Comfortable Shoes Studio's Rules of Art Journaling

So I've been online  alot looking for blogs to link to, art on flickr to post here and watching videos on youtube. In this journey I've been bombarded with adverts for products, workshops, classes, etsy shops, how-to instruction and I've seen an overwhelming number of comments on blogs, youtube and flickr asking a simple question "How do I do this?" What was most concerning to me, other than the startling amount of consumerism that has moved into the art journaling blog-o-sphere and internet were the amount of tutorials on how to build up an image "just like so-and-so's" and also a lot of questions on those same blogs about how to do just that.

From my concern and frustrations I"ve come up with:

The Comfortable Shoes Studio 7 Rules of art Journaling.(TM)

They are as follows:

1. Process NOT results
2. Pages don't have to be pretty.
3. Be wary of sales pitches. (but don't begrudge.)
4. Do a little everyday.
5. Any media/medium is okay.
6. Look for inspiration everywhere.
7. Rules should be broken.

I will over the next few days expound on each of these ideas in a full post. But this is borne of the idea that art journaling should be from inside, art journaling should be free and loose and about exploration. Technique can be taught but the end result should not be. When I was a budding art teacher my mentoring teacher told me that my duty was to shape and mold the kids to make their own art and that I should teach process and method but never the end. I take that idea to the art journals- i can teach people how to make them, how to fill them but I'm not going to tell anyone what to fill them with.

Comments

[Barb]

I love your rules...and the last one rocks! I haven't really thought about my own rules (you know, inwardly) about art journaling and my thoughts about it. What I do know is that art journaling has literally saved my life, not to mention my sanity, and that when I sit down and start a page or spread, I slowly begin to feel at peace. THAT is huge.
Peace & Love,
~Barb~

[Leah]

I like your rules - I've been looking at lots of blogs and tutorials too, and one thing that struck me is that everything is just a *suggestion* but there are no hard and fast rules.

[trish]

great post! I look forward to reading what more you write about the "rules"

[leslie herger]

The last one is key to these 7 rules. IN art journaling there should be no hard and fast rules, but suggestions as Leah says. I don't like it when people say you have to do this and you have to do that. Its paper, pen and whatever on a page. Do what feels good and what works.

[ABCcreativity]

for me #1 is key. i need my journal as a space to process. but i call it "creative journaling" because art journaling does seem to focus a lot on the end result.
thanks for this!

[leslie]

I like creative journaling as a name. Sometimes i think that people get caught up in the fact that it's called ART journaling and it tenses them up. Suziblu went through a phase where she called her journals Life Books" and I liked that a lot.