This was the second page I made, and it’s actually in the front of my journal. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by my  lovely blank journal, not knowing what to do in it, so I used a prompt I found on the internet by Sarah Whitmire at  www.souljournaling.com

As I was so new to the process it was great to just be told exactly what to do. First I photocopied some dictionary pages, stuck them down and wrote over them in pencil about how I felt about starting a journal. Then I gessoed over them.  I found a black and white picture of a knight (Sarah gives a link to a site with the pictures) to represent the protector of my creativity. He is there in the front of my journal protecting me from criticism form others and especially from myself. I wrote some words on the knight indicating what qualities I would need to be creative in my journal.

On the facing page we were instructed just to write our own name in different ways, but I also decided to add some photos of myself at different ages, which I had first made a sepia colour using photoshop. Sarah had used Walnut ink on her knight picture and I loved the effect so I found some walnut ink at the art supply shop and  copied her idea, shading around the edges of the paper and of the knight. I love the aged effect it gives and it tones in nicely with the sepia photos.

I was happy with these pages and felt that I was off to a flying start with my art journal.