How to start an illustrated journal

have you ever heard of an illustrated journal that's to say a diary where you record your life and your experiences in your world in both words and in pictures it's something that when i first learned about it i thought this is the answer i loved to write and i was interested in learning to draw but i wasn't really sure what i should draw or how i should learn or how i should make it into a regular practice and keeping an illustrated journal turned out to be the answer for me and i started to just record in words and pictures everything in my life food that i ate the clothes that i wore my pets my friends the houses in in my street um you know everything that that i experienced i would draw and then watercolor and write about and you know it's it is a really interesting way to get into a drawing habit but also to get a deeper insights into your life by creating this beautiful multi-dimensional record well today we're going to talk to holly rose who is an illustrated journal keeper she's also a teacher at sketchbook school and she teaches people how to start their own illustrated journals and she's going to talk to us about this experience that she's had what it's done for her how she came about it and the tools that she uses and lots of other stuff it's going to be a really fun chat and we're also going to talk about zines and we're going to talk about making stickers and we're just going to talk about having a life full of art every day which is something that is wonderful and i hope you want it as much as i do here's holly hi holly hi it's nice to have you here yes it's nice to have you here to talk about art and sketchbooks and spark and sketchbook skool and whatever else it is that we come to so um you've been a member of sketchbook skools community for a while now yeah since 2016 when i first took my first class okay that's a long time ago but you uh have have you always made art for yourself no i've been a creative and a maker over the years but not always art and it's kind of come and gone it wasn't until i came across you danny at a online art teacher summit that i really got into sketchbook keeping and then i've kept that practice ever since july 2016. i'm up to i think 71 sketchbooks now so art and teaching art is part of been part of your portfolio as it were but you you yourself have kind of come and gone with your own personal heart making it sounds yeah [Music] done scrapbooking and photography and knitting and all along the way i've tried to keep little journals because i would walk into a bookstore or an art store and i would love the feeling of a journal but what most often happened when i was keeping a written journal was that i would start and i'd get a few pages in and the habit would stop i couldn't seem to keep the habit with the written journal but there was something about a sketchbook that answered my desire to keep a record of my life in both words and pictures why do you think that is it's such an interesting thing um i think that first of all i've got to keep my hands moving there's something about the need to create to make um to just move the pen and then when i'm observing the world it keeps it it helps me keep a record of life but it also keeps it's a way to calm myself down in the evening to reflect to process my day i feel like it must have something to do with the benefits that i'm gaining from the practice of keeping a sketchbook yes you have been teaching as part of spark almost from the beginning tell me about some of the teaching the classes that you've been teaching and some of the experiences that you've had well spark has been just an amazing amazing experience i've been able to meet so many people through spark and then the ability to teach classes with spark has been a real gift for me it's allowed me to dive deeper and to focus on certain areas but then i started teaching classes like nature journaling and improving imagination where we'd focus on drawing from imagination then i went on to teach the illustrated journaling course starting in september and then i've done a lot of pop-up classes scenes map making creating stickers with procreate so every one of those classes has allowed me to not only dive deeper into my practice but then to share that with others so tell me a bit about your own practice tell me about the the types of things that you like to to put in your sketchbooks and the types of materials that you like to use so the themes that show up in my sketchbooks are food um family life objects just mundane things that are you know sitting on the counter the table um also nature journaling where we go so i always keep a travel journal if we're on a vacation um thinking about out and about i do sketching as well um so i feel like there's a little bit of everything in my sketchbooks and then when it comes to the materials i love to use um lumi safaris and watercolor they're kind of my go-to but then i've branched out so much more from that to colored pencils to gouache posca markers mixed media feels like every workshop or class that's come to spark i've learned something from those instructors and that's added to my art collection and added to my pages and my sketchbooks and what are the what is the experience like of teaching for instance your illustrator journaling class which is it's it's funny because illustrator journaling is kind of at the heart of sketchbook school but it's not something we've necessarily had a focused course on in some ways everything we did was about illustrated journaling but we've also we haven't really focused on all the different techniques and different things to think about within the illustrator journal because in illustrator journal it's more than just like here's what i did today it can be you can take on so many different forms and and subjects so tell us a bit about what you're you're focusing on when you do it so when i'm teaching illustrated journaling i'm thinking of capturing our stories one page at a time so our stories can include anything it's from the events that occur in our life it's the weather and the seasons it's our pets our family life it's the food we eat the places we visit it's capturing time and place but also capturing the images but our thoughts our feelings the wonderings we have so i think it's putting both the images and the text together to create this story of a moment and do you think that people take naturally to this idea of illustrated journal keeping or is it something that that you need to really bring people along and and introduce them to that's interesting because i feel like there are people that naturally do it they they've been maybe doing this for a long period of time without even calling it that um and then there are some people that maybe they've done more of skill-based drawings or practices in their sketchbooks and so i think there's a little bit of both um people that really are into illustrated journaling and those that are learning about it is it a private thing do you think um in other words if i do a drawing of you know my cat or something and i share that in the yard it's different than if i'm really sharing a record of my life and certainly something as simple as what i ate for lunch isn't a big personal secret but i think we don't think of journals and diaries as something that we're making to share or that we can share with a feeling of safety what do you think about that it's an interesting thing about how much to share and what to share but everything that i've shared i've gained so much back for the time when i've been vulnerable whether it's with my sketchbooks or my zines and so i think encouraging that ability to share is allowing for a human connection so the people when they're reading your journal pages or your illustrated journal pages they're finding the connection not just based off of the image that you drew but what you wrote to go along with it and so at first i was really encouraging students to use sticky