process Archives - Ingrid Murray

How to Paint Like a Child

Children’s art is one of my greatest inspirations: it’s intuitive and impulsive, without the confines of “should” and “can’t”. Kids don’t have any sense of limitation, or any reason to doubt their own abilities.

Detail of a mixed media art piece, with brush strokes, scribbles, and splatter.

Picasso famously said “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” And, in one of my favorite talks ever, Do Schools Kill Creativity?, Sir Ken Robinson spoke about the confidence of a child drawing.

Today, I encourage you to pull out some paper, or canvas, and explore like a kid. Cheap materials work well for this kind of exercise: you’ll worry less about “wasting” your supplies and focus more on experimenting.

Try picking a color — paint, pen, pencil — and making random marks on a page. Close your eyes. Use your non-dominant hand.

Step back. What color is next? What color feels like it should come next? Add that.

Step back again, and look at what you’ve made. How does it make you feel? What is missing? What materials can you experiment with? What’s next?

I find that when I create like this, I wind up with tons of messy pieces, some that I’ll toss or paint over. But often, I also end up with some very surprising and joyful works of art that I would never have discovered had I not let go and experimented.

Let go and channel your inner child: curious and unafraid of failing. And most importantly — have fun.

Messy May 2023

An open mixed media art journal. A layer of mostly neutral collage (and one large teal painted paper) is topped with energetic marks and drips in black, neon pink, white, orange, and blue. Most of the background shows through.

Over the weekend I took part in a Creative Hour conversation with Caylee Grey, Meg of Meg Journals, Claudette Hasenjager and more than 100 other art journalers. Caylee is the founder of Get Messy, and Claudette, Meg, and I are three of thirty artists leading this year’s Messy May, a free daily art journaling project.

Connecting with other creatives is something I treasure. Sharing processes, challenges, inspiration, and habits reminds me both of how deeply personal creating necessarily is, and also how universal and innately human creativity is. I am always humbled and inspired, and leave more curious about and committed to my creative practice.

Thank you to all the participants for joining, and to Claudette, Meg, and Caylee for a fantastic conversation.

PLAY in Messy May

For me, creating is a practice of tapping into childlike wonder and intuition. There is no room in my art journal for criticism or perfectionism — only curiosity, joyful exploration, and reflection. As a Messy May featured artist, I encouraged participants to let go of expectations and tap into playfulness and possibility.

Check out the video above for a time lapse of my process, and some additional creative prompts to encourage playfulness.

And below, just a few of the many, many responses to the PLAY prompt. Click on any image to be taken to the artist’s feed. (If you decide to give it a go, please tag me on Instagram! I’d love to see what you make.)

Why abstract art?

Open mixed media art journal. A layer of collage (graph paper, security envelope) is topped with energetic abstract marks in teal and turquoise, green, neon pink, and dark blue. Much of the background shows through.

I admire photorealism: it takes a huge amount of patience and technical skill to represents external reality well.

What I love about abstract art, though, is the conveying of emotion, experience, thought, and existence through form, color, movement, texture, and composition. It represents internal reality.

When I create my work, I tap into a sense of childlike wonder, letting intuition and joy lead the creative process. I choose colors that feel right in that moment. I scribble and splatter. I react to what’s on the page; nothing is preplanned.

Last year, I went to see a Joan Mitchell exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Joan’s paintings are huge and inspired by “remembered landscapes that I carry with me — and remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed. … I could certainly never mirror nature. I … like more to paint what it leaves me with.”

The point of abstract art is expression and curiosity, not perfection.

Hey, Artist

Open mixed media art journal. A layer of neutral-colored collage is covered with energetic marks in teal, green, white, and green. Much of the background shows through.

I have heard from a number of people over the course of my own creative journey who’ve said something along the lines of “I’m not an artist, but I’m interested in starting an art journal [or painting, or exploring collage]. Where do I begin?”

First up: yeah, actually, you are an artist.

Creating is innate; as a species, we’ve been expressing ourselves through dance, sculpture, music and painting for tens of thousands of years. You don’t need a degree to make art, and you don’t need to make “good” art to be an artist. All you need to do is start.

I wrote on My Peacetree — way back in 2011 — about the creative process:

The journey to creativity is not a static one: we must always be searching, pushing, moving, and striving forward. There is no end to be reached — there is only new discovery, exploration, growth, stretching, and learning […]

Art is something which must be practiced over and over again. It is only through this we can really make it our own.

As to where to start: What art makes you pause and stare? Go buy some of those materials — cheap ones are fine. Try them out. Make mistakes. Experiment.

Seek out other artists, look closely at their work, and pull elements of it that you love into your own. (Don’t steal others’ work, though! Incorporating colors and processes and materials is ok; duplicating work is not. And always, always credit artists where it’s due.)

What do you like about your art? Do more of that. What don’t you like about your work? Do less of that.

And above all else, don’t apologize for your work or for yourself. Take yourself seriously and others will, too.

Art Journal FAQs

What type of journal do you use?

I make my own art journals. They measure about 4.5×6 inches (11×15 cm) and are filled with watercolor paper. They’re simpler to make than it looks; the only special materials you need are chipboard, an awl, and waxed linen thread. Check out the tutorial I use here.

In the past, I’ve also used thrifted books or handmade books by other artists.

What supplies do you use?

I use many different kinds of paper for collage, from graph paper to security envelopes to vintage book pages to other things I’ve collected over the years. For adhesive, I use a regular glue stick.

When adding color, I use a variety of mark-making tools, acrylic paint, tempera paint sticks, and acrylic ink.

What is your process?

Lay down some collage
Scribble
Add some paint
Add some drips

I always let the wet media fully dry before adding new layers.

How do you take and edit photos of your work?

I take photos with my phone in natural light, placing my art on a white foam core board. I used to edit the shots with A Color Story, but it stopped being usable. Now I use Snapseed. Both apps are free.

More questions? I’d love to hear from you. Reach out through my contact page or on Instagram!