Art Journal With Me: An Hour of Making, Messing Up, and Finding Quiet

Hey friend.

I've been sitting on my studio floor for the last hour, journal open, paint smeared across my palm, and I wanted to bring you into this moment.

Sometimes the best art journal sessions aren't the ones where you make something beautiful. They're the ones where you make something at all. So this is me, just... making. Messing up. Changing my mind. Staring at the page. Starting again.

I thought you might want to see it. All of it.

4:15 PM — Starting With a Mess

I've had this spread sitting in my journal for three days. It started as a watercolor wash in a color I immediately hated — this muddy brownish-purple that looked like... nothing. Like sludge. I tried to fix it by painting over it with white gesso, but I was too impatient and the gesso mixed with the still-damp watercolor underneath, creating these streaky gray patches that looked like dirty snow.

Most people would have torn the page out.

I let it dry and closed the book.

Today, I opened it again. The gray patches are still there. They're not going anywhere. So I decided: this is where we start.

4:23 PM — The First Layer

I grabbed my glue stick and started tearing pages from an old magazine I found in the recycling pile. I don't even know what magazine it was — something about gardening, I think. I tore out a photo of hands holding soil, some green leaves, a scrap of text that said "bloom where you are planted."

The thing about collage in art journaling is that you can cover up almost anything. That muddy gray wash? It's just texture now. A background for whatever comes next.

I glued down the soil photo first, slightly crooked. I thought about straightening it, then stopped myself. Crooked is honest. My hands are crooked when I'm not paying attention to being perfect.

Over the soil photo, I layered a piece of green leaf pattern paper. The edges didn't line up. I left them messy.

4:38 PM — Writing Words I Didn't Plan

I picked up my white Gelly Roll pen and started writing without knowing what I'd say. This is the scary part of art journaling — the moment where your hand moves and your brain isn't controlling it yet.

I wrote:

"I've been trying to fix things that aren't broken. I've been trying to be a better version of myself when maybe I just need to be this version. Messy. Gray in places. Still growing."

The handwriting is terrible. My lines aren't straight. The pen skipped in places, leaving gaps in the letters. I wrote over the skipped spots, making the words thicker, messier.

It looks like someone crying wrote it. Maybe someone was.

4:51 PM — Adding Paint I Was Afraid Of

There's this magenta watercolor I bought six months ago and have barely touched. It's loud. It doesn't match anything in my usual palette of blues and greens and soft neutrals. Every time I open my paint box, I see it sitting there, still wrapped in plastic, and I think "not today."

Today I pulled off the plastic.

I wet my brush and touched it to the pan, and the color came out shockingly bright. Almost fluorescent. I stared at it for a second, then made three dots on the page.

Too much.

I took a wet paper towel and smeared the dots until they became soft pink washes, bleeding into the collage underneath. Better. Still bold, but not screaming.

I added a few more touches — magenta mixed with the green to make a murky brown in the corners, magenta touched lightly over the white words so they glowed pink in places. The page suddenly had energy it didn't have before. That one scary color changed everything.

5:02 PM — The Part Where I Almost Stop

Here's something real: I almost called this page done ten minutes ago. It looked balanced. The colors worked together. The words were there.

But something felt missing.

I sat with the page for a while, just looking at it. This is the meditative part of art journaling that nobody talks about — the staring. The being with. The not knowing what's next and being okay with that not-knowing.

I made some tea. Came back. Still didn't know.

So I picked up a black Stabilo pencil and started making marks. Little dashes around the edges. Some circles. A few lines that didn't mean anything. Pattern-making without purpose.

And somehow, those random marks pulled everything together. The page felt complete — not because it was perfect, but because it felt true.

5:12 PM — Looking at What I Made

The spread I'm looking at now is... a lot.

There's the original muddy wash, still visible in places. The crooked collage pieces. The messy handwriting with gaps in the letters. The magenta that scared me, now softened and integrated. The black marks that didn't plan to be there.

It's not beautiful in the way Instagram art journals are beautiful. It's not something I'd frame. If you saw it without context, you might think it was a practice page, a mistake, something to cover up.

But it's honest.

And I keep thinking about that phrase — "bloom where you are planted." I glued it on there randomly, just because I liked the words, but now it means something. This page bloomed from mud. From gray. From impatience and cheap glue sticks and a color I was afraid to use.

It bloomed because I kept going when it would have been easier to stop.

What This Hour Gave Me

I started this session feeling anxious — that low-grade hum of worry that's been sitting in my chest for days. Work stress. Life stress. The general February feeling of being in-between, not quite winter anymore, not quite spring yet.

I didn't solve anything. The stress is still there. The uncertainty is still there.

But I spent an hour making something with my hands. I made marks on paper. I layered colors and words and meaning until the anxiety had somewhere else to live for a little while.

That's what art journaling does. It doesn't fix you. It doesn't cure anxiety or solve problems. It just... holds space. It gives your hands something to do while your heart settles down.

If You Want to Try This

You don't need the magenta watercolor. You don't need gesso or collage materials or fancy pens.

You need:

• A page that feels like a mistake
• Permission to cover it up or work with it
• Something to make marks with
• The willingness to not know what you're doing

Start there. Cover something up. Write words without planning them. Pick a color that scares you and use just a little bit.

Let it be ugly. Let it be messy. Let it be unfinished.

Let it be yours.

Before You Go

I want to see your messy pages. Your unfinished pages. Your "I almost tore this out" pages.

Post them. Share them. Tag me or don't — keep them private if that feels safer. But make them. Make the ugly things. Make the honest things.

There's no wrong way to fill a page. There never was.

I'm going to keep sitting here with my journal for a little while longer. Maybe start another page. Maybe just look at this one and breathe.

Thanks for sitting with me.

— Renna