notes or procreate to block out their journaling if they didn't feel comfortable sharing it but it's been something interesting that is where does the human connection come from what's the purpose to share and so i've definitely put myself out a lot and shared a lot in my illustrated journaling and i think that that's really an important piece to share with others yeah i feel like the people who influenced me the most to want to draw but also to want to keep illustrated journals and i'm talking about ross stendel or hannah hinkman or robert crum or dan price all these people are very forthcoming with what's on their mind what their struggles are you know things that would seem fairly personal but in the end i think nobody nobody has stuff that they're that is such top secret and so unique to them that they can't share it and in fact when you share when you make yourself vulnerable you forge connections because if you're allowing people to you're allowing them in there they can trust you and you can be authentic so you can really see stuff that is universally true um even though it comes from your own personal experience i mean i think about something like diary of anne frank you know it's such a unique experience that she had obviously um and yet there's something all essentially human about that kind of a thing that uh we shouldn't be ashamed to share uh it's in a lot of ways i think one of the most essential aspects of art making is this sharing of the human experience tell me about some of the other pop-ups that you've done and and do you can you think of some of the uh interesting things that happened in in those pop-up sessions that you've done yeah so i taught pop-ups on several different subjects but some of the more recent ones map making zines and creating stickers from procreate those have been a lot of fun and what's been really neat is not only sharing my work but then also having other people take that class and then go create their own scenes their own stickers and then i've been the recipient of some of those i've received so many scenes in the mail from students from my class and that's been really exciting i was speaking with one student and she was talking about how being um or about how sending that zing out she wasn't expecting the response that came back and a male box has had so much mail in it just by me sending out scenes to other people and being willing to share my life and my artwork with them right sharing sharing is a boomerang and you get stuff back when you put it out there so i think it's it takes some courage um but it's i don't know anybody so far who has had a negative experience from doing it so i'm hoping that that continues just to explain what a pop-up is a pop-up is really a one-time little mini workshop where we take a subject that may not be extensive enough to be a whole class but is um something that we can teach and something that could be interesting so you've become the master of so many of these pop-ups and uh i think it's it's interesting because it also says to people you know what try this out and then if you want to go deeper there are ways to to continue that journey but you know just have a sample have a little smorgasbord yeah that's great now you're also a spark student i know that you go to a lot of a lot of classes and you tell us tell me a bit about what your what your experience is as being a member of spark as well as a member of the faculty yeah when spark first started a lot of the classes we would attend we'd draw together we'd get to share and it has grown and grown and become much deeper and much richer so as a student i've benefited from the relationships i've built with other people here at spark which has been just amazing but then being able to take the workshops so once a month there's a workshop i can dive deep into a topic and learn from somebody else and take a piece of that into my practice everyone has been an amazing experience i love to take the workshops live and complete the art in the moment it pushes me to create something and to finish a piece and about part way through each workshop i think i'm not going to be able to do it and each time the instructor guides and it's amazing at the end what you're able to do and then there's a whole week of spark classes to take some of them i've been able to take live and some i watch the recorded versions but each class each instructor offers something different and so i've been able to build my art skills um through whether it's gouache or cross hatching jelly plate printing there's so much to inspire you to keep you creating and learning here at sparks so i feel like even someone who has been teaching art and has been keeping a sketchbook for years and has learned so much already there's so much for them in spark as both an instructor and as a student as well that's great that's a nice little commercial there for spark which is how i intended for you but that's great too no i think um no to me to me it's valuable to hear somebody who has been part of sketchbook school and then has gone through the spark experience to really explain because i think a lot of people don't quite get what it's about i finally want to ask you you're you know you are a teacher you're teaching in schools you're doing stuff at spark you're also a mom with with a bunch of teenagers how do you how do you manage this and how does how does your art making fit into it in other words are you like how do you find the time and why why do you find the time when you could be i don't know doing other stuff or doing stuff for your family and so forth do you feel how do you make that that balance work so balance is a tough thing it's it's one of those things where you think about priorities and for me the last six there's art has become a bigger priority in my life there's things that have maybe one off the table that aren't as important but when i get to the end of the day if i haven't created art i feel like something's missing and it can be as simple as a 10-15 minute sketch that makes me feel like okay now i've created something today and your tank is full which helps you then be able to take care of others well thanks very much for sharing your experiences and for being part of spark for being part of sketchbook skool and for sharing all of your beautiful work this has been really fun thanks for having me i'm really happy to be a part of spark and a part of sketchbook school it's a big big part of my life isn't holly terrific she has so much energy she's such a great teacher and she is so enthusiastic about making art so if you would like to learn more about keeping an illustrated journal or some of the many other things that we teach at sketchbook skool come to sketchbookskool.com and sign up for a two-week trial of spark you can take classes with holly and so many other fantastic artists in fact we have about two to three hours of classes on average every single day you don't of course have to take all two to three hours but whenever you feel like making art there are people teaching it and making it alongside you live so find out what that's like because it's pretty cool and it's pretty transformative and uh you know you if you really want to become an artist i don't mean a professional artist but just somebody who has art as a meaningful thing in their life spark is a fantastic way to get there i hope you'll check it out i hope i'll see you there soon and holly too

Channel: Sketchbook Skool

Views: 150,619

Keywords: Sketchbook, art, art journaling, art lessons, danny gregory, draw, drawing, drawing lesson, illustrated journal, sketch book, sketch skool, sketchbook drawing, sketchbook ideas, sketchbook journal, sketchbook skool, sketchbooks, ted talks, advice for creatives, advice for artists, personal development, how to be creative, life hack, inspiration, motivational video, self improvement channels, danny gregory draw with me

Id: F5viqBfh3PQ

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 15 2022