For years, I’ve been playing with the idea that everyone can draw. Maybe not a perfect portrait or a watercolor, but draw something meaningful. I’m not an illustrator, either, but put me in a meeting and I’ll fill up the page with symbols and doodles. In fact, when I take notes, I use a lot of symbols.
Raw-art-journals is the website I developed for those who can’t draw, but would like to keep an art journal.
The Idea (c) Quinn McDonald, 2009
Well, now there’s an idea. Suppose you could develop symbols that were meaningful to you? Suppose that you could use existing symbols–including numbers and letters–and create interesting pages in your journal? Well, you can.
Those symbols, doodles, sketches and abstract art pieces in your journal is raw art journaling. The ideas are yours, and you don’t need anything fancy to create it. A pencil or pen, eraser, and good paper, and you’re off!
The one on the left is my idea or raw art journaling. It combines an exclamation mark, a lightbub shape (for the idea) and a plant (made out of journal pages), and you have my symbol for a raw art journal.
I’m a word person, so I add words to a lot of my designs. In the one below, it says, “Writing helps me untangle my thoughts–or learn to love them all tangled.” One sentence journaling at its
Untangled (c) Quinn McDonald
best–and a fun way to express myself. Sure, you could do it in colored pencil, and I have done that, too.
Stop by and start your raw art journal, too!
—-Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. She’s going to have workshops on raw art journals, too.
Her other website, Raw-Art-Journals, is about her art life. Follow Quinn on Twitter.
QuinnCreative 