Positive / Negative Journals Look Through (Part 2)

This is the second part to my post looking through my Positive and Negative Journals. If you’d like to read the first part, where I give my thoughts on how the process has gone so far and show the pages from my negative journal, you can go here. If you’d like the read the original post, outlining this whole project, which started back in September, you can find that post here.

I really enjoyed the process of working in my positive journal. It was all the things I love about journaling: having the freedom to experiment, trying new things, a lack of pressure to create perfect work, a way to try out colour combinations and compositions, as a means to express myself creatively… I think all of that shows in the journal and especially how I feel about the journal. It feels like a proper representation of where I am currently at creatively and where I want to go in the future with my art.

Here are the pages from my completed positive journal.

It is interesting, for me, to look back over this, because despite it only being over the course of a few months, you can see a clear progression in my style. I think it is clear that by the end of it I had figured out a style I liked. I was definitely more mindful about composition and creating finished pages than I have been in the past with other art journal, including my negative journal. It is also very noticeable, to me, that there are definitely colour combinations that I feel happier or most confident working in than others.

I have decided to carry this on. I want to finish my negative journal, but while also keeping up a positive journal, side by side. It has been a really good experience for me creatively and I want to carry on and see how far I can go with it. I have decided to work in my old junk journal, which was the first ever post I made on this blog, because I haven’t worked in it much and I’d like to see how I can carry on exploring the ideas of using painting and collage, like in my previous post.