You know when you buy the beautiful journal, write three pages in January and then it sits on the shelf looking hopeful? The blank lined page just kept asking for something you didn't have that day, perhaps we just couldn’t find the right words.
There’s something inspiring about a new notebook, but we don’t all think in sentences. Some of us think in colour, in weather, or even in the shape a day had. An art journal is the same idea with the pressure of good sentences, neat handwriting and grammar taken out.
What an art journal actually is
An art journal is a book you put marks in. That’s it.
Some days that's a wash of colour that matches your mood, or it could be a shape that feels right or three strips of the exact greens that appeal to you at the time. Some days there are a few words tucked in a corner, but they're optional and they're not the point.
You'll also hear it called a visual journal or an art diary. Same thing. The names all describe one practice: recording something without needing to explain it.
Why it works when written journaling doesn't
A written journal asks you to translate. You feel something shapeless and then you have to turn it into a sentence with a beginning and an end. That translation is genuinely hard and it's where most journals stall.
Paint skips this translation. You put down the colour that feels right and you're done. There's no grammar and nothing to get correct. A grey-blue smudge can say what the afternoon was about and only you will know.
There's also nobody to impress. An art journal isn't a portfolio and it isn't for the internet. Nothing in it has to be finished, framed or good. That's not a lowered standard of creating, it's just a different purpose.
So what to put on the first page
The blank first page is the only genuinely hard one, so here are a few starting points that don't require an idea:
Paint today's weather. It could just be the colours, what it felt like or loose outlines of what you saw.
Match a mood to a colour. Mix until it's right. That mixing is the journaling, then cover the page.
Keep a colour diary. One stripe a day, whatever colour the day or feeling was. After a fortnight you have something quietly beautiful and completely honest.
Copy something small in front of you. The mug, a leaf, the corner of a window. Observation gives your hands a job so your head can settle.
Cover a page you don't like. Paint straight over it. Being allowed to do that is most of the freedom.
If you'd like these already written down for you, our free 15-Minute Painter's Guide has a month of prompts and a simple tracker, built for exactly this, so you never open the book to a blank decision.
Choosing something to journal in
This is where a lot of art journals end and it's worth knowing before you start.
Most journals and sketchbooks are made with paper pages that are thin, so the moment you add anything wet the page buckles, the colour bleeds to the other side and the spread you were enjoying is ruined. You learn to use less paint, then you use the book less, then it's on the shelf again collecting dust.
If you already know you want to work with paint, start with a surface built for it:
- Weight matters more than page count. A heavier surface takes water without warping, canvas is the best.
- A canvas surface takes acrylics, oils and heavy media that ordinary journal paper can't hold.
- Look for something that lies flat so you can work across a full spread.
- A4 is the sweet spot, big enough to move your arm, small enough to keep on the kitchen table.
Our Sustainable Canvas Book was made for this exact use and meets all the above criteria. It's a canvas pad and sketchbook in one, Australian bound, made from recycled plastic, a real canvas surface you can paint on properly, in a book you can keep. No stretching, no priming, no setting up. Open it and go.
How often should you use it?
As often as it feels good, and not one page more.
There's no streak to protect and nothing to catch up on. An art journal you return to twice a month for years is worth far more than a daily one you abandon in February.
If you'd like a rhythm to start with, fifteen minutes is enough. Long enough to get somewhere, short enough that you'll actually open the book.
Start with one page
You need something to paint on and one small mark to begin. Open the book & put down one colour, that's an art journal that has therapeutic benefits.
👉 Download the free 15-Minute Painter's Guide for a month of prompts, or start your art journal in the Sustainable Canvas Book.
At Sustainable Canvas we make high-quality art supplies from recycled materials, including our Australian-bound Canvas Book and Australian-made reusable palettes, for people who want to create beautifully and thoughtfully. Everything we make is made from recycled plastic to lower plastic in the environment or going to landfill.