Sense Diary - Making the Diary Yours.

I hope everyone had fun staring at an object every day and then describing it! I thought it would be awesome to get everyone started on something like that before really getting into any detail about what makes up a sense diary/artist journal.  I decided to take a journey through the internet to search out other artists' journals so those who haven't ever started one can get a little more of an idea on how to approach this tangible way of recording ideas and inspirations on a daily basis.

This stack of journals is a perfect example of how you want your sense diary to look like - you want the journal to look like it's yours.  So now that you've filled some of the pages of your journal, it's time to turn the outside into a reflection of who you are.  What does your favorite room in your house look like? What's your favorite era in history?  Do you have this song that you always have stuck in your head that you actually like the lyrics to? These are all things that you can draw, paint, write, paste pictures of that will make your journal uniquely yours.  Plus, it might actually make you want to pick it up everyday to add something to the pages inside.

* A very important thing to remember:  Everyone who is creative may not draw or paint, or write poetry, but something in you makes you love to create whatever it is that you create, so while keeping a sense dairy may be more difficult for the non-visual artist, I want to challenge you to try it out and not worry about the result - it's all about the process and about bringing out more of how you think and what you see.

So that is the only assignment for this week... isn't that rad?

Some tools to consider (and to get your ideas flowing):

Your journal, of course AND...

- Tape - you can definitely use the pretty tape, or masking tape...  (sometimes I end up drawing on the tape, so I usually use masking tape)
- Glue Stick
- Markers, erasers, watercolors, ink pens, calligraphy pens, pencils, white out pen, crayons, colored pencils, pencils, etc.
- Stamps, stencils, ink pad
- Tissue Paper, newspaper, graph paper
- Images from magazines, photocopies, wallpaper, etc.
- Sheet music
- Ribbon, string, thread, etc.

And anything else you can think of!

I will actually be collecting images of these to share in the next couple weeks, so take your time and I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with. As time goes by, the outside of your sense diary will most likely have just as many layers as some of your entries on the actual pages themselves.