October 7th, 2024.

What a difficult year. This beautiful process, Visual Journaling, literally saved me this year. Unlike journaling with words, the act of downloading to a page marks, colors, and forms directly sources the experience of our soul and our body, way more directly than words can. This is not to suggest abandoning a writing, other practice, or therapy, only that there is a direct way to access our inner experience, one that we don’t/can’t always contact with our minds.

You do not need to know how to draw. I repeat YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW HOW TO DRAW! This is paradoxically as important for a professional artist as for someone who feels they don’t have a creative bone in their body. If there is a hard part, it’s not looking at this as art at all. To suspend the inner critique for just awhile and see what the part of you it’s harder to access has to say. 

Remember this is a download, a data drop, an image dump if you will. The point is to get the experience you are having out onto the paper. As with speaking and writing we understand our experience better when we express it. This doesn’t mean you will understand what it is you are trying to say before you start or that you will understand what it is you are ‘saying’ after you finish, or that you ever have to. But you will have given a deeper source a chance to ‘speak’. 

You can go very big with this or small. The above series I made while in Jerusalem. Since I was traveling I took 6 x 6 inch blocks, 4 of them (when the paints are out and I’m on a roll I can’t wait for a page to dry nor should you). I like Fluid watercolor paper, it is on the less expensive end. I find watercolors and inks flow better on hot press paper and color can be more easily lifted than on cold press, try both. You can use any medium (paint, ink, markers, crayons, colored pencils, charcoal, pastels, fingerpaints, fabric, collage, etc …Crayola makes a washable watercolor set that is cheap and vibrant). 

Right now I love working with watercolors and water soluble inks. Water helps with flow. There’s mystery in it. It’s hard to predict. It makes things interesting! That’s the one guarantee here …you will find what you make interesting. All the more so if you don’t try to make it beautiful or impose any standard or criteria on the outcome. Generate enough pages, and there will surely be ones that do satisfy you visually as well. You can go back into the ones that you deem less successful later if you like. But wait a bit. Don’t show them to anyone. Put them in an envelope or a drawer for a while. 

PLAY! Expand your sense of what colors do with each other. And develop new marks (the easiest way is to use your non-dominant hand). I have accumulated a lot of art supplies over the years and I do not intend to die with any if I can help it. I encourage you to be generous towards yourself, not spare or stingy with the color, or the paper. If you like me have trouble adding more paper into the world this can be a challenge, but your mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being is more important.

I am grateful to have been introduced to visual journaling by the wonderful Uma Sanghvi, who showed me it is a form of meditation.

The workbook and guide Visual Journaling, explains the process in more depth. The authors also have YouTube videos. But don’t wait! Right now go gather whatever supplies you can find lying around. Choose a surface. Find some paper any paper. (A friend actually used soy sauce and blue pastel on paper towel). Let it rip! 

Feel free to drop me an eMail if you have questions or thoughts. If you want to talk more, reference this post and I will cut my hourly prices in half for a first coaching session.

Treat yourself to the gorgeous documentary: The Colour of Ink.