Watercolor Journal Flip Through | Find Watercolor Painting Inspo with Sarah Cray of Let's Make Art

Hi everybody, it's Sarah Cray with Let's Make Art, and today I wanted to do a special video where I do a flip through of my journal, okay? We have Michael here working the cameras. Hello. He's my husband, so sometimes we flirt a little bit. Yes. Okay, so if you guys follow me or not, just to give you an overview, I like to do morning journal paintings every weekday morning. It's how I start my work day. It just keeps my creativity flowing, and I have learned over years that as someone who has to kind of paint a lot for her job, there are habits you have to implement to keep your creativity alive, and having a free journal painting session every morning for me is one of those things that I do that's super helpful that I love. This journal that I have here is a Bella Classica journal. I've mentioned them before on YouTube. They are fantastic. We'll put the link to their shop in the description. So basically they take these books and then they fill it with 100% cotton watercolor paper so then it becomes this really gorgeous watercolor journal. Okay? All right. This is my first one from them, so it's the first book that I have completed from them, and I have to say that it's a biggin'. Yeah, that's chunky. This is the one I'm currently working on now from them, so it's quite thick. I counted, there's 92 paintings, 92 paintings in here that I did. Wow. Okay? Also, we have a 13-year-old, and I just learned the term, that's a big back, you know? Yeah. That book's a big back. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, 13-year-old. So let's just go through it so you guys can flip through. I'll talk about my process as we're going. So usually I actually skip the first page first, so this is the last painting that I did in this journal. The whole time before this, this page was just empty, okay? Love that. All right, so let's just go through. And some of these you might recognize because they were some ideas for projects that I was testing, or maybe I did a YouTube video on how to paint one of them. What kind of dog is that? I'm just kidding. It kind of does look, this one looks like a dog for sure. They're friends. And usually these paintings take me, on average, 20 minutes. Okay. The really complicated ones might take me 40. Sometimes they only take me five or 10. So it just ranges. It's never over 40 minutes. Do you set timers, or do you just have an internal body clock? I just know because I always film it because I post them on Instagram so I can see how long the videos are after. Some of them are based off of photos. So this was a photo I found on Pinterest, and then some of them are just, like this is a butterfly that I have in my studio. I have a dried butterfly that I wanted to paint. So this was just something that I was painting my studio. This was off of a photo. And when it comes to my journal, I give myself complete creative freedom. I'll do whatever I feel like. So whether that's based off of a photo that I kind of screenshot and saved, if it's based off of an idea that I had in my head, if it's based off of just going with the flow and not really caring, you know what I mean? It just depends. I usually try and paint seasonally. So can you guess what season I started this? Definitely spring, right? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I like that fall, which, I mean, don't go back, but there was a witch. The witch. Silhouette. Ah, that was good. Yeah, I think I did that one really close. Halloween, this one was fun too. And so again, it's just kind of playing around. I love this spread. I feel like this spread captures fall to me. And I just want to call attention to, you see these, and I'm gonna tell you this tip because it's super helpful if you have your own journal. When I do atmospheric painting, when I'm using a palette knife and stuff, I use a thick amount of paint. And even though it feels dry, it actually is still moist underneath because of how thick it is, and it can cause tearing and sticking. Do you see this? If you take your Dore Lens Wax and actually wax your page when you're done painting it, both sides, then that will not happen, and you won't have any paint sticking back and forth. So it's a way that you can preserve your painting and that your paint won't transfer if you work with really thick paint in your journal, okay? If you Dore Lens Wax it, there's no touching up the painting, though, afterwards. Correct, after you Dore Lens Wax it, it's done. It's finished. And then this one, I was trying different, like if I liked the transparent layers or the wet-on-wet technique. So that was just exploring different ideas. There's that dog again. That dog, that darn dog. And now you can see that we are fully in winter. Missouri winter. Gingerbread. And I think a lot of these ones we actually have on YouTube, you guys, on the shorts. So if you wanna do little short videos, those are there for you. And you can see, sometimes I tape off the edge, sometimes I don't. I love this painting. Yeah, that's really good. This is one that turned out, like while I was painting it, I was like, I don't know about this. And then at the end, I was like, dang. I really fell in love with