Visual Journaling: Drawing Your Feelings - A Class Review

I’ve been taking creative classes on Skillshare for years now, but when I took “Visual Journaling: Drawing Your Feelings” last week, I know I had to share it (and my class projects!) with all of you, because I think you’ll love taking it, too. (Especially when you learn, below, how you can take it for free!)

In case you haven’t heard of it, Skillshare is kind of like the Netflix of online learning. They have nearly 20,000 classes, on all kinds of topics: from creative classes like this one, to business and social media and photography, and beyond.

The classes are taught by people who are experts in their field to everyday creatives like you and I, all sharing their gifts.

The best thing is, when you use this special link, you can take this Visual Journaling class, as well as any of the other 1000’s of classes FREE for 2 months!

Anyway! Enough about Skillshare… let’s get to the class review:

Well, I’m going to share a spoiler here, which is probably obvious but I loved this class!

I only have one complaint, and it’s pretty tiny and based on a pet-peeve I have with classes like this, so I’ll just get it out of the way now…

I’ve taken a lot of art journaling classes in which the teachers aren’t making art in their actual journals (or even sketchbooks). I can see why they might do this (flat paper? If they make a mistake, no one has to know? Bigger size? Maybe there’s another reason I can’t think of…)

This class is the same way. Even though the extremely talented instructor, Jordan Sondler, shows bits of a skecthbook or art journal, her actual projects are done on a single sheet of paper.

Again, this is just a tiny pet peeve of mine, and should you decide to create your own class projects on a single sheet of paper, I suppose you could always glue it into your art journal later.

But enough about that! Let’s get to the good stuff!

One of my favorite things about this visual journaling class is actually the instructor herself! Jordan is not only talented, but she’s REAL. For instance, she makes mistakes, but just goes with it. She’s vulnerable in her projects, too, letting us into her world.

But besides the fun class projects she teaches, my favorite thing about her is how funny she is! Okay, maybe not like Bridesmaids kind of funny, but she has this subtle, honest humor that made me laugh, over and over!

She’s the kind of person you want to be best friends with, and the type of person that helps you bring your own guard down when doing each project.

For instance, it was easy to share what inspires me (the first exercise of five in the class)!

(Hand-lettering has never been my strong suit, but I had fun with this one!)

But in the next exercise, we had to draw four examples of what we hate. That was harder for me. I try to live my life hate-free (I mean, this blog is called joyful art journaling, after all!)

But no one is perfect, and of course there are things I still hate. The first one that came to mind had to do with politics, and to be honest, I just didn’t want to go there. So I had to dig deeper and really think about it. (Thank you, Jordan!)

This is what I came up with:

I came up with: hot and humid days (my face turns bright red when I get hot, and my hair get’s so frizzy in the humidity!). Uncomfortable beds (because I LOVE a good sleep!) Arguing (I’d rather just get along!) And final, making mistakes (even though I know they’re just part of the learning/growing experience of life.)

I don’t want to give away all the class projects, but let’s just say there was more digging into some more of the dark and light sides of life, and the final project we got to go “freestyle”, creating something based on what we learned in the class. This was mine:

Overall, I highly recommend the class! It’s not only a fun way to fill up several pages in your art journal, it’s a great way to explore your own feelings.

And again, you can take “Visual Journaling: Drawing Your Feelings” for free for two months with this Skillshare link.

I posted all of my class projects over in projects and resources section, if you want to see what else I made. And if you do take the class and upload your projects too, let me know if the comments below so I can come see what you made!