Your first month of art journaling

Most beginners freeze in front of a blank journal page, afraid to waste paper they haven't earned yet. Here's what actually happens when you sit down and start anyway.

By Colin B. · Published June 17, 2026

Art journaling has a reputation as something you discover by accident. You bought a journal to write in, started doodling in the margins, then added paint, then looked up six months later with 200 pages of visual experiments and a shelf of supplies you love. The entry is that casual. But the practice takes real time to develop, and knowing what to expect in the first few weeks makes the difference between a journal you fill and one that sits empty on your desk.

This is what your first month actually looks like.

Week one: your first Gelli pull

The best possible first session is also the most immediately satisfying: a Gelli plate print.

Here’s the process. Squeeze two or three colors of acrylic onto the plate (no blending, just drop them in rough patches). Spread them with a brayer until the plate is evenly coated in a thin layer of paint. Now add texture: press a crumpled piece of plastic wrap into the paint and pull it back up. Press a dried leaf. Press a piece of lace. Each object lifts paint in a unique pattern that can’t be replicated.

Then press a gessoed journal page onto the plate, smooth it flat with your palm, and peel it slowly from one corner. The reveal is the reason people get hooked. Every print is different. The colors mix in ways you couldn’t have planned. The texture from the plastic wrap or leaf reads clearly even through layers of paint. You’ve made something interesting on your first try without any drawing ability required.

Layer over the print while it dries (acrylics dry in minutes). Add a wash of diluted paint in a contrasting color. Stamp a word or pattern with an ink pad. Write something with a paint marker on top: a date, a line of text, a phrase you heard. Add some gesso over part of the spread to tone it back down. Let it dry and add another layer.

You’ve just made your first mixed-media art journal spread. It took about an hour.

Weeks two and three: the ugly phase

Every art journal page goes through an ugly phase. This is when most beginners stop.

The ugly phase happens somewhere in the middle of a spread, when you’ve covered the original Gelli print with paint and it looks muddy and overworked and nothing like the reference image you were vaguely thinking of. The response is usually one of two things: either you close the journal and don’t come back for a week, or you keep going and discover that the ugliness is just a layer, not a final state.

Keep going.

Add white gesso over the parts you hate. Let it dry. Now you have a partially obscured background with texture showing through the thin white layer, which is usually more interesting than either the original or the muddy middle. Add color on top of the gesso. Write over it. Add collage elements: torn pages from old magazines, patterned tissue paper, printed ephemera. The collage pieces don’t have to mean anything; they’re texture and color and contrast.

The specific skills to develop in weeks two and three:

Gesso as paint. White gesso isn’t just primer. It’s a tool for toning down areas, creating highlights, and adding a milky translucence over existing layers. Apply it thin and let color show through, or apply it thick and paint over it with a totally new color scheme. Most experienced art journalers use gesso at every stage of a spread, not just at the beginning.

Layering without muddying. The sequence matters: dark over light works less well than light over dark in acrylics (unless you’re using paint pens or gesso, both of which are opaque). Let each layer dry before adding the next. Work fast or work patient, but not both at once.

Text as a design element. A line of writing across a painted page (your own handwriting, a stamp set, a stencil) does something visually that no amount of additional paint can replicate. It creates scale, contrast, and the sense that the page has something to say. Even if the words are illegible (many art journalers intentionally write so fast that it becomes texture, not language), text grounds the composition.

Week four: the practice starts to emerge

By the end of your first month, if you’ve been filling pages regularly (even just one or two a week), you’ll notice something: you have preferences.

There are colors you keep reaching for. There are techniques you find yourself using on every page: maybe it’s always the Gelli print as the first layer, or maybe you start every spread with a gesso background and then paint directly onto it. Maybe you’ve discovered that collage makes you happy and paint feels like an obligation, or the opposite. These aren’t rules you’ve been taught; they’re patterns that emerged from doing.

This is the actual value of the practice. Art journaling isn’t about making beautiful pages (though you will make some). It’s about developing a visual vocabulary through repetition. After 20-30 pages you know what you like. After 50-60 you know why. That knowledge is what actually transfers to other creative practices (watercolor, illustration, design, photography, whatever you want to go toward next).

A few things beginners still overthink at week four:

Saving pages. There are no pages to save. The journal is for experiments. Fill every one.

Fixing mistakes. There are no mistakes in the sense you’re imagining. A color that’s wrong is a layer waiting to be covered. A spread you hate is texture for the next layer. You can always go back and add more.

Being original. Every technique you’ll learn in your first year was invented by someone else and taught to someone else and is being used by thousands of people simultaneously. That’s fine. Learning to use a technique fluently is its own kind of originality.

Having the right supplies. The supplies you have are the right supplies. The ones you don’t have yet don’t matter yet. Every art journaler believes they need more than they have; most need fewer.

After your first journal is full

Fill it completely. Don’t stop at page 20 and move to a new one.

When it’s full, compare the first 10 pages to the last 10. The difference will be visible in a way that’s hard to describe before you experience it. The first pages will look earnest and careful and a little stiff. The last pages will look more confident, messier in good ways, with moments that genuinely surprise you. That’s not because you got better (though you did): it’s because you stopped being afraid of the pages.

Start a second journal. The learning compounds.

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Ready to stock up? See our art journaling gear guide for the exact journal, paints, Gelli plate, and tools worth buying first.