painting shadows, too. Somebody asked if I sign and date my journal paintings. I do not. I don't sign them because it's my personal journal, so I feel like it's a given. However, dating them is not a bad idea, actually. Especially, like, this is probably my third or fourth journal that I've completed. And the previous ones, it would have been nice to know, you know, the days of, like the days of the journal, you know? You know what I'm saying? Yep. I mean, you do film all of them, so you have like a digital date of all of them, which is nice. Oh, that's true. I guess I could go back. Yeah, you know, when they were completed. I just have to laugh at this because I feel like I've been doing like moody, whatever, you know? And then I was trying to plan projects for Valentine's Day, and so all of a sudden I have these like bright hearts in the middle of this like moody spread out of all my, you know when you flip through your journal and you just get this little like cringe when you see? That's what this spread is. Just because, not that it's bad, but just because it does not fit the vibes. Right here, right here it does not fit the vibe, but that's okay. It's hilarious. It's kind of funny how, you know, with our journals we want it to be a certain way, and you really have to fight. You have to fight against that feeling of trying to do a perfect painting every spread, of making sure that it feels good. You know what I mean? It's natural for us to want to create these kind of like masterpiece journals, especially because of like social media. You know what I mean? I know that I'm not helping this by posting these paintings every day because you guys are probably thinking like, oh my gosh, every painting has to be a masterpiece. But really what this is, is this is me exploring ideas freely, and that's what a journal should always be. And that does not mean that it always communicates or like transforms into this perfect thing. It's greater as its whole. You know what I mean? Yeah. So as you guys kind of start your own journal and do this, like really fight that expectation that you have within yourself to create something perfect every single spread. Because as you can see, as we're flipping through, it doesn't have to be that this was me exploring trying to figure out a different way to create textures if I didn't want to use cling wrap. So I use like a waxed canvas and it didn't quite do what I wanted it to do. And I didn't feel the need to do anything more than this. And I'm fine with just this in my journal. You know what I'm saying? Right. So give yourself that freedom to just try something and let it be. This one, I couldn't figure out how to do negative space painting. I had to practice. I'm like, wait, how do I do that? We got it eventually. I did. Here it is. That looks like the beach in South Carolina. Ah, yes. Totally, it does. That's what I was thinking of, actually. I was so dang proud of these clouds. This was the one that I like barged into your office. Michael, do you remember? I do remember. And I was like, look at this. I do remember. You at home don't know this, but in college, Sarah did like a whole semester on painting clouds. I did. And it feels good to do them in watercolor. That was in like oil and acrylic. And so watercolor, I'm still really trying to master them. And then this is the end. And here's a little pocket that they put at the end if you want to put anything in here. Snacks. Snacks, preferably. So that's my journal spread. I would have to say that probably one of my favorite spreads out of the whole thing is this one right here. Oh, yeah. I love this spread. Oh, but I also really like this one. And the next one, and this one. This one is also, you know what I mean? You'll just fall in love with different spreads. Like the heart candies one. The heart candies, this one? Yeah. So anyways, I can't think of any other things. If you guys have questions about it, feel free to leave them and maybe we can do another video about it if I didn't answer any questions. But that was just my journal flip through for those who were asking once I posted that I finished it. And on to the next. So thanks so much. I hope that this was fun for you. And I hope that it kind of inspires you to create your own journal practice. And even if it's something where like, you know, obviously I put out lessons on YouTube and on our digital website at letsmakeart.com. And so if I just want to say that sometimes doing all of those in a journal is actually excellent because it's a smaller page, which makes it not as intimidating. It's closed in a book. So like some people are like, what do I do with all of these? All of that kind of stuff. So I highly recommend finding a journal that you really love and just creating a journal practice. It's so good for your creativity. It gives you so much freedom. It allows you to play because one, it's just a piece of paper. And the beautiful thing is, is you turn to the next page and you start fresh, you know? I do paint front and back on these. 100% cotton watercolor paper. You can paint front and back. It's just different paper textures. So you can paint front and back and I think that's it. Thanks for showing us. Thank you so much for being here. I'll see you guys next time. Bye.