The Painted Art Journal

Take a mixed-media journey to the very heart of your creativity! The Painted Art Journal opens doors to your most personal and authentic art yet. Tell your story as only you can, through a series of guided projects that culminate in a beautiful, autobiographical art journal worthy of passing along to future generations. Along the way, you will hone your own unique style of artful storytelling, filled with the images, colors and symbols that resonate most powerfully with you. Twenty-four inventive, step-by-step prompts help you to: • Set the scene for making art--from establishing rituals that unlock creativity to curating a personal storyboard. • Draw inspiration from photos, typography, sketches, childhood memories, quotes and more. • Shape your story with timelines, gathered-word poetry and simple approaches to portraits. • Express yourself through an exciting range of mixed-media techniques, using everything from pen and ink, markers and watercolor to image transfers, printmaking with linocuts, acrylic and collage. A book unlike any other, The Painted Art Journal is all about digging deeper, honoring your life, and coming away with a truer understanding of yourself and your art. "Each of our stories is so different, lovely and broken in its own way." --Jeanne Oliver

Gather Your Art Journal Supplies: • Journal • Pens • Paint • Courage! Discover the techniques and courage you need to journal bravely! With Dina's help, you'll begin by working through any fears you have of using your own handwriting. You'll get journaling prompts and techniques to help you develop a handwriting style you'll love and words you'll want to write! Then, you'll move onto drawing: you'll learn not only how to train your hand, but also how to appreciate your own unique drawing ability. As you continue through the eight chapters, you will learn additional mixed-media techniques to help you overcome your fears of new materials, using photos of yourself, creating layers, working without a plan and much more. Put your worries aside and create fearlessly! You'll find: • Eight common journaling fears dispelled • Twenty techniques to give you art journal courage • Dozens of colorful art journal pages to inspire your own art

Over 1,000 journal pages presented in one beautiful full-color book Journals offer their makers a safe place to dream, doodle, rant, and reinvent themselves. They offer viewers rich, visual inspiration. There is a fascination with these revealing and often beautiful pages of self-exploration and personal expression. Journals offer a tantalizing, voyeuristic view of an interior life. This would be the first book to offer examples of over 1000 journal pages in one eye-catching, visual format, and would attract a wide swathe of artists who fully embrace or experiment with this medium. Journaling has seeped into popular culture in a big way and this collection provides a wide array of ideas, techniques and themes to inspire and inform mixed media and journaling enthusiasts.

The real news of our lives is not in newspapers. We must chronicle our own adventures and achievements, our brilliant observations and our comic relief, our best friends and our greatest embarrassments. Visual Chronicles is all about YOU: your dreams, your memories, your daily routines, your greatest loves and your secret pet peeves. It's all about getting to know yourself better, savoring the wonderful ebb and flow of your everydays, and celebrating it all in visual mementos of your life journey. Sound fun? Heck, yes! Sound hard? Not a bit. Each chapter of Visual Chronicles quiets common fears such as "Nothing happens in my life." or "I'm just not artistic." with projects such as the "My Day Unfolds Journal", and "Experiments with Composition." Inside, you'll learn that journaling doesn't take big chunks of time - just bits and pieces here and there, whenever the spirit strikes. "Get Going" exercises offer instant ideas such as listening to the conversations you have with yourself or recognizing that meaningful ephemera is a part of each and every day. Soon, you'll see that inspiration awaits all around you: a midnight trip to the store, a favorite scarf, an unexpected phone call, junk email, your breakfast plate . . . Don't wait another second. Make creative journaling a part of your everyday life, busting through self-doubt, time clocks, piles of laundry, and every other roadblock along the way. With Visual Chronicles, you'll be inspired to tell your story the way only you can!

Expressive Sketchbooks shares a host of creative ideas and prompts, tools and techniques, methods for working around obstacles and barriers, and tons of visual inspiration to help you grow in your sketchbooking practice. An expressive sketchbook is a place for you to explore, express, and enjoy your own innate creativity on your own terms. It is a safe playground for the imagination—a place to mess about, play, and experiment—and to gain confidence in your abilities as you develop your skills. Expressive Sketchbooks offers techniques and creative exercises that incorporate mark making, watercolor, mixed media, collage, words and text, and more. It unpacks some of the obstacles and barriers that you may face along the way and offers wisdom and encouragement to help you decide why and how to start your sketchbook and how to develop and expand your artistic practice. This book is packed with ideas and exercises, including: Exploratory drawing exercises How to utilize color in your sketchbook How to create dynamic and varied sketchbook pages How to find inspiration in nature and in your everyday life Ways to mix media and art supplies Ways to kickstart your creativity How to find and develop a process that feels personal to you Through this book, you'll find out what lights you up, what makes you curious and fascinated, and what makes you expansive. Discover how to magnify your creativity and enliven your art skills by using an expressive sketchbook as your daily companion.

HANDICRAFTS, DECORATIVE ARTS & CRAFTS. An ideabook can be many things: a keepsake; a work of art; a source of inspiration; a method of organisation; a collection of memories; a way to store recipes or patterns; a genealogical journal; a wedding planner or just a peek inside the chaos and creativity of our own mind! With Arne and Carlos's wit, style and trademark handcrafting genius to guide you, this book will show you how to make and enjoy your own ideabook. There is guidance on the materials and tools you need and detailed, step-by-step demonstrations showing you everything from sewing the pages together to gluing the spine and creating the cover. There are numerous examples of different types of ideabook, including Christmas, Children's, Cooking, Garden, Sewing and Travel Ideabooks, providing all the ideas and inspiration you need to make your own special keepsake.

Kiss those excuses goodbye! "I don't have time." "I don't know what to journal about." "I can't keep the momentum going." Sound familiar? What are your excuses for not spending time with your art journal? Get ready to cast those excuses aside because Gina Rossi Armfield's No Excuses Art Journaling offers a no-fail approach to art journaling. Using a day planner as your art journal, you'll find daily, weekly and monthly prompts that you can adapt to fit your real-life, busy schedule. Along the way, you'll learn fun and convenient techniques to add sketching, watercolor painting, collage and more into your journal, all while setting goals, creating art and chronicling your unique life. Inside You'll Find: • More than 20 mixed-media art journaling techniques demonstrated step-by-step so you can add color, style and life ephemera to your journal. • 6 pages of journaling prompts and tips for every month of the year. • Dozens of inspirational art journal pages by Gina and 12 guest artists to show how you can make the No Excuses program decidedly yours. Grab your journal and pen, and kick your excuses to the curb!

Art Journal Color! Art Journal Composition! Art Journal Freedom! Color is all around us and we often find ourselves drawn to particular combinations or arrangements. But how can you effectively and artistically capture those eye-catching compositions in your art journal? It's true, art journaling has no "rules" and is a safe place for free expression of your one-of-a-kind life. But knowledge is power and knowing the "rules" of color and composition gives you the freedom to use and break them willfully to create the effects you want. Dina shares these principles in a fun and approachable way with dozens upon dozens of unique journal pages to show you just some of the many possibilities. Inside You Will Find: • Lessons and tips about composition and color including dominance and repetition, symmetry, contrast and the power of black and white. • 10 step-by-step technique demonstrations. • Dozens of color and design tips and page challenges.