Tips to have fun with your art journal even if you aren’t an artist!

So, if you have followed my blog and instagram long enough, you might know that I am not an artist. Last year, I decided that I will start with an art journal and fill up atleast one journal but as resolutions go, I could not even fill one.

But this year, I decided to fill it up finally.

My art journal isn’t something that has a lot of artsy drawings in it. It is very simple and I just love having fun with it. I love colors for one and I love them on a paper, two.

So, following are the tips to have fun with your art journal even if you aren’t an artist :

1. If you are someone who has no idea about handlettering or calligraphy just like me, do not worry…

All you got to do is write in your own handwriting and make it really windy and casual. I assure you that it definitely will look good if you know how to work around it.

And if you think your handwriting is really bad…you can do one more thing.

Copy! There are tons of fonts on pinterest and they are easy too! Just copy the whole thing down.

Just like this one. I copied the quotes written on the brown paper from pinterest. They were the same font.

2. If you do not know how to draw faces, don’t draw them!

This is another thing that I would advise you guys. Many of us love to be creative but don’t know how to be the “standard creative”. Well, that is not a problem at all. You can just do what you feel like.

There are many beautiful art journals with tons of art works on them but you don’t have to have that because your art journal is gonna represent you. So, have fun with it.

Instead of drawing people or faces, you can cut out stuff from magazines which you think would look good and paste them wherever you feel like.

Believe me, it doesn’t look half bad.

3. Just because it says “art” journal does not mean you cannot have crafts, right?

There is one thing I love about my journal and that is…the fatter it gets, the prettier it looks. So, I try to make it fatter.

The above picture shows a swirl made of a piece of clothing. I painted the creases. Pinned it to the paper with glue and painted around it to look like night sky.

On the other side of it, I painted the page with some spilled pink paint and colored around it with crayons and pasted a few cutouts from a magazine.

It is that simple, guys!

You can make a swirl. A flower. A bow. Anything! Just let your fingers do whatever they want with the material.

And I do it with waste. It is not some cloth that I specifically bought for the journal.

So, make art out of waste.

4. There is one thing that you should know… vibrant colors can make your journal look very pleasing.

This is something that I learnt out of first hand experience. I usually tend to use really bright and vibrant colors on my journal. Usually, orange, magenta, yellow, bright green (do not use grass green a lot, it makes the page look dull), red, bright blue.

If you decide to use brown, it is still fine but make sure you don’t use too much of it.

Again, it is only my opinion.

5. Last and final thing : Do not give up and do not be too scared to pick up that paintbrush.

If you don’t let your mind wander, you would never know what you can do. So, pick up that paintbrush & marker, go ahead and do wonders. Even if you screw it up, it is okay. Work around it. Try to make it look better. If you make a splotch on the paper, cover it up with a crafty bow or with a cute cut out.

Now, let’s discuss the things I personally use for my journal :

1. A journal. I got it from amazon and it is super amazing. Believe me, guys! The pages are thick and just enough for you to fill for a month or more. Link is below.
2. A black marker. I use it for lettering, of course and it looks very cool on your colors.
3. Brown paper. Brown paper makes it easy for you to pen down things. It makes a great background to write and you do not have to worry about ink seeping through to the other side of the page.
4. Acrylic or water colors. I used to use water colors but now, I have switched to acrylic because acrylic paint gives you a shine after it dries up and it looks way better than water colors.
5. Paintbrush. You are working with paint here. So, you got to have a brush. Although it is fun to paint with fingers too, let’s not do that often, right?
6. Crayons/ color pencils. I have both crayons as well as color pencils to color my journal wherever I would like to and it really helps you with be more creative.
7. Magazines. I usually use magazines with lots of pictures on it. It helps a lot to cover up my mistakes and when I need to have a more colorful layout on my page. It would work great if the magazines have glossy pages to work with.
8. Stapler/glue. For obvious reasons.
9. Waste. Lots of it. You can be as creative as you want with the things that you already have.
10. Tape. You can use artsy tapes with glitters, colors and characters on it to make your journal look cute and shiny.

So, that’s about it. I hope you enjoyed reading this and I hope you would try journaling on your own.

Thank you so much for reading. 🙂

Get your journal here…

Doodle Day in your Life Typo Diary Notebook – A5, 80GSM, 200 Pages (Yellow)“><a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B00PGZPRV6/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=3638&creative=24630&creativeASIN=B00PGZPRV6&linkCode=as2&tag=kittyreadsand-21&linkId=e320251cf9ecfed01497a49e9aad3134″>Doodle Day in your Life Typo Diary Notebook – A5, 80GSM, 200 Pages (Yellow)</a><img src=”//ir-in.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=kittyreadsand-21&l=am2&o=31&a=B00PGZPRV6″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />

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