New to art journaling? Curious about this fun papercraft? Then join me for a series on Art Journaling Prompts, where I share a few of my art journaling ideas and tricks.
Art Journaling Prompt: Hands
I’ve wanted to do an art journaling page about this topic for awhile now. There’s something about hands—young hands, old hands, scarred hands, manicured hands, hands with tattoos and visible veins, hands with bitten nails or cool rings or notes written on them that I find especially interesting and beautiful. But more than just what our lovely hands look like, I wanted to explore those things our hands do.
After all, most of us (women) can probably list a million things we find wrong with the rest of our bodies, so let’s skip the criticism and spend some time and energy celebrating the amazingness of our art-producing hands, shall we?
Art Journaling Writing
The journaling part of my art journal page is an approach I really like: Using a free-form list.
This is simply a list of words, thoughts, and snippets that reflect on the general theme of my page. I’m not trying to write anything in a paragraph—this is really just top-of-mind jotting down.
Because I’m a planner, I have a process for this. 🙂 I’ll write words, phrases and snippets on a piece of scrap paper before adding them to my real page. This way I can sketch out my art journal page before committing to anything. And because I’m writing directly onto my page, this prevents me from ending up with too little space at the end!
At first I thought I would write all of this journaling in one big block of text, but then I thought why not arrange each line like the line of a poem?
Funny, isn’t it—just the way we visually organize our words on the page makes a big difference in how it “reads”, both literally and figuratively. By arranging my words like this, there’s now space between each thought. It seems to give attention to each one rather than crunching them all together.
Ah, this is why I love words.
Art Journaling Pens
As I’ve mentioned before, I like to keep my pages pretty simple—especially the backgrounds. Here I’m just writing directly onto blank pages in my journal, using a Pigma Micron 05 pen in brown. It’s waterproof and fade-proof and has a super-fine tip that I need for writing. Also, it was out on my table and therefore my choice for journaling today!
I adore my Spectrum Noir pens for tracing. The Spectrum Noirs don’t interfere with the Pigma, so there’s no smearing or bleeding. I use the fine tip of the Spectrum Noirs for outlining my traced letters. Here I’m using BT4 (blue), DG2 (green), CT1 (yellow) and CR8 (red—possibly the most lovely red ever).
Art Journaling with Stencils
With the page title, I’ve employed my all.time.favorite. art journaling supplies: Alphabet stencils. I’ve had these chipboard stencils for ages—I think I found them at an office supply store. They make me feel much more confident about writing big letters.
You’ll notice my letters have double outlines. I trace the letter with the stencil, then remove the stencil and re-trace the around the shape. This gives each letter extra impact and also hides any wobbly lines from my original tracing.
The circle is a coffee can lid that I traced. Super-easy to do and adds extra interest to the letters.
Art Journaling with Photos
I love to use photos in my art journaling. Maybe this is because I don’t do very much traditional scrapbooking any more, but I still love to play with photos and pair them with writing. I used my phone to take this photo of my hand writing, then emailed it to myself and printed it off on a piece of white cardstock.
I was messing around with the photo and ended up taking one I really like—even though you can see the funny way I hold my pen! (Yes, they gave me one of those triangular pencil grips in grade school to correct my “problem” but as you can see it didn’t change things. To date I’ve met two other people who hold their pen the same way and I feel like we’re in a special club.)
The paper snippet you see tucked under the photo is a piece of book paper that I painted partially with Fresco Finish Vanilla paint. I had some leftover pieces of it on my desk and thought to glue them by the photo, the top of the left page and along the bottom of the right-hand page.
Hope you enjoyed today’s Art Journaling Prompt!
Intrigued by art journaling? You might check out my Kick Start Art Journaling e-course. This is a 6-week online course with a lesson and art journaling prompt delivered right to your email in-box every Sunday. Just $15.00, it’s a super-affordable way to start art journaling, or to explore your practice more with additional journaling prompts. Hope to see you there!
