Into the Unknown

Art journaling challenge - Page 4

OK, it’s time to share a new page of my journal! In my previous post I’ve shared a video showing you all the pages I have yet to fill, and you might remember an almost black one, which only had some dark left-over paint (Raw Umber + Black) from a time when I painted the sides of a canvas. There was just a small patch of light left in a corner, and the whole story of this page unfolded from there…

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.

In my art, there is often a dance between Light and Shadow (which is something we explore in my online class Layers of Light). So my first impulse here was of course to bring back some light. I had no idea what the page would be about, at this stage it felt like a dark void, a little intimidating (I almost never begin with a dark background) but also intriguing and full of possibility (I love exploring something new!). One morning when I was not in the best of moods, I grabbed the journal and a white pen, curled up on the sofa and just poured my heart out on the page.

I find that one of the most healing processes in art is to work my way up from shadow to light. It never fails to lift my spirits and shift my energy, and this is definitely what happened here. At some point I even realized that it felt like I was writing with light. The page started to feel lighter, and so did I!

Then I took my journal back to the studio. I knew that this journey from shadow to light would be part of the story that was starting to unfold. In the top left corner, where the white page was still showing through, the brown brushstrokes had a bit of a circular movement. I followed that and almost immediately this big bright “moon” appeared!

I had some white ink left so I started dabbing with my fingers over the writing to make it less readable (especially since I knew I was going to share this), and it felt like sparkles and stars were pouring over the page. Each layer of light made me feel better and better…

And then it all went pretty fast. I became so deeply immersed in the process that I even forgot to take process pictures… sorry! At first, I felt that this brownish black was very earthy, and I needed to add a horizon or something to evoke the Earth under the moon. I found one of the very few black collage papers in my collection: a piece of Christmas wrapping paper with a simple, very graphic line of fir trees on it.

I added it to the page and it started to evoke a wintery landscape. I blended the edges of this piece of paper by adding more dark to the night sky and ended up covering a good portion of the words.

At that point it felt very still and there was this dark void again between the Earth and the Moon, so I built on the white dots to create a halo. It started to feel as though the Moon was reaching out towards the Earth, radiating her soft and beautiful light.

As serendipity would have it, this is the moment when I left the studio so we could take the kids to see Frozen 2… I loved it and came home so inspired, with the song “Into the Unknown” buzzing in my mind. The symbolic meaning of the story, and the lyrics of the song (below) felt so close to what the creative path can often be: that little voice whispering from deep within and far away at the same time, relentlessly calling us towards our truth, our bigger self. The push and pull between our resistance, trying to keep us where we are, and the inner knowing of our soul, calling us again and again until we finally listen, let go and run wildly towards our dreams.

At that point, I knew I wanted to add “someone” to the page, my own little Elsa I guess… I wanted to keep the design very simple, just like the trees and the moon, so I drew her with the same white pen I had used for journaling. I can imagine her whispers waking her in the middle of the night. She’s been running towards that voice, towards the light, suddenly emerging on the page and coming to a halt under the bright orb and the starry sky.

She is contemplating the light, her light, and she is letting it warm her and fill her up. She has let go of the fear. She is finally open and ready to step “into the unknown”.

Yet this “unknown” is not completely unfamiliar. It is part of her and always has been. It was there from the beginning, waiting for her to turn towards the light, say YES and bravely step into the bigger, truest version of herself…

I loved how fast and clearly this page unfolded. I also like how different it is from most of the other pages in my journal and from my usual style. I guess it really took me into the unknown! To me this is part of the magic of the art journal: sometimes it is much easier to open up and try something new here than on a canvas. It is a space of freedom, experimentation and playfulness. Magic is never far away…