That’s actually a bit of a tricky question to answer even for me. You see, like with regular journaling, there isn’t one correct way to create an art journal. For many years, I wouldn’t have described my journaling as art journaling despite my pages being filled with doodles, sketches, and geometric designs alongside my writing. In my mind since my focus was on the words, it wasn’t art journaling. In fact, I wouldn’t have considered the doodles art either. I had this idea that art had to be a fully formed creation. Today I don’t hold those ideas as truths anymore.
Art journaling is the mixture of words and images combined in a journal to express thoughts, feelings, ideas, and life events. Some days that may be a list of things I have to get done decorated with a border of geometric designs. Other days that may be a painted page with a hand-lettered poem scrawled on top. And other days that may be a self portrait expressing my emotions and surrounded by a story of what transpired. Art journaling doesn’t have to look one specific way. Like traditional journaling, it’s a means of self expression and space to process feelings and emotions.
So doodle, draw, paint, sketch, decoupage, write on, and glitterize your pages to your heart’s content. Art journaling is a part of your creative journey and you get to make the rules!