Art Journal With Me: Sunday Night Pages

Hey friend.

It's Sunday evening — that weird in-between time when the weekend is technically over but the week hasn't quite started yet. I don't know about you, but Sunday nights have always felt... fragile to me. Like I'm holding my breath between one thing and the next.

So tonight I'm sitting on my studio floor (the carpet has more paint on it than I'd like to admit), Gesso is snoring in the corner, and I'm going to make some pages with you. No plan. No goal. Just putting things down because my hands need something to do while my brain unwinds from the week.

This is what my journal looks like when nobody's watching.

Page One: The Chaos Page

I started with a page that was already kind of a disaster. Last week I spilled tea on it — you can still see the stain in the corner, all brown and blooming like a bruise. Most people would probably tear that page out. I used to do that too, years ago. Now I just... work with it.

I covered the whole thing with a thin layer of gesso. Not thick — I wanted the tea stain to show through, just muted. Ghosted. While the gesso was still wet, I pressed a crumpled paper towel into it. You know those patterns it makes? Like clouds, or skin, or the inside of something alive.

Then I got out my cheapest watercolors — the $12 Koi set, the one I recommend to everyone who thinks they need expensive paints to start. I didn't think about colors. I just grabbed what felt right. Burnt sienna, because it's warm. Payne's gray, because I've been feeling quiet. A splash of that weird magenta that doesn't really go with anything.

I let them bleed into each other. No control. Just watching where they wanted to go.

The page looks messy. The colors are muddy in places. There's a spot where the paper buckled because I used too much water, and it dried with this ridge that catches the light weird. I love that spot. It's proof that something happened here.

Page Two: The Permission Slip

While the first page dried, I flipped to a fresh spread and just... started writing. Not trying to make it pretty. My handwriting is terrible when I'm not thinking about it — all different sizes, drifting uphill, crossing out words and writing over them.

I wrote: "You don't have to have it figured out."

Then I kept going. "You don't have to be productive. You don't have to have a plan. You can just sit with the mess and that counts as doing something."

After I wrote, I glued in a receipt from the coffee shop where I sat this morning trying to work on something else and failing. The total was $4.85. I remember staring out the window and feeling guilty for not being more... productive? Efficient? Something like that.

Now that receipt is part of this page, and the words are scrawled around it, and it feels like I've turned that guilt into something I can hold. Not solved it. Just held it.

I painted over some of the words with a thin wash so they're barely visible. Secret words. Words that don't need to be read again, just felt.

Page Three: The Collage That Didn't Work

This one... this one is a mess, and I'm showing it to you anyway because that's the whole point.

I found an old botanical illustration in a magazine and thought, "That would be pretty." I tore it out — badly, the edges are all ragged — and glued it down with a glue stick. Then I tried to paint around it. The watercolors bled into the magazine paper because I didn't let the glue dry enough. The green I chose looks sickly against the cream background. The whole thing feels... forced.

I looked at it and thought about covering the whole page in black paint and starting over. Seriously, I had the paint out. I was going to do it.

But instead I wrote in the corner, in Sharpie so I couldn't erase it: "Not every page has to be good. This one wanted to exist like this."

And I left it. The ugly page. The failed collage. The evidence that I tried something and it didn't land where I thought it would.

There's something important about keeping the pages that don't work. They teach you more than the pretty ones. They teach you that you're allowed to make things that aren't beautiful. That the practice isn't about the product. That you're allowed to just... try things.

Page Four: The Breath Page

I needed something calming after that disaster, so I did what I always do when I don't know what to make.

I picked one color. Just one. A soft teal that reminds me of the sage plants on my windowsill.

I wet the whole page with clean water, then dropped the teal in. Watching it spread. Breathing with it. The way the pigment pushes through the water, finding the paths of least resistance, blooming at the edges...

I added a second color while it was still wet — a pale gold, barely there — and watched them touch and retreat and create this soft, hazy place where they meet.

No words on this page. No collage. Just color and water and breath.

Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes that's everything.

I sat with this page for a long time, just looking at it. Not thinking about what to add next. Just... being with it. With myself.

What I'm Learning From Tonight

As I look back through these four pages — the chaos, the permission slip, the failure, the breath — I notice something.

They're not "good" in the way I used to think art was supposed to be good. They're not cohesive. The colors don't match. Some of the pages are literally stained with my mistakes.

But they feel honest. They feel like tonight felt. Messy and uncertain and searching for something soft.

That's the thing about art journaling that nobody tells you when you start. It's not about making beautiful pages. It's about making TRUE pages. Pages that hold what you're actually feeling, even when what you're feeling is messy and unclear and in-between.

Your Turn, If You Want It

If you're reading this and feeling that pull — that urge to put something down on a page — here's what I'm inviting you to try.

Don't plan it. Don't think about making something good.

Just sit with your journal and ask yourself: What do my hands want to do right now?

Maybe they want to scribble. Maybe they want to glue something in. Maybe they want to paint one color across a whole page and watch it dry.

There's no wrong answer. There's no wrong page.

If you make something tonight — messy, pretty, chaotic, calm, failed, perfect — I'd love to see it. Tag me, or just know that I'm sitting on my floor with you, paint under my fingernails, making pages that don't need to be anything other than what they are.

Because that's enough. You're allowed to just make things. No goal, no plan, no pressure.

Just you, and a page, and whatever needs to come out.

Supplies I used tonight:

• Strathmore Visual Journal (mixed media, $8) — Budget option: Canson XL ($5)
• Koi Watercolors ($12) — The only set you really need
• White gesso ($6) — Makes everything possible
• Glue stick ($1) — Basic, but it works
• Sharpie fine point ($2) — For words that need to stay
• A paper towel from the kitchen (free, and full of possibility)

There's no wrong way to do this. There really isn't.

See you in the pages.

— Renna

P.S. — Gesso (the dog, not the supply) just woke up and knocked over my water cup. The corner of this journal is now warped and stained. I'm leaving it. Proof of life, you know?