Keeping Secrets in Your Art Journal: From Raw Art Journaling

By Quinn McDonald

To keep a meaningful journal, you need to feel comfortable and believe your secrecy is respected, right?
If so, you have two options. You might choose to journal in a way in which your secrets are hidden away forever from everyone, including yourself--"lock them up and throw away the key! Or perhaps you'd prefer to be able to check in on them in the future; there are many ways to hide your words that can be reversed later. An excerpt from the popular book, Raw Art Journaling by Quinn McDonald, Keeping Secrets in Your Art Journal shares many methods for keeping secrets secret, from overwriting to tangled language to code-talking and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781440322631

Book preview

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Introduction

A raw-art journal is a way to keep track of your life—the journey you experience as you decide what you want to be when you grow up (even if you are physically grown up already). With raw-art journaling, you don’t need know how to draw and you don’t need to know how to write. You just need to learn a few techniques to embrace your art, confront your inner critic, and make meaning with your words and your art.

An important part of letting your innermost thoughts and feelings out onto the page is knowing your secrecy is respected, that you are comfortable making your journal meaningful. Several of the techniques used to create a raw-art journal allow you to hide your words in a variety of ways depending on what level of secrecy you desire.

In this Craftable, an excerpt from the book Raw Art Journaling by Quinn McDonald, you’ll learn seven techniques for keeping your thoughts secret both from yourself, making them illegible, or just from others, by coding your secrets for you to read later. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but once you determine which techniques are right for your secrets, you’ll have the freedom to express them like you may never have before!

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arrow Keeping Secrets Secret

To keep a meaningful journal, you need to feel comfortable and believe your secrecy is respected. Do you want your writing to be yours to process, but kept