's all sorts of brushes, natural hair brushes you can get top of the range like this is a Winsor and Newton Kolinsky sable brush number two, a fantastic brush I use for watercolor and gouache. Quite expensive. Otherwise I would have a lot of them. Or on the other side you've got synthetic hair brush like this. This is a short flat, also very nice for watercolor painting. Not very useful to get larger washes of color down pretty quickly. And your smaller brushes, obviously less paint for more precision painting, you may want to get some of these reservoir pens. You unscrew it for the handle with water and you can just squeeze the pen and the brush gets wet and there you go. Alright. Put the cap on. So great for traveling. You've all has got water in the handle and you're ready to start painting at a moment's notice. You can buy these individually or in sets of different sizes. By enlarge though, this is all I use for watercolor. And in this course I will be mostly using the 12th pan set for watercolor, and of course, the gravitons as well. Alright, let's have a look at other water media that I'll be using. Most important of which is my set of gouache paints, which I keep in the etat container. It's got a plastic seal or rubber seal that keeps the gouache paint moist for as long as reasonable doesn't last forever. Of course it will dry out. But you can see how I deal with dry gouache paint in my gosh painting for beginners course. But basically put my gosh in here and I tried to keep the paints moist. And if I know, I'm gonna be using gouache soon, at least the day before I start to wet all the gouache in the trays and the next day it's usually ready to go. Now the quash I use is Winsor and Newton, designers gouache, or useful strong pigment last quite a long time. And I get great results with it. There are of course, many other brands. So you may have to get what's available in your area, but I think Winsor Newton, OK, quite well known throughout the world. Other watercolor media that we'll use in this course is acrylic paint. And for that I'll use the Amsterdam student acrylics made by royal tollens. Good-quality actually vary vibrant. And I use it straight up the tube. Don't mix any water into it. It's ready to go straight out the tube and it is at its best when it isn't watered down. So you don't need to water down your acrylics brushes. For acrylics, synthetic hair brushes are best at. I think the top painting brush anyway, for my acrylic painting is daily. Ronnie's gorilla range of brushes, very good acrylic painting brush. I use those and they've lasted me very well, lost me years and it's still in good condition. And that's it. A range of materials like this. You can paint any subject and it will keep you going for many months, if not years, of enjoyment. I've got no trouble endorsing any of these materials are going to get paid for it. These are things that are bought myself and tests lot over the years Emma, find they have served me extremely well. Now with your watercolor materials, always have tissue paper on hand or a good cloth or lint free cloth to dry your brushes off in-between or mop up any excess paint or anything like that. You need these to remove excess water very quickly from your brush. Okay, I think that about covers it. And now we can start seeing how to get the best out of these materials. 7. Materials for Writing: Now let's start having a look at the materials. There are so many types of materials you can use for journaling. So I'm going to divide this up into a couple of videos. Starting off with pen and pencil, advanced and basic writing materials is enough to get you started with journaling. Or when you need is a pencil and some paper. But we're gonna go further in as well and look at some of the more interesting things you can add to the whole idea of drawing and writing, and also different journals or paper that you can try out. So let's have a look at what you can use to start drawing and writing in your first journal. Well, let's start off with looking at an drawing media things. So I'm going to use for the drawing stage of journaling. And this is perhaps the most important. What do you need to get yourself started with journaling? Well, the simplest thing of course, is just having a pencil, a couple of pencils, like a six B and a to B pencil. What more do you need? You can do so much with it, and then of course you need something to draw on. Now there are so many kinds of journals, books, pads, all sorts of things are like Fabriano paper. It's one of my favorite papers and wholeness tend to get Fabriano products. I'm not sure why that is. But you can start something as simple as a sheet of paper and simply draw on that. But ideally, to get the most out of journaling, you want something like a book, a pad of paper that you can draw on. So let's just have a look at a few examples. Is a Fabriano watercolor pad or book. And it is 300 g, 140 pound paper, cold press, or always go for cold press because it's quite forgiving with many types of media from watercolor to pass toll to pencil to pen, that handles at all. Find hot press paper is very smooth and it's not so great for watercolor mediums or ad hoc price is perfect for simply drawing. It's a very smooth surface compared to cold press. Cold press has a texture to it, which holds a lot of pigment and you can paint on it very easily. Great for watercolor, also pen and pencil and gouache as well. So this is one example of Brianna's products. Watercolor book, A5 size, very nice, spiral bond. Easy to fit into your bag and take with you another example. This is a sort of multimedia pad, 200 gram paper, A4 size, relatively smooth. It's more of a drawing paper, not really a watercolor paper, but it will still handle watercolor medium. This is your basic multimedia pad. Very cost-effective as well. Now this is the watercolor paper, 300 gram, once again, hundred and 40 pounds. And this is cold press, so there's a bit of texture to it as well. Very nice paper, indeed, great for just about anything as I've said. So this is also good value. But what am I going to be using to draw on in the course? I'm going to be using this in Phoenicia book or subpar Fabriano, 200 gram paper, 90 pounds, A5 size. Think it's a very attractive book as well. And the pages have some tooth on it. It is a cold press, but very good quality paper, nice and thick. Really a special book Clark this with a marker as well. And you can create something attractive for your journaling records. Get one of these, I think they're very good, but any type of book will be great. So as I said, you can start off with just a couple of pencils. And what I like to do