The Minimalist Art Journal 1

with Caylee Grey

The Minimalist Art Journal is all about finding your calm and putting your emotions on a page. Nothing more, nothing less. Sit down, get a nice cup of tea and face the blank page. Get away from the clutter and overload of normal life and just focus on what makes this moment, this hour, this day important. No overload of extras and stuff. Just you, a blank page and the basics.

This is about taking time.

This is about doing less.

This is about you.

LESSON PLAN

In this lesson we will build a supply kits of tools that you LOVE. We will choose simply but impactful supplies that are strong enough to stand on their own without needing the hoards of gadgets that distract from your message and meaning. We will hand bind an elegant, yet understated journal to give you full control of your minimalist art journal

In this lesson we will learn to not only not fear the blank page but to embrace. We will create subtle and quiet backgrounds for our pages through 6 different techniques. Our guests artists for this lesson are Riet Poch who will teach us to create Depth in our Backgrounds and Tanyalee Kahler who will introduce us to the magic of Watercolour Backgrounds.

In week 3 we will practice restraint, learn to listen to the natural flow of our pages and practice the art of simple, yet meaningful when it comes to embellishing our pages. This lessons guests artists are Essie Ruth who will teach us to Collage in Monochrome, Tiffany Julia who will help us use Image Transfers quiet down the noise in photographs and Zinia Amoiridou who shows us that Botanicals can also be Minimalist.

Lesson 4 will teach you how to express your ideas and thoughts as simply as possible. We will quiet the mind and the world and translate our ideas to be clear and concise. Our guest teacher Anika Lacerte will walk us through making an Impact with Less and Jennifer Bilton helps us reconcile the business of Collage and Lettering with minimalism.

In case you didn’t have enough ideas, this is a super practical lesson where we look at minimalist art journal pages, translate it into actionable inspiration, and learn how to apply it directly to our own pages.

Class Lessons

Welcome
Lesson 01 : Tools + Journal
1.1 : Tools You ♥
1.2 : Preparing the Journal
1.3 : Binding the Journal
1.4 : Essie Ruth - Collage in Monochrome
Lesson 02 : Laying a Foundation
2.1 : Quiet Backgrounds
2.2 : Abstract Acrylic
2.3 : Riet Poch - Depth in Backgrounds
2.4 : Tanyalee Kahler - Watercolour Backgrounds
Lesson 03 : The Bits
3.1 : Preventing Over-Embellishment
3.2 : Using Found Images
3.3 : Tiffany Julia - Image Transfers
3.4 : Zinia Redo - Botanical Minimalism
Lesson 04 : Succinct Journaling
4.1 : Say What You Need
4.2 : Get It All Out
4.3 : Anika Lacerte - Impact with Less
4.4 : Jennifer Bilton - Collage + Lettering
Lesson 05 : Ideas + Takeaways
Lesson 06 : The Finished Journal

Caylee Grey

Hyperbolic journaler and imperfect artist, Caylee Grey is also a wife and mother from South Africa. Caylee is the Fairy Artmother of the Get Messy art journal community, book, and art supplies brand. She has sworn an oath to embrace the messy middle and believes that more than zero is enough.

Essie Ruth

Essie (she/her) is an artist and writer who works with a broad range of media to explore ideas of identity, family, love, grief, trauma, and social justice. Her writing and her visual art inform each other, and are in constant dialogue in her journals which hold a constantly fluctuating mix of story telling, reflection, catharsis, and imagination. She has one wife, one son, two cats, eighteen tattoos, and approximately two hundred rolls of washi tape.

Riet Poch

Riet lives with her husband near the coast in North Germany where she enjoys capturing her memories and feelings in journals and albums. If she isn’t covered in paint and glue she writes stories or photographs the nature outside her door. She started writing her feelings down when she was a child and as a teenager she discovered scrapbooking which helped me to capture memories and combine them with my words. Over the years she began to include more paint and own ideas to my layouts. That reminded her of my dream to make art but she felt like she was not good enough and so never dared to go for it.

Tiffany Julia

Tiffany Julia is an artist of many trades living in New York City with an absolute passion for documenting her everyday life. She enjoys keeping little handmade A6 journals that combine her love of art journaling, junk journaling, and memory keeping, with pages and pages filled with writing. She believes as long as you’re honoring your story, there’s no wrong way to journal.

Anika Lacerte

Anika likes art journaling, scrapbooking, photography and DIY projects. She is an introvert; her Myers-Briggs personality type is INTJ. Anika lives in a small town in BC, Canada with her husband and their two girls.

Zinia Redo

Zinia is an art student from Greece. She loves everything about colors, cats, puppies, cupcakes and pretty paper products. Zinia dreams of one day being an art educator and spreading confetti of inspiration to the world.