Saturday, 13 December 2025
Art Journal Joy - Celebration, Nobel Peace Prize
Friday, 11 July 2025
Just One Tool - Filling the Creative Well - Blog Series
Limiting your tools or supplies can be one of the most liberating creative decisions. Today’s challenge is to use just one tool, medium, or material and explore everything it can do. I find it is a great way to really understand all the uses of that tool or supply, and it gives you more flexibility and variation in your work.
What you can try
- Pick one: a watercolor palette, a black marker, a needle and thread, a gel pen, a single color of paint. What happens when you stretch its use across the whole page or several?
- With fewer choices, you are able to explore further. Try making different types of marks. Experiment with layering. Use the tool in unexpected ways maybe your pen mimics another supply, or your watercolor develops unusual texture when layered thickly.
- This kind of exploration sharpens your understanding of your materials and deepens your relationship to them. You become more resourceful and imaginative.
- You might also notice that limiting your choices frees your brain. Instead of worrying about all the variations of color in your acrylic set which can sometimes be 50+, you get to focus on how many different shades and variations you can get from one color.
Bonus idea: use the same tool each day for a week. Observe how your comfort grows. This practice helps you slow down and appreciate simplicity.
Takeaway Nuggets:
- Limiting tools can unlock deeper creativity.
- Mastery comes from exploration
👇👇👇👇👇👇
Check out some of the free and paid resources below to enhance your creative journey
Check out Filling the Creative Well which helps you establish your creative practice. In the course Filling the Creative Well, your journal is also a place to answer questions, encourage and motivate you, some days you need a reminder and so filling it with encouraging words so that you can come back to it, especially in those days where you are in a valley is really important. .
Monday, 30 May 2022
Free Mixed Media Art Resources
Friday, 20 May 2022
The Joy of MOTIF - Rachel Bellamy Online Course
Join Rachel as she brings you on a journey of exploration and discovery, in her new course The Joy of M.O.T.I.F.
She has some amazing processes for creating abstract art and using colors, marks and symbols to bring them together a cohesive collection.
In this class, Rachel shares her M.O.T.I.F. framework that she uses to create a cohesive series of abstract art using gelli plates, a curated collection of supplies and inspired mark making.
Saturday, 4 February 2017
10 Prompts, 10 Days, 10 Minutes - Day 5 - Unusual Marks
Welcome to day 5 of the 10 Ideas to kick start your creativity. Today's task and additional instructions is below
Find different stick/old pens that you wouldn’t normally use to paint and try creating with them, see how each creates a different line and shape in the paint. You can get some great and unusual marks in the paper, and also start to add to your creative tool chest things that you can use at a later date.
You might find some of these marks that you make the next inspiration for your next piece of art








.png)