is sharpen the pencil as well with a blade. I don't use a sharpener. And you just sharpen your pencil. The old-fashioned way, get a really nice long Pencil lead on it, which is great for doing various things. As an example, you can hold the pencil loosely. I don't put fingers down. I'm not actually resting my hand on the paper when I'm drawing as if I'm writing, I'm not doing that. I'm holding the pencil like so with a lung and lead on the pencil, you can hold it at an angle, shade with it. It can hold it up, get a thin line, vary the pressure, soft, light, soft light, etc. And you get that looseness, which you get with a paintbrush. And that's what I want with pencil. I want to get this variety. I'm not doing that. I'm not writing and drawing and creating or other media that we will be using to write with. You can use a simple pen like this. This is a gel pen and perfectly fine for drawing. The, some artists, what they do with a ballpoint pen, for instance, is quite amazing. But if you just have one of these pins, always use black ink. You can do amazing drawings with that as well. Other examples of drawing media contact crayon gets at sort of rough effect, Very nice as well. But as a general drawing item, I don't use contact crayon, It's more for filling in if R12. An important drawing tool for me is the Pigma Micron pen. I can get them in sets like this, or you can just buy individually. My favorite size is the 05. It's a bit thicker and it gets you a nice line like that. Very nice. You get a thicker one as well. A point or 0805 is ideal. Another nice addition to the my range is the brush. You can get brushed up good, nice thick, thin and basically that brush shape, that very attractive. And of course the good thing is they are all waterproof so you can go over that with your water media without any problem. Pigma Micron pen for writing. I'm using a fountain pen nib. Alright, these are made by speed ball and you get different sized nibs and this is the handle and you just pop it in. Like so. This is a Parker pen product, Parker ink. But if you want waterproof Indian ink is the good one to get, right. But just for writing, if we're not going to use any water media, dip into your ink and you can write like this, alright? And what I find is that this makes me more conscious of my writing and I take a bit more time to write neater. I think that's just a fun way to fully in your journal, but you don't have to use and LED like that. You can of course write with anything, a regular pen, even your pencil as well. We will do the other writing instruments that are used from time to time in all my artwork, felt up markers. These are Copic markers in different shades of gray and black. I have a pointed tip on one side. But my favorite is of course the wedge tip because I can get that broad stroke, which is very much like a brush, thinner strokes as well, and all sorts of textures. And then, and then different shades like that of gray give me the essential values. I need. Black, light, gray, medium grays, subversive four values. And I can do almost any subject like that. So there's black. This is a natural gray number three, cool gray number five, and a cool gray number one. Alright, so generally go for the cool gray or black, a number five, and maybe a number one for an extreme light gray. Even if you have three of those, you can draw so much with that are spanning the divide between dry drawing media and watercolor. Watercolor soluble pencils like these. This is Qur'an dash and Staedtler, all sorts of manufacturers and works like a regular pencil that when you add some water media to it, dissolves away. And that's a very attractive compromise as well, especially if you're traveling or you can't take a lot of paints with a few pencils like this, and a brush and some water and there you have it. Now if you want to really try something different, it can make a quill, the sock made out of segal feathers, right? I see go further, which was strongly at a diagonal, make a little split at the end. And basically you've got an old-fashioned writing cool tip that a new ink. And you can write quite nicely with that if you want something fun and a little bit different, make your own writing quo for your journal. This is all a lot of equipment, so it's quite handy to have a role like this, to put all your writing tools in there and easy transport. So pick what you want. Start somewhere. Start with a couple of pencils and a multimedia pad and you're good to go. And you add as you go along. I never acquired all of these things all at once. This is over a span of years of testing different things and settling on what I need from our own practice. 8. Pencil Techniques : In this lesson, I want to talk about the techniques I like to use. And I'm going to start with pencil and then move into pen and ink. Now, of course, using a pencil and some paper must be one of the simplest ways to get your ideas down. You can do pictures, you can write. It's actually a perfect combination. And artists have been using a pencil and some paper to a journal for probably as long as it's been painful. It's as basic as that. And it's a wonderful way to just get some ideas down. Now meeting of the demonstrations, I'll be starting with pencil and then moving into some watercolor or maybe gouache or acrylic. It's seldom that I'm going to just do a pencil drawing. However, I like to start with a pencil and sometimes I'll develop it further. And because of that, I can sometimes just use a little bit of color instead of a lot. And going too far. If you've got nothing else, then just get yourself a to B or six B pencil and some paper. Now the techniques I use to draw are very simple. The way you hold a pencil is very important. It's the same with holding your pen. When you're drawing, you're not writing. You got to try and keep your hand above the paper and don't rest your hand on the papers if you were writing. So the result is a fairly loose drawing and that is what we want. It's kind of a spontaneous way of drawing, one that I tried to keep the pencil moving constantly. It doesn't matter about perfection. It's not a computer illustration. Alright, it is an organic experience. Each time I draw the same subject, it's gonna be a little bit different. Now with the pencil, besides drawing the very rough outline, I will do some shading. And for that I think the best technique for me anyway is to use the tried and tested method of hatching when you draw lines and then cross hatching when you go over those lands in the other direction. And you can build up texture and light and dark that way. It's very simple technique but very effective. The other