The thrilling conclusion to the many moods of the journal! Here are three more "moods" I've found in Journal #11 I felt you may encounter in your own travels.
( Click here to read part one )
The Vent
We all have those days. Work or life throws us a bit too much, and we feel the brunt of bad fortune. Things stack up. Tasks become impossible. We may run home and vent to our loved ones or a close friend, but what if you're stuck in the thick of it, unable to get away?
Your journal is there, ready to listen. And it doesn't say stupid things – in fact, you're always right where your journal's concerned. So grab a pen from the collective pen jar, sit down on a break or at a stoplight, and just go at it. Pour your heart out! Tell your journal all those things you've been meaning to say, want to say, need to say.
The page doesn't need to be pretty or thought-out. Here, I had a simple watercolor-like background I worked on top of. The drawing was a doodle during the Great VIA Taste Test (note the tallies on the top....my official notes as I asked people to taste coffee) at Starbucks in October. Was she colored in when I wrote the page? No! Just a bic pen drawing I stapled in with the store stapler and some writing with a pen I grabbed. (Note: it's a two column layout, I was being “clever.”)
Go back and add some color later, but don't feel as though you need to add a ton. These pages are lovely in their simplicity, and later on, you can have a laugh at how upset you became over something as small as, say, running out of grande/venti lids at a Starbucks during a morning rush.
The Last-Minute
A shorter version of The Vent usually takes place over a messy page meant for something greater (though what that could be, we'll never know). Sometimes, we get interrupted when journaling in the studio, and end up with this great collaged and painted page we totally meant to go back to and never did (time to cook dinner, an appointment you forgot, etc). So it sits in the journal and waits for us to come back to it.
And, of course, distracted, we forget about it until some thought, some sharp emotion, grabs us and brings us to our knees. Searching for a friend, we write messy words on the forgotten page, maybe adding some doomsday illustration (my fearful raindrops, anyone?). Since there's all this space, we can write as large or as small as we want, and usually come back to this page several times over the day (or however long the emotion lasts).
I love the look of these pages, because there's nothing there but raw, true emotion. Beautiful, indeed.
The Semi-Scrapbook
There's no reason your journal shouldn't be like a scrapbook. There are just some events you really want to remember, but your thoughts are bit too personal to put in a scrapbook. Enter the journal! She'll love whatever you have to say, and gets giddy when you show her new friends.
A pre-done page houses this Semi-Scrapbook page. Laid down collage bits act as a natural frame. One thing you'll need to learn when journaling is that sometimes, the content requires you to cover up something you don't want to! On this page, I didn't want to cover the paper behind the photo, but found it was the best place for it. Over the paper it went, and I'm happier for it.
Don't be afraid to write on your photos! They're begging for some alterations themselves, and writing names or pointing to details on the image itself can make it feel way more personal! Here, I point out who is in the picture – my friends and myself – and actually chose this shot for the extra space it afforded me at the top.
But the writing, I think, is what distinguishes it from a scrapbook page. I write about long-held emotions, deeper thoughts, and some personal stuff I wouldn't want to show friends paging through beautiful, clean layouts. There are scribbles and arrows, doodles and mistakes. This is how I want to remember that day – and my art journal offers the perfect hybrid between writing about the day in a social diary and laying out the picture for a visual record.
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And now, I am off to read more magical adventures in Victorian England before an early night (as I work at 4:30am tomorrow!). Check back in the next two days for the next installment of the bookbinding video!