Disability diaries: Don't Be Afraid To Get Messy: Overcoming the anxiety of “The Mess”

Image Description: an art journal page made with Mixed Media that says “Don’t be afraid to get messy” written in Posca Pen over an abstract watercolour, acrylic, and ink background. A white Posca pen and bottle of gold acrylic ink are laid out next to the sketchbook

Recently I took Tanya Lee Kahler's "Messy Pages" class at Get Messy Art Journal as part of access to a free class for being part of their email list. The course covered a variety of things; Mixed Media basics and tools, Journaling and adding text into an art journal or sketchbook, making pages with acrylic, watercolour + water soluble crayons, and collage as well as techniques to mix them all together, and finally a page with a list of prompts.

Image Description: An art journal page made with yellow and red acrylic for the background with a princess drawing in black ink over it. She has accents of neon yellow, green, pink, red, and purple as well as a white Posca pen outlining her.

Now, sadly, my time with the class expired before I could do all of the journaling/text and prompt sections of the class but I was able to get through nearly everything else. I learned a lot of new things during that little class (and totally want to find more online mixed media classes if anyone has any recommendations) mostly that collage work is a bit of a crazy messy totally insane and slightly frustrating media, and that acrylic surprisingly isn't all that bad.

Image Description: A side profile of a girl with black hair. She has a red and black background in back of her and has a gold bracelet around her arm. She has white dots for freckles and a metallic silver dress using acrylic paint.

I had quite a difficult time with coming up with ideas for things using acrylic and collage, thankfully I follow some fantastic art journalers on Instagram who provided some much needed inspiration. This page in particular was my favorite from the collage section of the class

Image Description: A collaged art journal page using scraps of multicolored and patterned paper, matte medium as a glue, and strips of washi tape with quotes reading “You are Loved.” “Grow your own joy.” And “Forever is made of moments like this.”

Perhaps my favorite part was the watercolour section of the class, while I use watercolour and marker often in my illustration work, Messy Pages introduced me to a few new ways of using it, combining it with other media, and allowing me to continue to practice with ways I already knew such as making

watercolour galaxy paintings. My favorite uses of watercolour in this class were water soluble crayons like my Neocolor ii crayons and Marabu Art crayons, and the watercolour clouds lesson using a background of watercolour and sparkly watercolour and laying a cut out collage piece on top once it had dried underneath.

Image Description: A photo of the watercolour clouds lesson using watercolour and a cut out doodle pasted on top

But most of all what I learned is to get rid of the fear of getting messy (mostly through that collage section of the class...thankfully splat mats and paper towels exist) getting messy is something I must admit, I really have a fear of. Part of that might be the ashkenazi intergenerational trauma and most of it is probably I just hate having to clean things up that can be a bit disgusting...also soft pastels are dusty and go EVERYWHERE. Really, try them sometime and tell me I'm wrong.

Image description: an acrylic portrait of a girl with red hair, she has white lines going through her hair and a grey background

When my time was up with this lovely super fun class I decided to use all the different techniques and supplies I learned during this time to make this page as a little reminder to myself "don't be afraid to get messy" I started with a layer of journaling then took some watercolour pans and layered some colour over the writing causing it to bleed, then added acrylic paint and acrylic/watercolour inks before finishing the page off with my beloved posca black and white paint pens. I think this serves as an excellent way at least for myself to wrap up the "Messy Pages" class, and it certainly serves as a great reminder to not be afraid to try something new...even if it is messy.