way is to create texture. And I'll show you that in the forthcoming demonstration of these techniques that we're going to use the pen, that's mostly a Pigma Micron pen and it's waterproof, of course. So very easy to go straight into any water medium. And the same thing applies. They hold the pen with your hand above the paper. Don't let your hands rest on the paper. Keep that pen moving. And with the pen, I like to use almost dots and dashes approach some squiggles as well. Just keep the pen up, down, moving along, varying the pressure on the pen, right? Let's have a look at this in action and then perhaps also how I'll take it a little further with adding some color. First of all, sharpening your pencil. I like to use a sharp blade to sharpen a pencil like this so I get a long lead and that makes drawing a lot easier. Six P and to be pencils cover most eventualities. Now holding the pencil, don't hold it like you're writing with your fingers on the paper. Hold the pencil higher up. Kind of like you're holding a paint brush. And then keep the pencil moving. Lift off the paper, but keep your eyes on the subject. So you, your hands moving is hand-eye coordination, but also coordinating with you Brian, as you're looking at the subject and thinking about placement and automatically putting those onto your paper. So you get this loose, organic type of drawing. And you can develop that as you go with shading and changing your values. And as I usually do, I end up adding some color. Vary the pencil pressure, as you can see, it gives a different effects. And of course, hatching is the way I like to add value changes lights to dogs. This is basic hatching, these diagonal lines and then going across to cross hatch. You can do that again and make the value even darker. You can vary the width between the diagonals to create light to dark as well. Very useful technique. You can add texture, could be stippling or little circles like this. Just make marks So your basic hatching, crosshatching and adding that shadow side to the trees and the shadow across the road. Very simple. I am fairly impatient and draw because probably want to get to the color as fast as possible. Adding some texture on the road here. Say if your picture is going to be all in pencil, all in ink, pen, take more time with it and really enjoy getting those textures down that little details, the stippling, the crosshatching and so on. Variation of width of your edges. Pencil pressure. You see how various gated Lost and Found look. Now, moving in the direction of the shape as well. Getting these curves helps to indicate the volume of the tree. So you use all these little techniques the same as you would using a brush. Here's a contact crayon just so you can see that in action, this is a Brown County crayon. And you see it gives us a dry line effect, kind of broken. And you can smudge side with your finger as well. Water-soluble pencil crayons, very handy. Kind of a dry watercolor approach. Get your color down as I'm doing here with blue in the shadows. And then get some water on your brush and just dissolve that. Very handy and very clean and convenient way to get a bit of watercolor effect, yellow, blue, and you'll get that green effects so you can do some mixing as well. The Pigma Micron pen, my favorite size 05. Nice waterproof pen. But here's a regular Joe writing pen. And notice also quite waterproof too. Is a Pigma brush tip. Very nice pen. If you want to get a lot of variation of thicknesses, you get all of that. Convenience of a brush tip. Very bold, strong graphic potential with the brush pen, also waterproof ink. The county cran does dissolve a bit as you see this, that could be useful using the number 05 Pigma pen. I'm going to start drawing out with the ink. Notice the stippling of the lines, little dots, dashes, longer lines, shorter lines. All part of getting some variety and texture and variation to your shapes. Bit of cross hatching as well for the shadow side of those distant trees. The wall I'm keeping also very loose, suggesting some of those stones if you want to create some texture. So you decide how detailed you want to make it. I'm going to bring a little bit of color into this as well, just to show you a pen and wash approach. Urine bringing textures to the utility pole, crosshatching and stippling up and down. And you see the nice, interesting texture just happening. Now with the water-soluble pencil, creating that shadow. Quick and easy. Now bring in some watercolor pans to create that wash. Now when you do a pen and wash, the wash is normally a very thin layer of watercolor. You don't want to build up too many layers are the ones that turns into something a little more formal, a little more like a typical watercolor. I do tend to want to add more layers and develop the painting, but that's fine. If that's what you want, then go for it. But in a general sense or a general guideline, pen and wash, very simple one layer wash of watercolor. Over all or part of the drawing. You don't have to do the entire thing. I always like to leave some space in a journal drawing or illustration. Space around the edges to perhaps write some notes. Adding color and just making this little sketch come to life. And that's it. This is pencil, pen, watercolor, everything you can try and make an interesting journal illustration 9. Watercolor Techniques: Now with a lot of journal paintings, I want to add color. I love color, and it's hard to resist. Now, a great medium with journals is of course, watercolor. I use the regular watercolor pens. That's a Winsor and Newton set 12th half pans. And I will say use the dough and graph it and water-soluble colors as well. Give me a different sort of experience. The graviton pans more in the line of a value study, whereas the regular watercolors, more of the vibrant color you'd expect with watercolors. Once you've got your pencil drawing or your ink drawing, nothing better to go in there with a bit of watercolor and just add something to it. And I let the process develop. Sometimes I will just do a little bit of watercolor adding a thin layer. But if it looks good, so often I'm going to progress with another layer or two, or I should say another wash of watercolor Results always also interesting. It's such a lot of fun watching watercolor develop. Now, once again, the technique that I'm using for journaling with these watercolors is not a perfect process that you would use perhaps in creating a large watercolor painting. But they certainly are more similarities than differences. Starting off with a transparent, warm wash and then adding the values, the darks afterwards is a standard watercolor