Tthoughts about the idea of inner peace and how we seek it.
Essie Smith
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.
Catalysts by Essie Smith
Lesson 4 – Anger and Rage
Allowing yourself the space to feel anger, and finding a vent for it in your art journal.
Ep 003: Think about the world in a slightly different way
Messy ConversationsMessy Conversations is a series of interviews with amazing art journalers who share their favorite tools, tips and why they art journal. You’ll get an exclusive peek into their art journal pages and their process. We have a...
Lesson 5 – Wonder and Surprise
Wonder isn’t something that necessarily springs to mind when we’re thinking about all the different emotions we experience, but it’s a unique one, and really worth spending some time with.
How to add drawn features to watercolour backgrounds
Hello, excellent ones! It's Essie again, this time with a really simple post about adding pen details to watercolour artworks. I feel like I need to start this post with a disclaimer:...
9 ways to add text to your art journal
For many of us, images come most easily when we’re art journaling, and for others working with text feels more natural. Being a wordy, languagey, writer-type, I am definitely one of the latter. That being the case, I want to show you some of the different techniques I...
The Mailable Art Journal
Hello, splendid Messians! I'm jazzed as hell to be back sharing another post here on the blog with you. Especially one that's about giving! Most of the people I've met through Get Messy...
How to make Watercolour Collage Paper
Hi lovely Messians! It's Essie again, here to share a video tutorial (ooh, faaaance!) of how I make watercolour collaging paper. I love to go through magazines to find...
2.2 Loving Mama
We’ve talked about how motherhood can change the parts of you that existed before, and how you can reconnect with those in your current life. Now it’s time to identify the things that were born in you when your child became yours. The new, awesome, scary, surprising...
Class Kit + Workbook
Workbook + Digital KitDownload these files and save them to your computer. Print them out and use them in your journal for this class or for other projects. Copyright © Caylee Greyvenstein and Esther Smith. All files are for personal use only. You may not distribute...
1.3 And Then There Was You
Arrival Few of us have days in our lives that are more memorable than when our babies came into our worlds. For the majority of us it’s a story that involves giving birth, though for adoptive and non-birth parents it’s still an unforgettable, life-altering event.Write...
2.3 Self Care
So we’ve looked at who you were and who you’re becoming, and now it’s time to think about practical ways of taking care of you moving forward. Now that your life is busier and fuller than ever, it’s important that you’re cared for and supported as much as humanly...
1.1 Life Before
It might be hard to remember right now, but before you were a mother, you were you. There’s nothing like having a baby to completely turn your world upside down, and make you feel like your identity got shattered in the turning. All of a sudden you’re a shuffling,...
2.1 Who Am I?
So far, we’ve talked a lot about the process of becoming a mother, and what that was like for you. But that’s actually the shortest part of the story. What comes next, is the rest of your life. No matter what happens to you from now on, you are a mother. It's...
Closing Thoughts
Here's a look at our completed journals...
1.2 Suddenly Real
While the sperm-meets-egg biology of conception is universal, the process of creating our babies is different for everyone. Some of us fall pregnant easily, and some of us struggle. Some of us are biologically linked to our kids, while others adopt, or are the other...
Loving Mama
When you have kids, you can become so absorbed in the daily work of caring for them that you become disconnected from your personal stories. In existing for others, you can lose yourself. This class is designed to help you take the stories of your mother-self, weave them into the self that existed before you became a mother, and move forward with both of them intertwined. You’ll record the process in a creative journal, and when it’s done, it will be a beautiful love letter to yourself that honours all the parts of who you are and tells the story of how you came to be the amazing woman you are right now. This class comes with the Camellia digital kit, extra journal cards, and a printable workbook to get you creating as quickly and easily as possible.
Lesson 3 – Sadness and Grief
Our art journals can be the perfect places to “art it out” when we’re feeling sad. Sadness can be a scary emotion, and one we shy away from, but if we can allow ourselves to sit with sadness from time to time, it can be good for us.
Lesson 2 – Joy and Happiness
This lesson is about connecting with happiness in our art journals. In the video I’ll introduce you to this idea, and to an artist whose work inspires me to create bright, joyful pieces of my own.
1.4 Essie Ruth – Collage in Monochrome
The conversation between colours in an artwork can make it complex and busy. When you reduce your palette to shades of one colour, you reduce the noise, and make a much more minimalist piece. It can still be intricately detailed, and multi-layered, but doesn’t get as intense.
Collage presents a unique way of including a wide range of textures and shapes while sticking to shades of a single colour.
Infuse your Art Journal with Emotion
Find the right media to express specific emotions.
Making A Tag Book
Hello, favourites! It's Essie again, back to share how I've been approaching this season of lists. Now, I am a crazy busy person. Like a lot of women, I wear many hats, and routinely...
Creating a Floral Collage
Hello, beautiful Messians. It’s Essie from the blog team here. I hope this season of Happy is doing your soul good and setting the tone for a joyful and creative year. This week, I’m...
Making a strip collage
Hello delightful and delicious Messians! I’m Essie, and I have a tutorial for you today. I’m going to share my strip-collage process. Just so we’re clear I don’t mean that in the...
Lesson 1 – Introduction
This course is about accessing your emotional self through your art journal. In it, we are going to spend time meditating on different aspects of our emotional selves, and find ways of expressing them through our art.
Heart Journal
The Heart Journal will get you connecting with your emotional self and exploring her in your art journal. Essie Ruth will lead you through exploring joy and happiness, sadness and grief, anger and rage, wonder and surprise, and peace. Alongside Essie, you will look at how great artists have conveyed emotion in their own work and draw inspiration from them. You’ll consider how artistic media can best communicate certain feelings. You’ll contemplate your relationships with different emotions and what you think about them. And most importantly, you’ll take everything you’ve learned and use it to create expressive, satisfying, and rewarding works of art. If you’d like to start putting your heart into your art journal, then this class will help you find ways to do just that.
How to draw a song
Hi Messians! It's Essie here, very happy to be back with you in this inspiring season of music. You know how some music gets you feeling big things? Some fills you with joy, some pumps...
Welcome to Loving Mama
Welcome to the class!
Day 17 Yes
Remember: Bring your messy self, take what you need (no such thing as being behind), and remember that more than zero is enough. Here's the prompt for today's Messy May:What was the last creative impulse you felt? Was it to try a new medium? Attempt a...