Making Art with Meaning
Artist &Workshop Facilitator
Hi, I’m Valerie. I’m so glad you stopped by!
Art reflects life, and to be honest, art making has helped me through the hard times in life as well as celebrating the sweet times. It’s a journey and I love sharing in the artful life journey with others.
My hope is to bring you a bit of inspiration for your creative journey.
This website includes many journal pages to peruse through, video tutorials, and opportunities about how you can grow in exploring your creative vision, expand your artistic skill, and express your own unique creative self.
My motto:
Love God
Serve Others
Make it Beautiful!
Art journaling your focus word
This E-Course is an online version of the weekend journal workshops.
Courses
Step-by-step Art techniques to inspire beauty & personal meaning
A Beautiful Word
This course walks you through the entire process of making an art journal, beginning with a sheet of watercolor paper and a word.
You'll learn how to dig deeper into a word, find quotes and Scripture online, look for a font that goes with the word, experiment with colors to decide on a color palette, and loosely plan what goes where. Then moving on to making the journal itself - filling it with beauty and meaning and bringing it to completion with the techniques shown in the videos.
The possibilities for a journal like this are endless. The journals below were all made in a similar way to the WORDS journal I’ll be demonstrating in during this course
In the art tutorial journaling videos, it is as if you are standing over my shoulder as I make the journal.
It is designed for you to bring your own word and journal ideas, but you could also follow along and make a similar journal to the one I'm making. The techniques are demonstrated as part of the process making the 'WORDS' journal.
Keys to Drawing Celtic Knots &Illumination
Enrollment OPEN NOW through March 31
To see a flip through of the ‘Be Thou my Vision’ journal click here to visit the course page and scroll down to view the video.
Join me on this creative and spiritual journey as we learn easy ways to draw Celtic knots, designs & lettering as we travel through the Celtic Christian hymn ‘Be Thou My Vision.’ This online retreat includes nearly 24 hours of edited video, including 20 downloadable video lessons with multiple videos showing start-to-finish how to create 20 illuminated pages for each phrase of the hymn ‘Be Thou my Vision.’ Over 20 downloadable PDF page layouts of the illuminated pages. Some additional PDFs with visual/written instructions. 20 video devotionals, around 10 minutes each, to go along with the phrase of the week. 20 downloadable devotional PDFs with Scripture, “Heart-full” questions and spiritual exercises to inspire you to grow deeper in your walk with God.
Here are two videos I hope will encourage you. The first is the Shalom prayer (featured in one lesson in the course), one of the most influential prayers of my life, presented by the Maranatha Community. I received permission to add the artwork and text to the audio version. The second video is an Irish blessing featuring people from 300 churches with Be Thou my Vision.
Shalom Prayer, © Maranatha Community, UK office, audio & written version at: https://www.maranathacommunity.org.uk/shalom/
Improve your painting skill while celebrating the wonder of birds. In this course you can! There are 7 step-by-step video lessons with bird themed of eggs, birds, feathers, and nests. Have fun and learn how to paint realistically and expressively with acrylics on a variety of surfaces and backgrounds: watercolor sheet/journal, wood board or canvas, sheet music (thin paper.)
Bible Journaling with Stencils & More
This course will help you take your Bible journaling to the next level. Each Bible journaling lesson includes HD video showing detailed step-by-step processes of how to Bible journal using a variety of mediums: acrylic paint, pen, colored pencils Gelatos© and even a bonus lesson using watercolor. The lessons range from simple, journaling with dry media (pen, pencils & Gelatos®) in the margin, to more complex mixed media (paint, collage plus dry media.) This class is more than learning art techniques. Scripture is woven throughout the class and you will see how to use symbolism to deepen the spiritual meaning your Bible journal pages.
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way –
things I had no words for.”
~ Georgia O’Keefe