approach. Now I'm going to show you how I use this with my journaling. Sometimes I may even start or very soon in the process get some docs going as well. But I don't try to put everything on at once either. So you gotta be mindful of the medium itself and respected. So in this demonstration, I'm going to show you the very basic process for starting your watercolor and then coming back into it to add some further washes and get to a rather pleasant completion, something you can be really happy with. Let's have a look using the same reference as we tried with the pencil and ink. I'm going to use that now with watercolor. Composing the painting as described, using the pencil just to loose, constant moving. Drawing of the composition. Rough idea of weird shapes are going to go. And just marking out where I'm going to put some script at the bottom and into the first light, wash to some of the warm yellow to begin and a little bit of that green. But I like to start with the warm colors because I can cool them down and also darken them as the watercolor develops. Some yellow ocher on the road. A little bit of green mixed in there. Also very light. I'm not too concerned about reserving any lights. Now, let it dry. Very important. Once triad, I can go in with the second wash and start applying more values as well. Deeper color, richer color, build up. A layer or two. I just want to clean that out and exit. Don't want that orange in that middle mixing tray. But more or less premixed a few tray colors. I like to have. The light warms on the left and obviously the cool docs on the extreme right. And just dropping in some color, That's all. Middle value. A few darks as well. So second wash, like I said, just getting the darker colors, mostly middle values, but doesn't matter if you bring in some darks as well. And I might just finish this painting off with a touch of gouache paints as well. Because we can do that. We keeping a journal and we can mix media. No problem End justifies the means. That's a little too strong with that burnt sienna. So I'm gonna just walk through a tunnel at all, break that dark edge. Light. At the focal point. We're going to take that green right across, actually looking very nice indeed. As in summary or springtime greens. This is the thing with journaling. Am more interested in getting the values correct and playing around with color. Experiment a little with the color. If it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world. Journaling is just playing with your color, experimenting, trying things. And if you make a complete hash of your watercolor, no problem. We're going to fix things up with some gouache. So for instance, in the focal area at the end of this road, I want to tidy that up a little with some opaque gouache paints. So that's what we're gonna do. In the meantime, get a little more gradation of these greens and yellows in the middle distance. At latter second layer on the tree. Remember painting trees, bushes, shrubs, that sort of thing. They're all really can be described in three values, lot, middle value, and the dark shadow side. I like to pop in a few touches of alizarin as well. Kind of a warm shadow color. But it suggests a few branches and things like that, but with a touch of mystery because it's more shadow like a little bit of that cobalt blue, very soft bit of water in there. Just a suggestion of some wispy clouds and sky. Little more. Slightly drier brush application, suggesting some details. It's just the bit of reflection in there, but that is still a shadow. Quite strong shadows in the reference. But you don't have to follow that dark shadow. Absolutely. Like that. I do keep in mind that photographs tend to make shadows a bit too dark. Now, I brought in the gouache. I'm going to add a few highlights on the top of the wall. Traditional watercolor artists would object, but that's not what we're doing. Journaling, using multimedia and really enjoying this process. Some bright lights and the focal area to clean that up. So for the most part, the watercolor is going to remain in place. We are just tuning up the painting and, but getting some deep yellow with white breaking in a few scar holes in the tree. I think. The painting, I'll just clean up the shadow area by putting in some burnt sienna to bring out the road a little more on that certainly does help. You can do a lot of the painting, paint over it in gouache if you want, but I just want to get the focal area really that's the main thing in a couple of highlights. A little bit of variety I think is great and I love the perspective of the scene. It's given us a little more drama and energy. Some lights on top of that hedge. Now, let's add a figure using burnt sienna and ultramarine blue for a dark. Can I just suggest a figure in there to finish this off? And look how we've progressed from our pencil drawing. And the color wash. Little more information with watercolor before switching to gouache to get those final tweaks and details in place. And I think it's looking quite sprightly. Little bit of burnt sienna gouache coming in there but not bringing white into the docs. Okay. If sign that off, I'm now going to inscribe it with a quote from Marcus Aurelius to finish things off and take a moment to acknowledge some thought into this painting process. And something a little life-affirming as well to keep in mind. And of course, an artist has a happy life. A working artist can only happy. And they will have it 10. Gouache Techniques: Now one of the most important mediums are used for journaling is gouache paint. And gouache has a unique sort of consistency as kind of watercolor, but it has a more of an opaque nature to just bigger particles. And also bringing in white paint turns the watercolor effect into a more of an opaque kind of like acrylics. But then again, not so much because it can be reconstituted with water and it dries to a more of a matte finish as well. I like to start with watercolor and then go over it with the opaque gouache paint where I want that stronger or more punchy color. But of course you can start straight off with gouache paint as well. It is so versatile. Anyway, let's have a look at the gouache paint and a few techniques and thoughts about how to use the paint in your journaling. Well, let's take a closer look at gouache paints. These are tubes of Winsor and Newton gouache paint. And I generally work from a palette like this. This is a stay wet palette. That lid has got a rubber seal around it there and you put the lid on and clamp it closed. And it helps to keep the gouache moist for a few days. Doesn't lost indefinitely. But it certainly gives you a bit more time because