A Soul Dreams

Art journaling challenge - Page 6

Hello from… my living room! The central heating boiler in our house is right under the studio and we're having it changed at the moment, which means plenty of noise, unpleasant smells and no more heating… So I have made myself a sweet creative nook in the living room where I get a bit of warmth from the fireplace. Funnily enough, I started my art journal by the fire in the living room of our previous home 3 years ago… It feels like completing a circle, as I'm completing the journal.

So this is where I created the page I’m sharing to day, the 6th page in my Art Journaling Challenge! I love the portability of this creative practice so much.

The Art Journaling Challenge:

I’ve decided to finish my current art journal by the end of the year so I can start a brand new one on January 1st! I’ll be sharing the pages each week and you’re invited to follow along. You can even set your own goal to end the year in a creative way!

And to celebrate, I will reopen enrollment for my art journaling class, The Artist & the Journal, in the first week of January too.

Sometimes an art journal page begins with a lot of randomness, but pretty soon I start noticing fragments of a story, or maybe of a question. It doesn’t have to make sense, but it gives me something to work with, something to invite inspiration…

This is exactly how this page started: some quick, random collage to get rid of the blank page (see the video in this post), and then playing with one of my favorite processes: blackout poetry.

At this stage I had no idea what would unfold, but I had a print of tree branches (one of my favorite subjects to photograph) and after the image transfer on the previous page, I felt like playing some more…

The page started to feel really grungy and moody, which, of course, echoed my own mood a little bit. Lately I’m having lots of dreams at night (probably due to the migraine medication I’ve recently started) and for several mornings in a row I had woken up feeling confused and disconnected, with feelings and memories that did not feel “mine” and took a while to shake off.

I love the word “dream” and I’m a dreamer for sure, but definitely not in that sense! The found poetry here happened to be about dreams, so I decided to take a closer look at it and maybe use this journal page to process those uncomfortable feelings.

What caught my attention was the phrase “a soul dreams”. I circled it and it became a starting point to let thoughts unfold as they pleased. The uneasy, fuzzy feeling after waking up from bad dreams feels like not being myself, disconnected from my truth, from my soul. And I started to ponder some slightly silly questions: does the soul dream? or is it another part of me that dreams? And if so, where does my soul go, what does it do when I’m asleep? Is that part of me still awake, watching over me somehow? Or does it have better, bigger things to do that I can’t remember in the morning?…

The other phrase, “that perfect dream will come again” felt hopeful. I know those dreams are just a temporary phase, and they might even be healing in their own way, allowing me to release the stuck energy that has been giving me those headaches. In any case, I like that my journal is a safe space to express even the strangest thoughts without judgement…

I kept building up the page with more circles, like little bubbles of thought drifting up, up and away… I started to feel lighter, so I added some white and a garland of leaves, as though a gentle, healing breeze were blowing over the page. I also started adding more color with drips and droplets in blue and rust tones.

And then, a butterfly landed on the page! The butterfly is my favorite symbol. Whenever it shows up in my art, I know it is bringing me some wise guidance. This one is not the shiny-happy-colorful kind, but it is rising proudly and steadily from darkness to light, maybe after emerging from its cocoon? I like to think of it as a reminder that sleep and rest are necessary to growth and transformation, and that growing our wings requires trust and patience, even if it isn’t always a comfortable process… I journaled with all those thoughts around the butterfly. There can be such relief in writing instead of keeping things locked inside our head. It doesn’t have to make sense or be readable afterwards, it is just so freeing in the moment.

At that stage the journey of this page felt almost complete. It only needed a bit of softness and gentleness to express self-love and hope. So I added touches of my favorite blush pink and light teal colors, and a pinch of gold!

Who knows, maybe there is color on the other side of those wings after all?