Let’s pick watercolors and colored pencils and make a flower for your art journal! Scroll down to watch a step-by-step video!
This flower can be a rose or a peony or any round and layered species. For me, it’s not so important which flower it is, but what kind of personality it expresses. Here I aimed for a soft but unapologetic character. Every flower you create will become a bit different, and soon you’ll have a collection!
Flower for Art Journal Page – Watch the Video!
The instructions for the flower and all the inspiration for using it on a page is in the video below! We’ll start with watercolors to make the foundation for the layered look and then add more sharpness with colored pencils. Some patience is required because you need to let the watercolors dry between the first steps.
In the video, I encourage you to adjust the center of the flower, the flower’s sould. Find a look and personality that appeals to you!
Including the Flower in Art Journal
In the video, I also show how you can use the flower with almost any background and make a spread for the flower in the spirit of Freely Grown.
This week, we use small collage pieces as picture prompts for art journal pages.
First you pick a small image, a hand-drawn squirrel or wolf in my case, and use that as inspiration for the rest of the page. You will need paper, colored pencils, and a pen for journaling. I also used felt-tip pens for the details that I wanted to highlight and graphite pencils for quick sketching. I attached the animals to the page with double-sided tape. My journal is Dylusions Creative Journal Square. (Affiliate link to Amazon.com).
Open Your Box of Joy and Select the Animal!
We will use hand-drawn animals as picture prompts. You can, of course, use any image, but I suggest starting with animals.
I save my hand-drawn collage pieces in boxes that I call boxes of joy. These little drawings are born from the joy of drawing. I have cut them so that they can be used as collage pieces.
I started drawing these small separate little things in 2018, and have been creating them ever since. It’s so easy to pick a paper scrap and draw something simple, and then get enthusiastic about adding decorations and colors to it. I have several online courses where we draw these: Animal Inkdom, Magical Inkdom, Decodashery, and Doll World.
My animals are mostly drawn for the courses Animal Inkdom and Magical Inkdom, and I love them so much, that I have also printed copies of some of them. I have many boxes to choose from and I love to both use them and re-fill them.
For the first page, I selected a squirrel because it has pink and orange, and those have been my favorite colors recently.
After selecting the animal, use its colors to color a small part of the page! Just color some layers freely (like in the course Intuitive Coloring). Don’t glue the animal yet, wait until you draw more and the story unfolds.
Picture Prompts – Go Beyond the Obvious!
We have a big nut bush in our garden and squirrels love it. So, my first thought was to draw some nuts for the squirrel. But that would be too ordinary and not fun at all. What if this squirrel would chase after Faberge eggs while others collect peanuts?
I love drawing decorated eggs. In Doll World, we draw a big egg, but this time I wanted the eggs to be small so I could fit many on one page.
I made the eggs a bit different in size to make the page more interesting.
Static vs. “What If …”
When using the animal as a creative picture prompt, you want to find the story – not only the connection between the starting idea and the additions but also something surprising that keeps the inspiration going. If you only draw the ordinary, the picture easily becomes static – nothing is happening. Go for the extraordinary! Change the rules of reality, change the roles of the objects, make the animal speak – by drawing, you can create a world of your own. Ask: “What if?”
When I drew the first egg, it felt like just any object, but when I drew more of them, my imagination started working. Maybe the squirrel could sit on the biggest egg? And maybe the eggs could have a bigger role than to be just a decoration.
What if the scenery that I colored inside the biggest egg would leak into the surroundings?
I wrote: “A palace was born, hot summer days came here, the queen (the squirrel) had a party, and all things good and beautiful came up.”
Then I drew more and completed the page inspired by the journaling.
This is a story about an impractical squirrel who collected Faberge eggs instead of nuts and wasn’t much like other squirrels. But her eggs didn’t stay small. They grew and opened and created a place for her to live in.
“Isn’t that a story about every artist,” I realized after the page was finished.
Flying Wolf Art Journal Page
Let’s pick another animal and make the second page!
This wolf is the first little collage piece that I drew in 2018, so it’s time to give her a home. Decorating the animals was one of my core ideas for Animal Inkdom, so I can now color freely so that the decorations will continue to the background too.
Again, I am using the colors that the animal has: blue, black, and pink. This way the collage piece doesn’t look separate from the rest of the page.
I wanted the wolf to fly, but not with furry wings. Could the wolf be partly a butterfly?
With the wolf, I felt a connection to my North Karelian origin. With the butterfly wings, I celebrated being a woman and loving delicate beautiful things.
This wolf didn’t feel like a lonely one. So, I added a small butterfly and another bigger that is showing only partly on the right edge.
Back in 2018, my wolf didn’t fly yet, but it’s flying now! The more you draw, the more you can imagine!
Picture Prompts – Step by Step
Pick the animal.
Use the animal’s colors and patterns to get started.
Ask: “What if …”
Answer by drawing and journaling.
New in Development!