gouache dries very quickly. Okay, Now, quash is very similar to water color. So let me put a little bit of lemon yellow. This is a Winsor and Newton designers gouache, one are alike quite a lot. And I'm just using some cold press watercolor paper, which is very nice for using gouache. And we'll put some quash down without any white paint in it. And you can see it looks very similar perhaps to watercolor. This is Phoenicia, watercolor, primary yellow, so it's going to be a bit darker. Let's put a little bit of that on the pellet, mix some water into it. So it's more like watercolor. And next to the gouache. Now, you may be able to notice that it certainly looks more transparent, which it is, of course, because it's watercolor and the particles are much finer. The gouache is already pretty much dry. Watercolor so obvious is still quite wet, but warm, dry soon enough. But yeah, I'll take some of that yellow watercolor and I'll mix with quash into it. And they mix just fine. So they get along very nicely together. And watercolor and gouache can be a good combination. Particularly if you want to start with vibrant, transparent color. You can start the scene off with watercolor. Or maybe you want to just turn your paper and work over that with quash. There's many options. In my journaling. It's handy to start off with watercolor and then adjust with gouache when I need a little more strength in the opaque color because one of the great things with gouache is using your white paint as titanium white. Mix it into that gouache. And you can see that strong opaqueness already starting so not as vibrant as pure gouache. Cooler, the titanium white, it's very cold or cool it down. Put some more in. You can see a cooler color already met, already marks back the vibrancy of a lot. So there is that trade-off. Once you get white paint into your gouache, it's changes quite considerably. White and I can, thus was the watercolor. I can go over that. Actually quite similar in value. The effects that it has on painting, acrylics and oils. Pretty much the same thing with quash. Here's some scar, blue and quash. You can see very strong vibrant colors straight up the tube, gets some white paint into that. And just like adding white paint into any of the other typical opaque colors like acrylics and oils. A big, big change to that color. Okay, if I take the sky blue also without anything mixed into it, Go over that yellow that's already dry there. You can see no transparency to it. In particular, if you wore to the dance or more, you could perhaps get a bit more transparency. You can see the green coming through. But with watercolor, you would almost be glazing that. It would be nice and green, perhaps more similar to that. But the covering strength of gouache is quite considerable. So if you're doing your gouache painting over watercolor, you could perhaps simply create a tone. Let's say this is your paintings panel. And you could do your landscape. Here's some Ultramarine mixed in with the yellow. And you can create your docs. Let's get some of that watercolor yellow. You see it makes quite readily yellow. Some burnt sienna. To get these light effects. With some white and some yellow, you can get mass opaque. Brush strokes like that. But you'll notice your gouache will dry darker and as many even sink into that wet paint around it. So you would go back and create more layers of gouache paints. Benefits when you layer it, like most opaque type of colors. The other thing is your consistency. How much water do you add in? So let's go back to this scar blue. And you can see that a fairly dry technique there for scumbling, but quite difficult to work with. So little water in the paint, so I'll put it on my palette like that and up the brush in the water, but I don't want water dripping off the brush. That's mustn't be pouring off just with the brush. And I may use some tissue just to take up any excess water if it's too much, mix that in. And basically you wanted mass and fluid, but not dropping off the brush. It's not a wash like in watercolor. It's simply of a nice and fluid paint. So you get that. And of course the pipe is absorbing the paint very quickly, but it gets a nice cover, coverage like that. You're not scrambling you now painting. If you go over the wet gouache paints, That's fine for certain effects, but you'll find that the wet paint is now going to absorb the wet paint you put on it. So if you want a vibrant top color, It's not quite like oil paints. We, you can simply pick up a lot of oil paint on the brush and paint wet overweight. With gouache. You might have to move on to another part of the painting. Let that dry a bit before you come back to get that strong, thick paint they wanted on top. Even that, it is going to sink a little and get absorbed into that semi wet blue paint. So ideally, you wait till it's nice and dry. And that's probably sufficiently dry there. And now I can should be able to do fairly strong of color on there and paint some more color. Should of course, keep my white paint on the palette and mix it in my other colors. So just remember that what's happening here is the wet yellow is reconstituting some of the blue below. So if you go over, you gotta be very careful. You're going to lose your paint, your top color that way. So put on your color and leave it, go over it again when it's dry. To avoid intermixing like that. That's really the most important points with gouache. Even though the gouache paint is dry, it doesn't mean that can't be reconstituted with water. So keep that in mind. You can use acrylic gouache, which dryers permanent lead like acrylic. But I believe if you're using gouache, this is the way to go. And you can paint good, strong layers. But don't overdo it. You don't want to get a thick blob of paint and put something like that on with quash paint because that is very likely going to crack. We're not dryers. So there's too little water and it's too thick. You'd have to just a bit of water to get it a bit thinner. And you can start getting a nice layer. But it's not going to crack like that one went nuts. Dry. Gouache paint has dried in your palette. You can rework it with some water, just soak a little bit of water on it. Take a bit of time, break it down with your palette knife and mix it up. And you can reconstitute that dry paint. However, it's not going to be as good as fresh paints straight out the tube. So bear that in mind. It might be better idea to scrape art. I cover, yeah, I would probably scrape the side and bring in new paint. Fresh paint is much better with gouache. So that's the simple fact of it, is great for painting direct and getting great