Art Journal Joy: Seeking Progress Over Perfection

Lately, my art journaling hasn't been very satisfying. It has been driven mainly by the need for a blog post about art journaling. While that's been forcing to make something each week, I haven't always enjoyed the process or liked the final page.

I feel like I need a project that helps me improve a skill that I can use in my art journaling. It needs to be a daily project like sketching or lettering or faces or watercolor flowers. I've been thinking about this idea and yesterday I made the decision to follow through and pick a project and start it and work on it daily for the month of August.

So, I cut some sheets of watercolor paper to 6x8" and stamped the date on each one. I decided to spend 10 minutes each day practicing watercolor flowers because it's something that I have been enjoying this summer and there is so much to learn.   Thankfully, Pinterest and Instagram and YouTube are full of tutorials to help me learn and keep me inspired.

It's a little scary to share pages that are not going to be pretty or perfect. However, I need to do this and I want to share the process. Maybe I'll learn that I'm rubbish at watercolor flowers but what I'm hoping to learn is that I can get better with a daily practice.

I will share my pages on Instagram each day and I'll share my progress here each Friday.

I only started yesterday so this week I have one watercolor flower to share.



I found a tutorial on YouTube for painting watercolor tulips. My first flower (the one on the left) didn't  turn out like the video so I tried to combine what I saw with my abstract watercolor floral techniques to create the one on the right.

Here are some closeups.





I hope you'll follow along and cheer me on. If you have any tips or techniques to share or a favourite YouTube channel with great videos, please leave a note in the comments.

Here's to picking projects and learning something new.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Cathie