I have been making a new course that has a working title “Hearts and Stories.” I have already drawn quite many pieces for it. I collect them under a plastic plate that fits the side table of my studio. There I can see the whole collection at the same time, and think about what’s missing and how I will proceeed.
These drawings make me smile. My goal is that you too will smile when the course is running!
I want to be the advocate for drawing, because:
If you only think, your imagination has limited capacity.
If you only paint, you will stop playing and eventually run out of creative ideas.
Drawing is important for any artist and for any human being.
I want my Black Friday campaigns to be inspiring for art-making, and this year my theme is “Black Berry Friday.” It means juicy art journal pages on black paper. I am pretty sure you have one like my black and square Dylusions Creative Journal(affiliate link).
I use my black art journal for using up old supplies that don’t inspire me anymore. And if I have leftover paint on a palette, I make a few brush strokes on a page rather than toss the paint away. This floral page was born from those kinds of careless strokes and now, much later, I finished it with paint markers.
Edges and Banners
Usually, the center of the page is the most important area, but for banners, the edges need to draw attention. Here, the circular floral design, enhances the center text area beautifully.
I made the banner in Photoshop, and boosted the colors a bit.
I also drew a long rectangle of cherries that not only makes a great banner but also looks great on the journal. I think we treat art journal pages too often as one unit when a page could be divided in sections and thus bring more variation to the journal.
My banner wasn’t long enough for all the purposes, so I made it longer by duplicating the design in Photoshop.
Colored Pencils on Black Art Journal Pages
I like to use colored pencils with paint markers. Marker pens produce thick and opaque shapes but colored pencils are softer and more translucent. Colored pencils are great for backgrounds. Look at these stripes!
I also used gel pens to add thin lines.
Again, I became more interested in the background than the center. The center is not very elegant, but here, in the banner you mostly see the edges.
Doodling on Black Art Journal Pages
My Black Friday offer is simple: All classes are 20% OFF. So I wanted the banners have some simplicity too. Doodling circles is easy and doesn’t require much thinking.
I got a bit carried away though!
I was talking on the phone and watching a movie while doodling, and once I stopped, I thought that I doodled too much. But the banner looks great and of course, there can’t be too much of anything in art!
Designs for Fabric
I got so inspired making these pages, that I had to play with Photoshop a bit more than necessary. I combined many pages into one design and I think something like this would make a great fabric.
Black Over Painted Background
I have been contemplating whether I should use both sides of the pages on my black art journal. Using only one side would give a blank page to protect the art on the opposite page. But the journal looks much more inspiring when both pages are covered!
Here’s one more idea for an art journal page, and this works on any journal. When you have painted backgrounds, use dark marker or paint on top to make shapes from the background.
I wanted to make one banner that has fall and thanksgiving themes with berries. The page became a bit busy, but again, the banner is ok, I think!
This week, I want to talk about colored pencils and coloring without limits. You can color without a preconceived idea, without outlines, and without sketching.
You only need to feel drawn to one color first. Recently, purple-blue has called me.
What to Draw?
Have you ever been thinking about what to draw when everything in the world seems to be drawn already? Maybe you too have wondered whether you draw a face, a bird, or a flower, and if so why. But there is always a secret path in art – the possibility to deviate from the traditional path at the very beginning and see what appears on paper freely.
I keep my pencils organized by color. All brands are mixed in one box. Some are watercolor pencils, some are regular, and all of them are in the same mix.
Just Start! – Two Tips
Bring the pencils to a place where you can see them often. And then …”Just start!”
Sometimes it’s easier said than done. When getting started feels like a chore, I have two tips for you.
First, let the color do the talking. Pick a pencil and examine it’s tone. Color lightly first, and then bring in more layers. Every color has a spirit. Connect with it like it’s your pet or an angel. You don’t need to rationalize why you feel drawn to this or that color. Find the pencil that resonates the best with your current self.
Second, give the color at least two other colors as friends. Often one color is very little, but when it’s side by side with two other colors, art will appear. A shape that has only one color is flat but with two other colors, it becomes much more lively.
Colored Pencils Say This All The Time
I know many colored pencils complain that they always have to create something figurative and realistic. They envy paints who can roam freely on paper and how people only smile at their tricks. Colored pencils are too often squeezed tightly and pressed hard against paper at the very beginning. They have to follow strict discipline and are under pressure to produce something that looks real. And when they try to do exactly as they are told, the result is stiff. “Nothing like what can be achieved with paints,” their owners say which makes the pencils sad. If they could choose they would be coloring without limits.
I believe in free education when it comes to colored pencils: “Make what you want and enjoy!” I often say to them. “Imagine that you are something more than just pencils!”
My pencils jump out of their boxes and do all kinds of silly marks. They are like paints.
Without Limits – Imagine You Are More!
In art, it is terribly important that we imagine to be more than what we are. Be more skillful, more innovative, more unique, and more important. Then, at that very moment, the pencils, life, and fantasy cannot be separated. The colors speak inside us and the art steps in.
Love of Coloring Without Limits
When I was a child, colored pencils often kept me company. They still bring me joy and I want to keep staying their advocate.