color effects. Sometimes you want to use the white paper to come through and add more vibrancy. Very often though, you may want to tone your paper, let that dry before you go over it with gosh, because you can still get some great effects with the underpainting coming through and even a bit thinner, you'll get that color coming through. Alternatively, you can make very strong darks as well with gouache paints, burnt sienna and ultramarine, just like you can with oil paints and acrylics. So extremely versatile and fun to work with 11. Painting Lost and Found: Sea shells: Now let's have a look at painting some C shows. I've got three seashells that I'm going to try painting, and I think they'll make a nice addition to the journal as well. So let's get into it. I've got three shells that are found on the beach that we're going to try and do some painting. I'm going to do them three in a row. Basically. Just going to outline was one because I'm doing them more or less the same sizes they are in reality. So that's just a quick little shortcut together. A more or less correct shape. I'm going to be starting the drawing in pencil and just getting the main shape and a few select lines and marks on the show. And then try some of the diamond, graphite and watercolor pans. Use that as the medium. I think the graphics and colors have that washed-out look that is ideal for this type of subject. These shells all obviously showing the effects of sun bleaching and wind curing. You could say, they got that old. Look to them. I think that when Turk graphics and colors will be perfect. Also just putting in that shadow line. The next one, same process. Just a quick little size. And then fill it in with the main lines and marks. And I think it'll be fun little exercise to try and get the simplicity of these shapes down on the paper. And this one needs a bit of correcting there. So I don't mind showing the correction lines. Some of them show through with the, the watercolor, but I think that's unexpected thing with watercolor. It's not a real problem. If it's really is an issue. You can obviously just rub out the lions or soften them up. And that wouldn't be even noticeable. But I find it has somewhat of a charm. Plus I think there's a benefit to reminding yourself that you do make mistakes when you're drawing. Okay, I've put the color chart from the box up as well because it's very hard to actually see those colors in the pans, that cell phone video. They all look quite dark actually. So it's interesting to note the color chart. Now mostly using the warmish colors, the browns, the yellows, yellow, greens, and some of the cooler colors will be blue. Now this color I'm using is called a autumn brown. That's on the extreme top left. Next to that. The orangey looking colors called rosette. And then the yellow sort of off yellow next to that is called meadow. And although the names don't tell you too much, at least you get to see what those colors on. Now, once again, I'm using the little sable brush. I find the watercolor mop. Although a great brush to use is just a little too big for this, and this number to Cybil is ideal. So looking for the direction lines, for the shape, I'm trying to suggest the form and get a three-dimensionality as well. So that means I tried to drag the brush in the direction of the, the lines, suggesting the form. So convex lines, concave lines, that sort of thing. Try and move your brush in that direction as well. Also the edges of the shell on the shadow side will have to be cooler and darker The top of the show will be the lightest area are all leave a little bit of the white paper showing through to try and emphasize that light and then the illusion of three-dimensionality will be assisted. I'm not suggesting it's gonna be perfect that way. But I think it should come through. Let our minds IS the top beer also kept quite thin, so I will add a little more water to the paint to thin it out and make sure the transparency is not lost too much. Find these gravitons are quite transparent. There's no doubt about that, but they do hold. But of pigment almost like little grains, especially when I'm using this color, yeah, I think this is the ocean blue. For the shadow. You can see those grains just accumulating in the water bead. So you've got to try and push that around the bud. Straight onto the next one. Quite a complicated shape this, but keep the top, that little off white spot, keep that white on the paper and then fill in the radiating lines from that. Keeping in mind, the left side of the soul is in shadow and that's going to have to be cooler. And then once again, the illusion of three-dimensionality should at least be noticeable. So there's the radiating lines and then there's kind of concentric circles almost like topography map. Say, try and look out for these little shapes and try and make the best of just rub that one of that age was just going to be much too hard. So in the shadow areas, a bit of a softer edge perhaps, or also on the lights at the top of the soul. Fairly soft edged. And that tries to give a little sense of atmospheric perspective at a very small scale. Soften that up a little more water. So an interesting exercise. I have not painted this particular shell before. So really, you're not sure what to expect as I just soften these edges up. A little bit of water on the brush just to make sure it doesn't get too, too hard and too demanding of the eye as attention. Spread those beads out a little. And then the final one, this is perhaps the toughest one of all I can see I have the drawing, a little art. Looks like the shells are slightly compressed from left to right. But never mind. We'll work with what I have. I think it will still come together. So all I'm looking for is believability as well. It must be obvious that it is a shell that I'm painting and have some connection with the actual appearance of the shell. I'm not doing a natural history illustration for a book conch shells of course, but stole. Hopefully it's recognizable. The back of the show has quite a strong shadows. So that's Aston be much cooler. Cooler down the sides as well as I explained previously, to help the three-dimensional aspect. Light on top. Very quickly drawn this and it's all about trying to get the grabbed the moment. You could do this on location. And that would be a lot of fun. I think, just sitting on the beach during these sketches. Or maybe even in your car after you've been down to the beach. Using the lions. Want to soften this one up above it, using the lines to suggest the shape as well, the flowing lines of the shell. And these circular shapes, I think that pretty much finishes it