You don’t have to say a lot for it to be meaningful.

Theodore Roosevelt's diary entry the day his wife died.

Many who keep art journals find it easy to do the art and more difficult to put the words into them. We create beautiful backgrounds and images and then we fret that we will spoil them by writing on them. We worry that what we have to say isn’t important enough, that our handwriting isn’t neat enough, that we will write too much or too little. So we use quotes.

We substitute our own words with someone else’s, someone more famous, more worthy of note. We take the words of great men and women, and instead of being inspired by them to write something of our own we succumb to the belief that their words say what we think better than what we say ourselves.

Try this:

Make up a quote that sounds like it was said by someone else, but is in fact your own.

You could write in a different style, perhaps using high-brow English instead of the way you would normally write, to give it an air of a quotation rather than just something you wrote.

You could take on the style of a favourite poet or writer for your quote. Look at how they wrote and put your words into their language.

When in doubt, try something simple. Start with something that is significant in your life and a feeling you have about it. Then convey that in words.

For example,

Perhaps your children are the be-all and end-all, you might decide that your ‘life is immediately forfeit when I consider giving it up to protect them‘.

Or maybe your dog is the one who you love above all else and his ‘wet nose on my hand brings a smile even on the rainiest day‘.

Once you have your quote, decorate your page accordingly, creating your art around the words rather than doing the art first and writing afterwards.

This prompt was adapted from similar prompts in my Use Your Words art journal workshop. Follow this link to find out more about the workshop.