Rakefet Hadar - Layers of Meaning: Elements of Visual Journaling

This book would not have come to be without some people very dear to me.

Thank you to my friend Anat, who showed me the wonderful world of her visual journals.

Thank you to Rakefet Berger, who taught me the courage to dream and helped me to open my school.

And thank you Iris Gal for managing the school in the last two years.

Thank you to my many beloved students, who over the years have helped me to further develop the method and to continue the search for what heals.

Thanks to the translator, Dalit Shmueli and my good friend Tal Shimizu, who read the drafts, commented, and helped to edit them.

Thanks to the dedicated Green Man studio for the beautiful graphic work of this book.

Thanks to Lee Scop, my beloved eldest daughter, who photographed and produced the Headstart video and devoted hours with me in thinking how to make the visual journal accessible to the public.

Thank you to my good friends, who were the first to encourage me to get the visual journal out into the world, and a special thanks to my extended family that accompanied me during the project and donated money to fund the book.

And above all - thanks to my family, my husband and children, who have accompanied me over the years and were patient when I was totally involved with my work, which enabled me to devote hours to it, and shared my happiness with every step on the long path to the creation of this book.

The Power of the Soul

Intention is the heart of the artistic process, and it plays an especially important role in the visual journal. The primary intention of all visual journal spreads is to connect to the soul, and the desire to express all of its parts without being bound to rules of beauty and aesthetics.

Every spread of the journal starts with intention or a desire to express something. Sometimes, the intention is clear to us right at the start, and sometimes we start creating intuitively and discover the intention deep into the process.

Therefore, the element of intention may be misleading. Do we not have intention when we create intuitively? Can we say that the element of intention is always there whether or not its intuitive? We always intend to create a meaningful connection to the soul in the moment, to know it here and now through our work.

The natural way for me to create is to start intuitively, and through the process, discover the intention of my inner dream child. Creating is the way to communicate with the higher parts of me; its the only way that it can communicate with me, through lines and colors and the magical mix of the seven elements.

So, for me, intention comes from my unconscious mind, from the higher, hidden parts of myself. At a certain point, usually when I add a few layers to the page, I start to understand the message, and then I connect with what has emerged from the spread and continue to create with intention.

For some people, intention has to be clear and known in advance. They can only create when the element of intention is clearly defined for them. In such cases, you can connect to your intention but maintain the freedom to think of the idea that you want to express, while also enabling the unconscious mind, the mysterious, coincidental, and the magical to do their thing.

Intention is like a cloud that always hovers over us when we work on our visual journal. The higher intention is to express ourselves in a new language, a visual language that touches us, a language that lets us create something from nothing. That is the higher intention of every spread in the journal.

Prompts are for people who find it hard to create something from nothing. They need some kind of lead to help them get started, and then the wellspring of creativity bursts forth. Prompts help us to channel our intention into action.

Prompts are the verbal instructions for visual journaling. You can find many prompts on the Internet on websites devoted to art journaling. Today, almost every teacher of art journaling posts their work on personal blogs and shares prompts for creating spreads with their followers.

Open prompts provide students with the stimuli to start working on the journal.

For example: Create a page that describes the connection between you and your parents.

These prompts dont give clear instructions on what to do; they just give a general direction.

The journaling process is a puzzle of higher-intentions, of prompts and instructions for the use of techniques and materials in a way that enables a meaningful inner process.

An accurate and correct process that leads to completing a spread in the visual journal is a unique art that demands a great deal of work on the part of the teacher and includes many prompts to bring the student, step-by-step, to create a complete and evocative spread.