The Art Journalling Practice That Changed Everything

Back over summer, I realised just how much I missed playing in my art journals.

Not creating for a collection. Not painting for a market. Not worrying about whether something would sell.

Just messing around with paint, making marks on paper, and creating purely for the fun of it.

Around the same time, I was following a few people online who had started daily practices—writing affirmations, gratitude lists, intentions, and mantras.

It got me thinking. What would happen if I created my own practice? One centred around art. So I started an art journalling ritual.

I quickly realised that if it was going to be sustainable, it couldn’t be daily.

I wanted it to feel like a gift, not another thing on my to-do list. Something I looked forward to. Not something that came wrapped in guilt if I missed a day.

So I made a few rules. (of course I did!)

My Art Journalling Rules

1. Create at least three times a week.
With exceptions for holidays, illness, and those inevitable seasons when life gets wonderfully messy.

2. Spend no more than one hour on a page.
When the time is up, the page is finished. Sometimes that hour becomes fifteen minutes. Sometimes it’s the full sixty. Either way, done is done.

3. Words are optional.
I don’t have to focus on a specific affirmation, mantra or theme, but if a word or thought emerges while I’m painting, I write it down.

4. Anything goes.
Any medium. Any technique. Any style. No rules beyond the rules.

5. Share the ugly pages too.
If I was going to share this practice online, I needed to be vulnerable enough to show the pages I didn’t love alongside the ones I did.

Those simple guidelines gave me a freedom I don’t think I’d ever truly experienced in my art practice before.

What surprised me most wasn’t the artwork itself.

It was how grounded I felt.

The process quieted my inner critic, gave my busy brain somewhere to land, and reminded me why I’ve always said art is my sanity.

Even more unexpectedly, it opened the floodgates creatively.

Ideas started arriving more easily.

New collections began taking shape.

Problems I’d been wrestling with seemed to solve themselves while I was busy playing with paint.

The pages themselves became less important than the practice.

I’ve shared many of these journal pages on social media over the years. Sometimes they come with a long explanation about what inspired them. Sometimes just a few words.

And sometimes they’re simply a photograph of a page and nothing more.

What I love most is seeing how people connect with them.

Not necessarily with the artwork itself, but with the feelings behind it. The thoughts that surfaced while painting. The vulnerability. The randomness.

The wonderfully imperfect nature of showing up and creating anyway.

So if you’ve noticed me disappearing from the blog from time to time, this is often why.

And I hate to tell you, but it will probably happen again.

Because if there is ever a choice between writing and making art, I can say with almost complete certainty that art will win every single time.

I’d love to know—have you started a new creative, mindful or joyful practice recently?

And if you’d like to see more of my art journal pages, come and join me on Instagram or Facebook where I share them as they’re painted.

From my whimsy world to yours.