Category: joy connections

In my creative play time with art supplies, there are several different things I consider to be on my list of favorites because I can’t choose just one.

Painting with metallic watercolors on a black background definitely has a spot on that list. I sometimes use black paper. Other times I cover a white or cream journal page with black gesso and let it dry.

And then I spend time painting and playing with the metallic watercolors.

And then…sometimes I add outlining and doodling with pens or markers.

It’s how I spent several hours this past week. I opened one of my journals to a page I’d started a few days earlier where I’d used metallic watercolors on black gesso (a part of that page was shown in my last post) and I got out gel pens in white, pink, yellow, green, and blue.

With the white gel pen, I started outlining some of the shapes that had formed from the metallic watercolors. And I doodled – sometimes on top of the watercolors, sometimes on the black gesso – using the white and pink and yellow and green and blue gel pens.

Hanging out with my husband while the TV played in the background, I let myself relax into the calming distraction of doodling.

Over the following few days, I picked up my journal and added more bits and bobs and dots and doodles.

Just breathing slowly, letting the pens and colors play on the page, distracting my mind from the worries and fears of life.

Doing this is SO calming and relaxing and distracting.

I filled up the page with hours of something that helped me feel more peace and joy.

I’ll probably add a bit more to this page over the weekend. There are some areas, especially in the lower right, where I’ll spend some time doodling.

And then, eventually, I’ll paint another page with black gesso or I’ll get out my journal filled with black paper, and I’ll open a set of my metallic watercolor paints, and I’ll do some more of this type of creative play.

I’ll do it for more calm, more inner quiet, more peace.

More soul nourishment.

❤