3. Cultivate

The goal of the Season of Art 101 is to introduce you to new mediums and techniques and to eliminate the scary part of how to get started, what to choose, and how to care for supplies. The Messy Artists start at the very beginning with the best supplies and how to use and care for them. They then show you new techniques using these materials. This season also features guest artist Pam Garrison who teaches you how to produce detailed layers and shares insights into her regular art journal practice. Don’t miss the lesson on how to do collaborative art projects.

The Season of Gifts explores the idea of gifts, both intrinsic and external. Begin by learning how to make an upcycled journal from gift wrapping supplies. Essie shows you how to share art via mailable art journals and Nina creates art journal pages with “giving hands.” Learn how to use stencils in multiple ways, add metallic pops, and hide your journaling. Challenge yourself to make art journal pages without looking! Katie talks about working in multiple themed journals at once and Cait shares the power of a morning art ritual.

The Season of Dreams is where consciousness, subconsciousness, and our imaginations meet. Follow along with an illustrated dream journal using found papers. Explore the surreal world of double exposure photographs in your art journal and transforming dreamy watercolours into animals, botanicals, and more. Learn how shoe polish, tin foil, and glue can make distressed metallic elements. Create dreamy impact with vellum and water and ink. Learn how to use art galleries for actionable inspiration and see the Messy Artists’ beautifully honest tutorial on using art journaling to work through depression and anxiety.

The Season of Music combines two of the world’s greatest muses: Art and Music. Get started with how to draw a song, creating pages inspired by cover art, make 10 pages with 10 songs in 10 minutes, and including song lyrics in your art journal. Learn about colour theory and how to create portraits and galaxies with watercolours. Create distressed art journal pages with paper aging and burning. Get the most out of your Get Messy membership each season with an intention setting tutorial.

For the Season of Introspection, we turn inward to investigate our innermost thoughts and feelings. Begin with using ink blots to connect to your intuition and art journaling your personality type. Make a gorgeous mess bleaching paper, stenciling with mists, and making watercolour collage paper. Learn how to use the style of artists you admire. Find and source words for journaling and use your own photography. You will want to save that junk mail for the tutorial on using envelopes in your art journal. Don’t miss Katie’s beginner’s guide to drawing faces or Tanylee’s 10 minute art journal pages.

Featuring Get Messy’s first collaboration with 30 Days of Lists creators Amy Schubert and Kam Altar, the Season of Lists includes 30 lists and 30 art prompts. Learn to create lists in a variety of handmade journals with a pamphlet stitch, tag album, and tiny watercolour album. Create backgrounds with gelatos, watercolour effects, and texture. See how to transfer images with clear packing tape, collage with magazines, and find inspiration in everyday life. Don’t miss the Creative Team’s insights on “ugly pages.”

We all need a little more happy in our lives. Packed full of tutorials and ideas for happiness, the Season of Happy explores the emotions of colour with colour psychology and colour-based art pages. See how to make your art journal pages truly unique by creating your own stencils and making your own backgrounds with gelli plates. Learn how to incorporate photos in your art journal for unexpected results and vintage botanicals to create floral collages. Wrap up your art journal happiness with a tutorial on how to create an accordion journal.

The Season of Magic is about creating and finding magic in your art journal. Tutorials include mixing ink with acrylic paint for delightfully messy, magical results and incorporating words when you don’t like your own handwriting, as well as creating map self-portraits and making strip paper collages. See the art journaling mini challenge, Writing Letters to Your Past Self, for a printable notebook to spark your journaling.

The “journaling” part of art journaling is all about words, which is why in this season, we explore the power of words. We begin with showing you how to choose and prepare an altered book for art journaling. Then explore unique ways you can play with altered books using “peek through” pages, creating dynamic collages, and embracing your own handwriting via handlettered phrases and quotes. For this season, prioritize creating and put some words, any words onto a page.

The Season of Serenity invites you to explore how you understand the world around you and how that understanding can bring you peace. This season explores digital collage and using tissue paper and stamping to create delicately textured pages. We share a tutorial for how working with limited supplies can elevate what you make to completely new levels via a Get Messy swap (one of our favorite activities!). Our hope for you this season is that you find serenity between the pages of your art journal.

The Season of Adventure embraces wanderlust and exploration by exploring the uniquely expressive world of abstract art journaling and painting and includes how to make your own marbled papers with items you can find at your local grocer. Caylee includes a thoughtful tutorial on how sharing your art journal pages online can build community, hold you accountable to your own creative practice, and spark your creativity.

The Season of Brave is where the famous Zine Squad (Jules, Katie, and Vanessa) found their beginnings. This season challenges you to push past your artistic comfort zones and art journal your truths. Tutorials include how to create word art with washi tape and art journal with kids, as well as Get Messy’s first introduction to image transfers and mixed media techniques. Questions answered include: what is gesso and how do you know when a page is done?

The first official season of Get Messy, the Season of Love celebrates love in all its forms. Featuring a variety of artists and their unique perspectives, the Season of Love includes tutorials for playing with washi tape, incorporating everyday items like paper towels, creating your own embellishments, and using ephemera in your art journaling. You don’t want to miss the tutorial on how to get started creating with Get Messy prompts.

The Season of Bloom invites you to let go of ideas of perfection and deconstruct conceptions of beauty. Our wonderful guest for the season is Francisca Nunes of heArt makes who combines colour and nature to explore intuitive expression. For this season, you will create a Bloom Book that is testimony to the passage of time. Learn how to boil paper to create texture and play with colours, shades, and lines to create paper that you will use as collage elements inside your Bloom Book.