Watercolor Journal Flip Through | Watercolor Painting Inspo

Hi everybody, it's Sarah Cray with Let's Make Art, and today we are doing a journal flip through. So every morning essentially I come into the studio, I paint a page of my journal, it is part of my creative practice, it's something that I do to keep me engaged, excited, and just for fun, okay? Recently we have launched the Good Morning Journaling course, which essentially gives you access to the process videos of some of these paintings inside, as well as written instruction, and then I like break down my entire like why and process for how to even have a creative habit, okay? All right. So a lot of these paintings you're going to see in here, they were part of the spring Good Morning Journal course, we broke it up by season because that's how I like to paint, is seasonally, but there's also paintings in here that we've turned into monthly projects, there's paintings in here that have turned into courses, and there are paintings in here that just stay in here, because some of them are just for me, okay? All right. All right, here we go. So my journal is from Bella Classica, it is, I just love their journals, I do. So it's made with Arches watercolor paper, they take vintage books and repurpose them, and I just love it. Okay, so here we have a wildflower field, we did this during the Hamilton watercolor retreat actually, we painted this together. Dang, I love that. I love this one. This I actually painted when I did the video, my LMA journey, the up and downs. Yeah. I painted over it, I decided, you can actually even see some of the writing a little bit, but I decided to paint over it because I really liked the idea of like having this like a hidden painting underneath it that was kind of like personal to me and then like, you know, you're you're sowing seeds and you're planting flowers and all that kind of stuff, I felt like it went together. I love this spread. What kind of cat is that? Michael says that to our kids all the time, and when they're younger they really are like, what? This turned into a project, and honestly, I tried their peaches, they are the best peaches I've ever had. I don't even really love peaches that much, it was so good. I just could not believe it, totally worth it. I can tell you like Opera Pink, and I like Opera Pink. I mean, my entire personality right now is Opera Pink and Cobalt Blue and Hansa Yellow, that's it. Love that guy. Me too, I love him so much. Spring, little spring. Dang. It's so fun to just sit and flip through it, and also I just want to call out, for me, there are moments where I get transfer, like you see that right there? Yeah. That was transferred over from this. If that bothers you, you can seal your paintings. Once both spreads are done, you can seal it using like wax or even a spray sealer, and then that way they don't transfer. I do that sometimes, not all the time, obviously. This one you see a little bit of transfer. I love that. Which one, the pansy? Well, the one on the right. Well, the pansy is excellent too, but yeah, just your wildflower colors right now are just so good. It's so scary, Opera Pink, Cobalt Blue, Hansa Yellow. Can't get enough. Can't stop, won't stop. Billy of the Valley. Yeah, and this we painted together. That's on YouTube if you guys want to go take a look. YouTube? I've never heard of it. YouTube. Utube. Utube. They're all so pretty. I think you should do painting for your job. You think so? I think so. Oh my God. I love this one, but it was a beast. How do you get this book and the printer to print these on there? It's AI. How do you get ChatGPT to do all of these? It's really incredible. I like that guy. I know. Isn't he cute? This is fun for me because I haven't seen a lot of these either. Little peekaboo. This we turned into its own kit because the reaction that you guys had was like, I was like, oh, we got to turn this into a kit. The reaction was huge. Huge. Summer Atmospheric, these turned into projects for a course. Okay, I have to say, because I've seen some people request this to put it in the Good Morning Journal course. The problem is that my camera didn't film all of this. So it filmed maybe 20 seconds of it, and then I realized it wasn't filming and I was upset. And then I just kept on painting because I was like, whatever, I'm still here to paint. And so this is why I cannot include this one because it did not get captured on video. I know. Such a bummer. But I really am in love with these pigment powders and I have a feeling that they will be showing up more. Sometimes I'll use just random pages to separate a spread too, if I'm afraid of transferring happening. I love this project so much. That reminds me of that show we were watching about the Haunted Island. You mean Widow's Bay? Because when I posted this, I was like, is anyone else obsessed with Widow's Bay? Because I am. I like that show. Me too, it's really good. Love birds. Yeah, they're cute. These are part of the current monthly offering, these two. What month is that, by the way? Because some people will watch this. July. July 26. July 2026. These are the bonus projects. We're doing a month all about water and how to paint water. This was a painting underneath that I did not like. So this is gouache on top right here. I'm really into this kind of like wildflower river. It's kind of giving me like Monet vibes. And I loved it in juxtaposition with this because this is so smooth and soft, the water. And the green is what's making its way through. And then I flipped it where the color is making its way through in the green. And it is not soft. It is very active. I've heard you talk about this Monet character before. Who is this? Okay, that's it. That is my journal. Love it. I love how this turned out. I love that you guys have access to like literally 95% of these paintings. And so basically how it works is we broke it up by season. Right now we're doing summer. So I'm having summer paintings happening when that summer journal is done. I will do a flip through. If you guys are interested in establishing a creative habit, figuring out how to paint in your journal every day, you know, what's the process like? What is, you know, all of that kind of stuff. I share all of that with you in the good morning course. And basically I just, I was a little bit nervous to do this course because like this practice is for me and my creativity. And I was, I knew that like making it into something that you guys can like purchase and all that kind of stuff will change my relationship to it. I knew that. So I knew it going in that my eyes were wide open. But the whole purpose was essentially to like let you guys in and know that, let you know how capable you are of doing things like this. And also for me, I like to challenge myself. So it's just like, okay, I've obviously have established a really consistent creative practice with my journaling. This is probably the fourth or fifth journal flip through video I've done. And it's just like, what element can I bring into this that can make this a little bit trickier? And so it's really actually kind of fun for me to try and approach this where I have to pretend that you guys don't exist as I go and paint in my journal. It's like this added, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's like playing mind tricks on myself, but I really think that it is healthy for me to have those types of challenges sometimes because I was getting really comfortable in it. Does that make sense? And basically, of course, you guys, you don't have to like purchase the good morning course to have your own journal. You can absolutely have your own journal. My process is one where I just immediately paint something that grabs my attention. I'm always looking for sources of inspiration and reference photos. I have little like notes in my phone and save photos on my folder and all of that. Save photos on my phone in a folder, all of that kind of stuff. And then I just like let myself paint. There's no expectations. If I don't like the page, I paint over it or you can leave it. You have a really beautiful husband and like that's so inspirational. I really just stare at him. Wow. Yeah. And I'm like, I know exactly what I'm going to paint. Man muse. All right. I hope that this was fun for you. It's really fun for me to kind of look back and see it all together. And what I really love about having a journal like this, not only is it really good for my creativity and helps me feel that like constant connection with inspiration, but it's fun to look through and know like, oh my gosh, you know, this I painted because this was actually, this is our backyard. This is a memory that we had just a, you know, a couple of weeks ago with my family. And it's, you know, when, you know, painting this, oh, this was at the watercolor workshop where we painted loosely all together. And it's like a, it's like a memory book almost. It's like a little time machine. Yeah. What is that called? Like a scrapbook almost, but with painting, it's a journal. Did we just discover journaling? Sarah, I think you're onto something. Okay. Thank you guys. I appreciate you doing this with me. It's so fun. I love sharing what I'm making and what I'm into at the moment. And we'll see you guys next time. If you're interested in painting along with me, you can go to letsmakeart.com and look at the journaling course. It's all the information is there. You can take a look to see if it's for you. We'll see you guys next time. Bye.