off. So I'm sure you'll agree the soft, muted colors of the graph it and pans are perfect for this subject. We'll sort of earthy look to it as well. And that's more or less set. Let's get a little shadow. And that'll be a fun little subject. And I'm sure you'll do plenty of these great little exercise as well in color temperature, I think. Let's get something done to inspire us. And I hope you have fun with this subject 12. Urban Sketching Introduction: Now there are all sorts of things you can do with your journal. Perhaps you want to try urban sketching. If you live in a city, you may want to go out and it might be right there on your doorstep. You've got traffic, buildings. We use a subway or you travel on the bus. All these opportunities, you have, perhaps some downtime as you're commuting and you can do some sketching. This is about urban sketching specifically. It is actually quite a big movement and you can find lots of urban sketching groups. Let's look at a few tips to help you start to urban sketching. Start with the basics. We've discussed materials. And you just need a sketch book, a pencil, pen, and few other bits and pieces. Choose the right sketch book. If you're going to use watercolor, then must be a watercolor sketch book. Now you can experiment with different materials and ink pen or gel pen or pencil or watercolor pencils as well. But keep practicing, keep sketching. Set aside a little bit of time to do some basic sketching. We're quickly, it's all about capturing the moment. Not really worrying about perfection. What, even if you're doing buildings, just think about the perspective and big shapes. The main shapes and lines of the subject simplify as far as possible. And yes, always take your reference photo so you can look at that later on. Basic common sense precautions and don't get in people's way or privacy. And you should have fun with your urban sketching this way. 13. Urban Sketching Demonstration: I'm going to just do one sketch to give you an idea of how I would approach an urban sketching situation where time is limited and you just wanted to try and capture a moment. This is the reference and beautiful sunny Street in London. So I'm going to start off with the Pigma pen, the 05, and start sketching out a very rough sketch up the scene. Notice I'm holding the pen just with my fingers above the paper and letting the nib of the pen carry it along. Getting this sort of broken sketchy line. With buildings like this. And in most urban sketching situations where the streets and buildings were trying to keep the perspective in mind. So that's why I started with the horizon line. And then trying to relate all the diagonals of the buildings to that. This is a single-point perspective down the street as well. And of course the buildings have another perspective line as they go up. But for this drawing, it's the buildings relating as diagonals to the horizon line. So just these stumbles on dots, broken lines. And this to get that sort of loose and sketchy look to it. But of course, if you in doing this outdoors at the scene and any sort of scene like this, you're going to have to work pretty quickly and there's a lot going on. And you just want to capture the essentials. Overhanging tree with the branches and leaves, making a very nice framing elements to the scene and giving that dark value change into the lights up ahead. So I'll be filling this up with a wash of watercolor, trying to keep that very loose as well. Stop placing the figure now. Well, I should say that the figures, the two main figures. And then I'll put a few of the surrounding figures around them. Remember to work fairly quickly as you do this. Keeping your eye on the subject as much as possible and trying to keep the pen moving. Especially when you're doing the buildings and surrounding objects. Taking a little more time with these figures just to get placement. And the gesture of the figures really the fact that moving so one leg shorter than the other makes sure the heads of the figures are not too big. And that should just be enough detail then of course, the shading, be aware of the shadows, especially in urban sketching, shadows are a big factor, very important. Always. Shadows caused by buildings, trees cause people. It's a critical part of getting that warm and cool color. Or at the very least, value contrast if you're just using pen and pencil. Few more figures as well, that's a quite prominent, There's some dark background. The doorway is behind one of those figures, so it does stand out a bit more. Few of these seated figures on the side just acting as a framing or composition element to take the eye into the painting. The focal area being the street leading up and between the buildings. So it does take a certain mindset to keep things loose like this. I know a lot of artists are absolutely determined to get the details in the scene. And when I look at it like this, I do sometimes feel that way. Maybe I should try and get a little more of the detail. But once the color is in, I think things pull together mainly When you get the warm and cool colors in the shadows, that sort of thing that really makes such a huge difference straightaway. So I'm not going to be able to fit all the buildings in with this format of the picture is more or less kind of leaning more to S squared, but I've got quite a strong portrait shape with the page as it is. So I will fit in these towers and one of the, one or two of the buildings. You gotta keep a steady eye on the subject and pick up all of these shapes. There's that street sign. There's all sorts of marketing signage as well, but you don't have to get everything. The trick is suggesting these details. Few, a few lines, shape beer or are there. And that's what's important. Shapes and lines. And then the shadows. What part of the building is in shadow? What part is light? Is it warm? Is it cool? Pretty much a concern for every painting, every sketch you do. A couple of figures ahead. For the most part. Figures like us, adults, all the heads are pretty much on the same level. And it's just the legs that are at a different level, depending if they're further away or closer to you. Here's one figure. Yeah, that is quite a bit short-term, but that's just because the person is quite short. So if you're drawing children in the scene, obviously the children's heads will be lower than the adults. But it's just one of those things. Keep adult say it's more or less at the same level. But the legs can differ. Quite complicated, tower others. So what is a relatively complicated scene becomes even more so with all of these architectural features. And the trick is trying to