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Cut and Paste for Grownups

The joy of art journaling

By Tiffany Doerr Guerzon Published 3 years ago 4 min read
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Tiffany Doerr Guerzon

Cut and Paste for Grownups

As I spread the creamy paint onto the thick, textured watercolor paper, I feel my breath deepen and my heart rate slow. I guide the wide paintbrush, creating swirls and leaving deliberate brush marks as I cover the page with wavy blocks of bright acrylics.

Setting the paper aside to dry, I run my finger over the spines of a stack of magazines that I keep for this purpose. Randomly choosing one, I turn the pages, tearing out those with images, words or colors that speak to me. With only a vague idea of where I’m going, I start to cut elliptical shapes from one of the torn out pages, one filled with black and white text. The scent of newsprint drifts up as I create a pile of semi-circular pieces covered in random words.

When I teach classes on art journaling, I often call this process “Cut and Paste for Grownups.” It’s like going back to childhood when scissors, a glue stick and magazine pages were enough to occupy an afternoon. Art journaling can be as simple as collaged images stuck on paper with a glue stick or a combination of media and techniques like the mixed media art journaling that is my preference. It’s a way of recapturing the joy of play.

Art journaling is completely intuitive for me. I don’t have to worry about creating anything salable or even worthy of hanging on the wall. It’s my way of getting my feelings out and onto paper, speaking my truth without words. As a professional writer and art teacher, I find this type of journaling to be a release. It feels mindless, but it’s not. My subconscious guides me.

Mixed media art is about building layers on a page, which is why I use watercolor paper as my base. I pick up a patterned stamp and ink it with soot black, I press it several times onto the now-dry painted page. Adding depth with different textures is one of my favorite parts of this process. It also means you can’t make a mistake, if you don’t like something, just cover it with another layer.

Leafing through another magazine, I keep coming back to pictures of birds in flight. Using micro tip scissors, I fussy cut three birds from the magazine, meaning I cut out even the tiniest details.

Next, I stamp more patterns onto the page, this time in brown ink. I set the page aside again and spread out my magazine clippings on the table and an idea begins to form.

I arrange the crescents of text in a loose circle to create a nest near the bottom edge of the page. Turing back to the magazine, I cut a few more curved pieces out of an image of grass and add them to the nest. I realize that part of the page is blue, reminding me of the sky. I tint a page of sheet music with sepia ink to give the paper an aged look and tear out a few snippets of the written notes. Now that I have an image forming in my mind’s eye, I adhere the nest and sheet music to the page.

Coming back to the three birds, I arrange them so that they are hovering over the nest. But something is off. After a few minutes of contemplation, I place the birds so that they are flying away from—instead of toward—the nest.

I cut blue paper into egg shapes, add tiny speckles with a pencil and then tuck them in the nest. But that doesn’t feel quite right. Leaving them for the time being, I switch gears and add a few scribbles of oil pastel to the sky, smearing in the color with my index finger. Taking a black oil pastel, I outline the sheet music fragments and then smudge the line to give them dimension. After wiping my hands, I look through the magazine pages again, stopping on a page with a large block of scarlet. Picking up my scissors, I cut a wonky heart shape out of the red paper and switch it out with the eggs in the nest.

The art before me blurs as my eyes fill with tears. I tear three small chunks out of the red heart and place a piece near each bird, like the pieces are floating away. I return the incomplete heart to the nest.

As often happens when I am journaling, my art reflects my emotional life. My oldest child is away at college and my middle child is researching out-of-state universities. My youngest is entering high school this year.

My journal pages are seldom this obvious. Many times they are just abstract collections of colors and textures. But the process is always a kind of meditative magic and I never finish a session without feeling like I’ve finally exhaled, let go of a breath I’ve been holding too long.

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