Layers of Meaning
You already have an inner artist. This is the book that gives her a language.
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About this book
Seven elements. That is the whole method, and this is the book that lays it out. Intention, magical coincidence, background, images, lines, color and text, each one with exercises and a step by step tutorial, so you are working on your own page from the very first evening rather than reading about someone else's.
It is not a book about talent. Not one page of it asks you to draw well. It asks you to put down a background, choose an image that pulls at you for reasons you cannot yet explain, and let the page tell you the rest. Then it opens my own private journal and shows you the story behind every spread, including the ones made in the years I could not talk about.
This is a course, not a book you only read
Every chapter puts you back in your own journal. The seven elements come one at a time, each with its own exercise, and then the whole thing is built in front of you: one complete spread from the first wash of background to the last word of text, photographed step by step. Work through it in order and you have taken the course that my students take with me.
An exercise in every chapter
Not theory you file away. Something to do on the page that evening.
Photographed step by step
Numbered process shots for the techniques, so you can see exactly what your hand should be doing.
A meditation and a writing prompt
The dream child meditation, black out poetry, writing with your non dominant hand.
One full spread, start to finish
Part 2 is a complete worked process using all seven elements together.
Look inside
What you will be able to do by the end
Start a page without freezing
The background comes first, not the drawing. There is no blank page to be afraid of once you know that.
Read your own images
Why that fox, that door, that bird. The book teaches images as a map of the inner world, not decoration.
Use color as feeling
Color and blots as emotional quality, with exercises that show you what each choice is carrying.
Finish a spread you are proud of
The seven elements in order, then a full worked process from first wash to final word.
What is inside
This book is for you if
- You have never made art and you want somewhere safe to begin
- You already paint and you want the work to mean something
- You are a therapist or facilitator looking for a structure you can hold a group with
- You keep a written journal and you want to add a visual language to it
Book details
The other two books
About the method, and about me
I am an art therapist, and I was keeping a visual journal long before I ever taught one. What turned a private habit into a method was watching it work on other people. A woman who could not find a single word for what she was carrying would sit down with paper, glue and color, and by the end of the session she had said all of it.
That is what SoulPages is. Seven elements and a clear structure, simple enough to follow alone at your kitchen table on a Tuesday night, strong enough for a facilitator to hold a whole group with. Since 2016 I have been training facilitators in it, and my intention is not a small one: to bring this method to every place in the world that needs it. It changes lives, and I have watched it happen too many times to say it any more carefully than that.
Try the method, free