Art Journal Every Day: Getting Out of a Rut

If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here.  All of the previous posts can be found archived here.  Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day!  No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week, use the hashtag #artjournaleveryday so that we can all take a peek.  Even if you're not on social media, you can see everything (from twitter, pinterest, instagram, and facebook) that uses that hashtag here. 

Are you in an art journal rut?  Not particularly liking what you're creating these days?  Not looking forward to opening up your journal every day?  Not feeling like your art journal is a playground?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, I have an amazingly simple solution for you: Change up your supplies.

Seriously.

It's really that simple.  

This is a video of me playing in my art journal with a supply I love but haven't used in a while: Caran d'Ache Neocolor II water soluble crayons (press play or click here to watch the video):

And here is a close-up of the finished portrait:

I turned the video camera on on a whim.  Earlier in the week I had painted the page black and recorded a short clip for my vlog all about which paint I use to paint pages black in my art journal.  I wanted to follow-up on that clip with a video of what I put on the black page.  I was super surprised when (a) I had such a good time doing it, and (b) I was very satisfied with the result.

It made me realize that I have been in a rut!  

It's not the first time. I often get into a rut and I almost never realize it until I'm headed out of the rut!  This is true even though the same thing kicks me out of the rut every single time: changing up my supplies.

I tend to leave my journal on my desk and use whatever is at hand on the pages.  Sometimes this is great -- it's efficient, it's easy, and it means that I journal almost every day.  However, it can lead to creative stagnation.  Looking through my journals, I can see a few (fairly) recent examples of rut-breaking with new supplies:

In 2013 I started playing around with using a Permapaque Marker to draw in my journal instead of a paintbrush.  The permanence of the marker scared and thrilled me.  Watch my drawings advance:

2013:

2014:

2017:

Starting with a black background was a new idea to me in 2014:

Drawing on top of magazine images became a new obsession in 2015:

I started making lace pages in 2016 by cutting up my pages with a craft knife:

Most of the time, these rut-breaking supplies -- markers, black gesso, magazine images, craft knife -- enter into my regular rotation where, ironically, they can become part of the problem for better or worse.  But soon enough a new supply emerges and I'm off on a new tangent!

I'm glad to be on my way out of my current rut.  How about you?  Are you in a rut?  Or do you have a current supply obsession?  I'd love to know!

Thanks for stopping by!