Art Journaling--No Boundaries

How did it get to be November 3? It's raining here in Tennessee that slow, rhythmic rain that mesmerizes and teases one into doing less than one already does. Of course, that never happens to me. :-)

I've worked on my Sketchbook Project some.  (I will update on that later and put up some pictures and let you know about the process--the process which intrigues me.)

The Art Journal

But today I am thinking about art journaling--how freeing it can be. A friend from Georgia who is an excellent artist and writer purchased a small Moleskine journal and began allowing herself to play and draw and express with no boundaries. I wish I had her art journal to share. Viewing her journal is like stepping into a realm of creative magic, color, mystery and fun.

This is the joy of art journaling--being able to try on the page anything and have a mini-idea of what the result will be like if you decide to make it into bigger art.

Mostly for me, however, what happens in my art journal, stays in my art journal. Not because it is bad--my art journal is actually a place I put few judgments on myself--but because the idea of freeing oneself to doodle or make spastic art is like alchemy, burning a sacred element between the creator and the page.

No longer is it necessary to have approval of the other. I am the other.

Like my friend in Georgia, I purchased the small Moleskine journal and began a creative forage on the pages. The journal sits on my night table. When I stare at its hard black cover, the elastic band keeping the pages secure, the little pieces of stuff sticking out from the pages, I am happy. I don't have to venture inside the pages to be happy--simply the act of free association with the journal and creative freedom starts a quicker heartbeat for me.

God made people to create. So many of us don't do it or think we can't do it or say, "The only thing I can draw is a stick figure." But each of us can draw if we allow ourselves--just as each of us can write if we believe we can and if we do it.

Dan Price, The Moonlight Chronicles

Maybe you have heard of Dan Price, author of The Moonlight Chronicles. If you haven't, check him out. He wrote a small book called How to Create a Journal of Your Life. Sometimes when I was teaching I would use one of his exercises with my composition classes. I'm not sure if I've written about this exercise in a hub before. If I have, skip this part.

Price is quite the eccentric. He resides in Oregon. His home is an eight foot round hole he constructed in the ground. His goal is to live as simply as possible and peacefully. He's been published in Backpacker and many other publications.

On his travels about the country, he would venture into quaint cafes. Inevitably, he'd convince someone to draw a rendition of the salt shaker on the table. He would ask them to draw it into his journal and, of course, sign it.

Price mentioned how resistant folks were about drawing. "I can't draw." And on and on. What Price found from his salt shaker experiment is that once people started drawing, they were fine--and once they were fine, they created a salt shaker uniquely their own. No one drew the salt shaker the same.

Of course you might say, "Well he was in different places using different salt shakers."

True.

The Salt Shaker Experiment

So I tried this on my students to prove the point of the uniqueness of our writing, drawing, creative voice.

I'd pull a small empty salt shaker out in class and ask the students to draw a copy of it in their journals. I figured we'd have 26 salt shakers matching the other. But it was magic. No salt shaker--even though they were drawing from the same object--looked like. Each student had their own "artistic take" on the shaker and it came across in their drawing.

Once they'd finished we showed them to each other. The kids were as amazed as I was. They were amazed how different the salt shakers looked--yet none of them "bad."

That difference should be welcomed, not stifled. That difference transfers to the blank page, canvas, or any creative endeavor. That difference makes us interesting.

I encouraged the students to write the same way they drew that salt shaker--to always make the words their own--to always honor the difference of their being--to relish in it.

Dan Price had to dig a hole to live in to do it. We also must do whatever our heart requires to be the creative souls The Divine intended us to be.

The art journal I began provided a place I could draw fifty salt shakers if I wanted and no one would say, "I don't like that one--it looks too salty." Or whatever. The art journal provided a place of artistic hope--a place where random becomes the propelling engine to creativity.

The Creative Endeavor

It has been said that one of the requirements of living a full life includes particiapating in creative work each day. I agree. It's like doing the crossword puzzles to keep the mind sharp but instead you write that poem about how cotton candy tasted when you were eight or draw that sketch of how the sun casts a golden sheen across sage brush in the south at dusk--artistic puzzles to keep us healthier in and out.

You don't have to dig a hole and live in it as Dan Price has done to find the originality of who you are. You don't even have to draw a salt shaker. But there is undeniably a call within each of us to further our creative nature.

The only thing I'm asking you to do is answer that call--no boundaries--just be you.