The Power of Words Art Journal Process

Over the past few weeks, I have been building art journal pages layer by layer, working on 5 art journal entries simultaneously. It has been such an interesting experiment, and I have loved seeing how each page has gone through twists and turns as I turn my focus to only one element of the spread. This was the final week of this exercise, my change to add finishing touches and powerful words to each spread.

Normally, when I approach an art journal entry, I have a theme in mind. Sometimes that theme is centered around a color or technique, but more times than not, it focuses on a title or quote. Words have a lot of power, as we are all learning these days. They really can shape an art journal page. For these entries, it was cool to see how adding titles and quotes really gave the page even more direction.

The first page had me perplexed as to how to finish off the “Medusa” girl. Thanks to an awesome suggestion from a YouTube subscriber, I opted to sketch in the rest of her body first using colored pencils. This gave me the opportunity to define her a bit more, and also to bring a bit more color onto her face. I then decided that I wanted to brighten up her hair a bit more. I was also not pleased with the way the finish changed as the hair moved from the collaged paper onto the denim. A bit of Jane Davenport Acrylic paint in silver metallic really brightened it up a lot and gave the same sheen throughout! As the final touch, I hand-lettered a Medusa quote, “Your uniqueness is your magic”….done!

On the next layout, my primary goal was to bring more bright colors onto the page in order to incorporate the main girl a bit more. I added a red border, along with red roses with a Posca paint pen. I also added a bit more detail with stitching and extra texture lines using a blue Posca paint pen. The final addition to this page was the title, “Find Joy”.

My third entry was one that I was already pretty happy with. The page had an extremely interesting and intricate background. It also already had gorgeous focal points and a clear message with powerful words. So, I opted to add a little bit of detail to the triangles that looked like floating stars. With a dashed line, I made them look as if they were hanging crystals….done!

The last two pages leaned heavily on the addition of more words. I wanted the two pages to be related, but not necessarily with the same color scheme between the two. They end up relating to each other nicely!

As I mentioned earlier, this was a nice departure for me and a nice way to change up how I approached my art journaling. Which page is your favorite?