simplify them as well into rectangles, half circles, squares, triangles. Look for those shapes. Try to put them down in the right place. Don't think about getting out a ruler and drawing every straight line. That will take away from what we're trying to achieve here, which is a quick loose sketch. In the tradition of urban sketching. On the hoof hazard were there in person, That's the ideal situation. It could be sitting in your car parked on the side of the road and just sketching or maybe on a park bench. If you can. You can even do all the color work when you get back home. Just get the pen work in at this time. I think we getting to some progress here. And I think there's something that can be done with us. A few of these lines could be just a little more diagonal, pointing down towards the vanishing point in the horizon. But never mind, I think for the most part we're pretty much on track. Windows. You have to have a lot of patients to do windows in buildings like this. And it's one of my weak points is being patient in this regard. I'd just like to get the shadows in and start adding some color. Another figure over here, just to balance that against some shadow. Well, I have a foreground shadow as well. Let's basic hatching of shadows with the pen will show through with the watercolor as well. So it does help. With the watercolor. I'll be adding the color temperature aspect to the shadows. So that's all fine too. 101 little details. I've got a suggestion, a few shapes and hope that is sufficient. If you can actually recognize the scene. Then I think that's pretty much all I can really hope for. Starting off with the, the lights in their typical watercolor fashion. But I'm trying to keep this. The genre of a pen and wash. So very simple colors, a lot of overlaps as well. Choosing to use some terracotta and for the light sides of smudging that down with a finger. So the thing with the wash is to get a general impression of the color. Let's say the building is an orange brick color. You just wash the entire side of that building with that color. And then when that first washes dried, you can add the second layer, which could be a shadow over that initial color, using the Winsor and Newton sable brush. Number two. But at wholes, a surprising amount of water are really ideal for the painting. Using ultramarine and some cobalt for the darks and shadows. Applying that shadow wash over the warmer red wash for the light, Bolding some yellow ocher, little bit of yellow in the latter parts. So really I'm asking myself, what is the value, light or dark and what's the color temperature is warm or cool. That's saturated. I'm doing this more or less as if you could be in a location with you. Watercolor pans, maybe some reservoir brushes, and just getting done quick bit of color. Leaving the white of the paper for the extreme lights. This little dashes of red year, they're adding energy to the scene. I'll bring a bit more green into the painting to offset the reds. Repeat some of these reds in the figures as well for a bit of harmony. Strong light, dark contrast on the main figures. I'll touch of burnt sienna, which of course is a reddish color as well. So those little red nodes also add to the energy of the scene. A couple of strategic dark shapes under the roof line, for instance or so. That's an important dark value. But of shadow. The trick is, even though the, these are the shadow sides of the buildings, we don't want to make them so dark. The store, a lot of large flexing backup into these buildings. Really having fun with these colors, I must say though, often bring the scene to live. The shadow of your second little wash so they add some more texture and interests. Bring these leaves on trees forward a little. Actually using a bit of phthalo green as well. And that adds some, actually some movement as well with some of these longer strokes, looks like perhaps leaves blowing through the air as well. It just adds a little bit of extra and harmonize that with a few of those notes down below. That's pretty much it. Work on a few of the shadows. But this would be a typical urban sketch type of scene. And one that I'd be certainly happy with if I was doing in location. To be great. I'm going to add a little quote here from Marcus Aurelius just to add my personal thoughts. There it is. So try and approach like this if you indication or back in the studio to get something energetic and maybe whimsical as well. 14. Conclusion : Oh, there we go. A whole lot of inspiration for you to take up journaling, illustrated journals, write your story, make notes, observations, anything that you can commit to writing that's meaningful to you. All of that can be included in your journal and of course, illustrated with your art. It's not the same. Without bet illustration. That painting, that drawing, that little sketch, that moment. Memory you've put down. All of it is special and ultimately, you are building up your knowledge of painting. Everything you put into your journal is going to increase your skills, your powers of observation, and your interpretation of the scene. And of course, your ability to simplify the complex into more simple and stronger compositions you're after all, are now looking at shapes, are also bringing your emotional input to your journaling. And that's going to translate into your painting, of course, MAN. Firstly, improving your entire creative output as an artist. I don't want to overstate journaling, but it's hard not to, because it is a fundamental part of my creative process. I think you can see just how much fun it is as well. So I hope you, so I hope you are inspired to include journaling in your painting process into your life. Make it part of who you are. As time goes by, you're pulled up a library of journals as well. And what a beautiful collection that is not just for you to enjoy, but perhaps your family and friends as well, something to look back on. I guarantee you it is not there to replace photographs of course, but at Whoa, hold perhaps an even more special place in your heart because you've committed a memory and you've processed at the end you've created something. So if you haven't started yet, now is the time to create your first journal painting or drawing or illustration, or simply start doodling with a pencil and see where that takes you. Think about it. Work something out, come up with a theme, perhaps, just get started. That's all I want and don't forget to share your work as well. Let Everybody see how you progress and help others as well with your inspired creations. Have fun journaling, keep it up and I wish you all the best with your creativity in the future.