A Page From My Personal Art Journal

Hello Arty Peeps - Lynne here today with my August project for the Susan Weckesser creative team over at the My Sweet Earth blog.  This month the creative team is challenging you (and ourselves) to "Explore Your World With New Eyes" and to use your Art Journal to record your findings. So my project today is something a bit different from my usual stuff, because I am sharing with you a page from my personal Art Journal.

Now Art Journals are many things to many people, but to me my Art Journal is the place I go to create without barriers, where I remove all my "should's" and "have to's" and I just create from my heart.  It is private, it is personal and I don't usually share... because for me there is NO wrong way in my Art Journal.  I remove all the internal pressure to "make it pretty" and I allow only me and my inner guide to "speak".  I work on instinct, I try not to think and I go wherever my inner guide leads me without trying to question her too much.  (I am actually practicing creating without questioning her at all - but baby steps!)

My Art Journal is also a way to allow my inner voice - my angel voice - my God voice to direct me, because, you see, I don't actually have an Inside-my-head voice - I think in pictures. No, Really! Inside my head I see an unending stream of photos and when I speak out loud what I am doing is trying to find words for those images.  That's why, sometimes, I seem a wee bit distracted when I am talking, or there is a long pause as I try to find words to fit the images, or I talk REALLY fast because I am trying to keep up with the movie playing in my head. (TMI?)  No, I am not crazy! Just Different. (Grin) 

But when I discovered Art Journaling I also discovered a way to allow my inner self to speak to me in a language I could understand.  And for me, each step in the process of creating a journal page, beginning with applying the base color and ending with doodling in pen to finish off the page, is a conversation with my Inner Guide or Art Muse or God.

So I just want you to know that making the decision to share this page with you was/is scary and personal and REAL and I had to work very hard at remaining true to myself and my process and to not worry if what I was creating was pretty enough.  I had to throw some pretty hard punches to get that inner critic to stop bugging me! (Smiling here)

But as I created these pages Spoke To Me and I realized that I have created a cage made of Fear around my Artistic Voice.  Fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of not being Good Enough, just plain old unfounded FEAR.

And then I realized that sharing this page with all of you was a way to overcome that FEAR and was a necessary part of my Journey on my path of Making ART For Me.  And that I have to stop holding myself back, questioning my instincts and second guessing what Other People want or will say.  I need to Just Create from my inner artistic heart and soul.  

And the final lesson was realizing that actually I Have All The Power.  It really is up to me what I do, what I don't do and what I share... So I am Doing THIS and Sharing THIS!

As always thank you for popping in to see what I am up to and please do leave me a comment if you like what you see!
  Artistic Scrapbook Lynne Mizera
for the Susan Weckesser Creative Team

Susan Weckesser Products used on this project:

Bouquet Card Stock

At Ground Level Unity Stamps

Autumn Grunge Unity Stamps