This is Me Art Journaling Page- Silencing Your Inner Critic

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“When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I’m meant to be, THIS IS ME!
Look out ’cause here I come
And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
I’m not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, THIS IS ME!

This Is Me from The Greatest Showman

The first time I heard this song it was in this YouTube Video. I dare you to watch it without crying.

This song spoke deep into my soul. After years of trauma and abuse I relate so completely to feeling bruised, but brave. I’m still here. I haven’t given up. THIS IS ME.

I have wanted to do an art journaling page based on this song for a while now, and I finally did it!

For this page I wanted to address that inner critic that tells me I am not enough. A few years ago I had the opportunity to attend an amazing class on CreativeLive with Julia Kelleher.

Julia talked about facing our inner critic by giving them a body and persona. Thanks to her inspiration my inner critic is so much more real to me, which means I am better able to tell him to hush his mouth!

Maybe some day I’ll do an art page where I draw him. For today though, I’ll just focus on counteracting his messages.

First I took the time to think about what messages my inner critic likes to yell at me. They mostly center around my people pleasing fear archetype. (You can read more about the fear archetypes in Ruth Soukop’s amazing book “Do it Scared“)

I get a little bit too much of my self worth from others. I need to work on finding it within myself.

The next step is to dig a little deeper and really get down to what is the unmet need or false paradigm driving that criticism. For me it is the idea that I am unloved, unwanted, and not heard.

For my actual art project I started with a sketch of a woman’s head that I had previously done in procreate. I printed it on Canson Watercolor paper.

I created the background my getting th epage nice and wet then dripping on ink from my Jane Davenport Mermaid Markers. They contain a water based ink that acts just like watercolors, but with more vivid concentrated colors.

After mixing the colors around I dabbed a bit with a paper towel to dry up excess water as well as add a subtle texture. I then used Lushine ink pads to add a few more textural elements with my clear rubber stamps.

Next I picked out some positive words that were important to me. I typed them up using the font “Perfect Thoughts“, which is much nicer than my handwriting. Some of these words I feel are already true. Some are things that used to be true that I want to regain. Some are words that represent who I am committed to growing into.

For the final touch I mixed a bit of beige mica powder with denatured alcohol (excellent for making your own home made calligraphy inks!) and painted a light layer over the top. I like things to be sparkly! The mica will rub off once dry, so I sealed it all with a layer of spray fixative.

Here is my process video if you’d like to watch it.

Overall I am really proud of this piece. I’m proud of myself for doing it scared and going live! I’m proud that I didn’t listen to the inner critic telling me it wasn’t good enough to share. Most of all I’m proud of myself for facing that inner critic and claiming my muchness through art.

Would you like to get my free printables to do this project on your own? Just enter your email in the field below and I’ll send you over a file with a 2 page PDF of words you can use as well as several different face sketches to choose from. If you don’t want to give me your email you can buy the files in my Etsy shop for $1.97

If you do this project I would love to see your results! Please share them in the comments or hop on over to my Facebook group to share with other muchness mamas!