Of course it’s natural at the start of a new year to set goals for yourself, and since I was also starting a fresh art journal, I thought it was appropriate to outline a few goals for myself for my journaling practice. It has become a regular part of my regular routine, and though I don’t sit down with my journal every day, if a week goes by without out at least a little coloring and gluing I start to feel repressed and out-of-sorts.

One of my goals this year (that didn’t actually make it on to the page) is to keep my workspace neater and more organized, so that when a moment presents itself, I can sit down and journal without having to clear a space first. Just before the holidays, I splurged on my mental well-being by buying some new craft storage units which will hopefully inspire me to keep things neater. At the very least, they have allowed me to eliminate the pile of boxes that had accumulated around the foot of my desk, which means it’s just easier to get at.

The other thing I need to do now is sort through the masses of craft supplies I have stashed away and get rid of things I’m not using currently. This sort of goes hand-in-hand with #5 above: use the supplies I’ve got instead of giving into the temptation to buy more. I’m going to start sorting through things, and I’ve thought about doing a give-away here, but I’m not sure if I’ve got the readers to make it worthwhile. Would you be interested in getting some free art supplies? If you think you might be, please leave a comment!

Another goal of mine is to start writing more in my journal. I know it’s not absolutely necessary to write in an art journal, but I think it’s important step for me right now as a writer. I am one of those people who holds my inner thoughts and emotions very privately, often hiding what I feel even from myself. But not being able to write about my own emotional landscape is limiting what I can accomplish writing fiction—I can’t write about my own emotional journey, how can I ever portray the emotional journeys of my characters?

Art journaling in the past year has helped me to build a bridge with imagery between my conscious and unconscious selves. Now it’s time to extend the bridge further, to put words to the feelings, hopes, fears and dreams that drive my creative expressions.

Still, it’s very hard to break the bonds of privacy and put those thoughts in writing, to expose myself in such a concrete way. I’m trying to devise ways that encourage me to write what I need to write without feeling like I’m exposing myself to the world.

One such method is sealed notes pasted onto the page. I’ve had these envelopes, each with a delicate piece of letter paper folded inside, for years and years, waiting for the “perfect” project to use them in. Now they will hold “secret” thoughts of mine, things I need to acknowledge to myself but not to anyone else. Maybe as I get braver, I will leave the envelopes unsealed.

Another method that I’ve been successful with in non-art journaling I call “compartments.” Dividing the space on the page is a psychological trick: it’s not the whole page you have to fill, just this one little part of it. On the other hand, you do have to fill the whole compartment, which frequently pushes you to be just a little more creative, a little more expressive than you might otherwise have been. The other aspect of compartments that is useful is that the compartments on a page don’t have to necessarily relate to one another directly; one might contain thoughts about a dream, another a quote you heard that day that you found interesting, a third a list of synonyms for the color blue. It eliminates the need to build a coherent “essay” while journaling, which is the trap I always tend to fall into.

Below is an example of what compartments might look like in an art journal‚unfinished of course. I will fill in the boxes with words and images alike.

Some art journaling techniques that I use regularly:

1. I like to pre-paint all the pages when I start a new book, usually with watercolor washes. Yes, this does limit my color choices for each page when I come to it, but it also eliminates Blank Page Syndrome*—there’s always something to work with when I’m ready to start journaling. I can jump right to the actual work play part of journaling, instead of waiting for paint to dry. The one journal I used this year that I didn’t pre-paint the pages took me the longest to fill (and in fact I never did the last spread in the book at all) I think because having to add background paint increased the amount of time it takes to create a page. Besides, I can always alter the color later with my chalks (see #4 below).

2. I almost always add borders. Somehow, framing the space I’m working in makes it easier to fill it. I generally use scrapbooking papers and slices of color and imagery cut from magazines. (Architecture Digest has great textures and patterns in advertisements from textile manufacturers, but most magazines have great colors if you look for them.) More and more, though, I am starting to draw my own borders with pens and pencils (and other visual elements as well).

3. I outline nearly all the elements on a page, whether they’re glued in or hand-drawn. Not only does it pull everything together dimensionally, it also is incredibly meditative (though I have to confess it CAN be a chore, especially if I’ve added lots of writing!).

*I wish it was so easy to beat Blank Page Syndrome when I’m writing!

Some things I’ve learned about art journaling supplies:

4. My favorite/most used art journaling tools are my watercolor pencils, my non-smear pastel chalks, and my gel pens. Oh, and glue and scissors of course.

5. I’d give anything for a reliable white opaque marker. White gel pens (Sakura and Signo) are good, but not ideal for thick coloring. Various paint pens are great, until they clog or otherwise malfunction and need to be replaced. The white Galaxy Marker is pretty good, though I find it hard to get a very good coverage when working on watercolor backgrounds.

6. I really don’t like working with gel medium, at least as a general adhesive. I know this is probably shocking to certain quarters of the mixed media world, which seems to rely upon gel medium as if it was the only glue in the world, but it’s too messy and sticky for my tastes. For my purposes, a plain ol’ glue stick usually does the trick.

A few more art journaling lessons:

7. The pages I end up liking the most are those that begin without a clear theme in mind. When I let my creativity wander through colors and images first, and discover the message my subconscious needs to tell me through the journey. The process makes the page itself seem more alive and significant than if I start with a preconceived idea.

8. I kind of regret that I don’t add more actually journaling to my pages. I wonder if, years from now, I’ll look back through them and wonder what the cryptic titles mean? My newest journal (below) is slightly larger than what I’ve been working in this year, so maybe I’ll experiment with incorporating more textual journaling onto the page.

9. I have lost the urge to share every page I make on my blog. One, I think posting has the effect of inhibiting my personal expression, and I don’t have a desire to be an exhibitionist when it comes to my personal life. Two, I don’t like worrying about artistry—whether or not it’s nice or pretty looking—more than expression.