A Holiday Art Journal with artist Dawn DeVries Sokol

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! And it doesn’t feel that way to me without my holiday art journal.

For the last 15 years or so, I’ve kept a holiday art journal to get myself into the spirit. Some years are more prolific than others, but whatever happens in the journal becomes a record of the season. I’ve taught many online workshops for holiday journaling and even have one here on Creativebug.com!

To that end, I’m adding a new prompt to the workshop this year…

Create a concert or event poster featuring your favorite holiday “character”—Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, Little Drummer Boy, Charlie Brown, Baby New Year, Grinch, Scrooge, Buddy the Elf. There are SO many. You can doodle, collage, paint, or whatever you’d like!

Materials

For my page, I’m using certain supplies:

image of many colorful Posca paint pens scattered on a white surface along with Wet Ones hand wipes, glitter glue, and black gesso for holiday art journal pages

Gesso
Posca pens (3m-5m), preferred colors
Liquitex and Montana paint markers
Pencil
Stickles
Waterbrush
Micron pens
Uniball Signo white pen
Old credit card or gift card to scrape gesso on page
Wet wipes/paper towel

Preparing Your Art Journal Page

I decided “Rudolph” (think “The Year Without Santa Claus”) would be the main star of my concert poster—with a festival twist. I’m thinking of adding in the Heat Miser, Jingle and Jangle, Hermy and the Misfits, and Benny and the Bucks. They might be drawn or just their names lettered. By the way, this gives you a great chance at practicing your lettering!

First, I painted my pages with black gesso. If you’re using a journal with good quality watercolor paper or mixed media paper, you shouldn’t need to do this unless you want to give the background some texture. It’s really personal preference. My journals tend to have different kinds of papers bound into them. Sometimes I might be working on a paper bag page, sometimes it might be a flattened cereal box. See my workshop on How to Make a Blank Art Journal on Creativebug.

For this, I used a piece of Fabriano Artistico Watercolor Paper (hot press, 300 gsm) and black gesso to get some depth. After I finish, I’m going to tape the page into my journal as I discuss in my Holiday Art Journaling workshop here on Creativebug. I usually work right in the journal, but sometimes I do this as well!

image of a container of black gesso and a white page painted with the gesso

Finding Inspiration & Reference Material for Your Holiday Poster

If you need samples of concert posters, just Google “concert posters” online. You can go retro style, more modern, or collage photos instead of drawing. You can even collage the words with magazine cutouts, labels, or any ephemera you have on hand! Use a concert poster you find to plan out your design if you’re not sure.

image of a screenshot of a Google image search for concert posters

You can also find reference photos of your characters on the internet. Use those pics as a jumping-off point.

Sketching, Lettering, and Painting in Layers

First, I sketched my characters with a Uniball Signo white gel pen because of the black gesso. I’m never as sure drawing this kind of stuff as I am drawing letters. It’s best to place a main image on the page first, then work around that. I sketched in the letters as well for placement purposes.

image of rough sketch of Rudolph the reindeer in white pen on blac painted paper

Next, I started coloring in Rudolph and Heat Miser with the Posca pens and then filling in my lettering. You might notice as I progress, I painted over some things that I’m not pleased with. I also add a few layers to everything on the page.

image of a hand painted poster with black background and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

My lettering is something I first carefully write in, then go over and refine, just like anything you’d paint or draw. Add lighter colors on top of darker colors to add depth. Use a Black Micron once paint is dry to fix mistakes or refine lines and edges.

image of hand-painted holiday art journal page on black paper with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

I continued to paint in color and rework certain areas, such as adding a darker brown over Rudolph for some variation.

image of hand-painted poster with a Christmas deer designed like a concert poster

image of hand-painted concert poster with Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer starring in a show with Jingle and Jangle

I also added some Stickles on the page to give it some sparkle, which is necessary in a holiday art journal!

image of completed hand-painted poster of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in the style of a concert poster for a holiday art journal

Can’t wait to see what you all do with this!!!

By the way: If you want some more inspiration for holiday art journaling, check out my holiday journal e-zines in my shop, available for download. These are digital files that give you a flip-through of 10 of my past holiday journals. You can download them to your computer, view them in Acrobat, Books, or even Kindle. Check them out here: https://dawndsokol.squarespace.com/journalzines

Dawn DeVries Sokol is the author of 15 art journaling, doodling books, and board books, including Doodle Zen, Year of the Doodle, Art Doodle Love, Doodle Diary, and A World of Artist Journal Pages. She’s been published in Somerset’s Art Journaling, Cloth Paper Scissors, and more. Her work has been shown in galleries from Tempe, AZ, to Tokyo, Japan. Her latest book, The Postcard Project, combines art journaling and correspondence.