journaling | Samantha Humphreys

September 11, 2025

Why September Feels Like the Real New Year

I have always felt that the new year is more to do with September than January. even when I wasn’t working in education. It is ingrained into us from age four. We were taken shopping for new black shoes and a new pencil case (because this one is so last year). We also sometimes needed a new school bag and pumps. Finally, the pièce de résistance, the pencils, fountain pen and ink cartridges, and new felt tips!

I have always loved this time of year. As a child, it was the thing I loved most about school, apart from art lessons. Mum would take me into town to WH Smiths in Liverpool City Centre. We would buy these things the week before school started. I would feel confident that my tools and accessories would help me to succeed.

Now I have a huge room size pencil case and I still have the excitement of a child at the thought of buying new supplies. This ‘pencil case’ is not only where I can make art. It is also where I can share my joy and excitement with others. Ultimately, when I have finished my organisations, It will not only be a space for teaching art but a space that evokes a sense of calm. In my role as a journal therapist, I have built a portfolio of effective creative exercises. These exercises aim to free the mind of intrusive thoughts. They help in buying back precious moments of lust for life that have been earlier lost.

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March 4, 2025

The Benefits of Journaling Through Art

This afternoon was the first of two journaling lessons I teach at The Art and Design Studios in Great Waltham. Today’s task was my favourite exercise, drawing a tree. We draw trees we find pleasing and give thought to their similarities and differences to humanity. There are many topics of discussion to focus on that crop up during the session. I have taught this exercise over many years and each time it differs in content, outcomes and it develops. I learn from it myself, always.

I have many versions of drawing a tree. The one above is the first from today. I have another class tonight, so I will do at least one more. The tree is one I pass at least once a day. It often has a gang of dog walkers gathered underneath, chatting and socialising their dogs. Whatever the weather, they throw sticks in the river for games of ‘Fetch’. This is lovely to see. I manoeuvre my way around excitable pups who sometimes jump up to say hello. This prompts many apologies all round for a variety of reasons. Of course, all are totally unnecessary. But hey-that’s what we English do right?

This was very early morning yesterday and it was particularly tranquil. The weather was bitingly cold. I was so comfortable because I dress in many layers. I always prepare for being cold, especially when out early. The sky was as blue as early summer and I felt the endorphins flood through me. I reflected on how grateful I am to live within walking distance of these green spaces. I am grateful that I am healthy enough to enjoy them. I am also grateful that I have the freedom to do so. I can honestly say that I owe my new positive mindset, to once drawing a tree several years ago.

Time to think is important, even if it’s only for a minute every so often. Gift yourself the time.

The Art and Design Studios -Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/_theartanddesignstudio/

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February 25, 2025

An unexpected (but very much appreciated) moment of Joy

Yesterday, while I took a short walk around Great Waltham between my classes, I found a beautiful patch of early crocus on some communal grass area. I looked around in the hope of finding a fallen, broken flower so I could take it back for the evening botanical drawing session, but alas, there was none. Also, it was great that there was none, because there were some that had been mightily flattened by the heavy downpours and still looked very securely attached to their stems and firmly rooted in the ground.

I noticed that the colour palette was very much in line with my own yesterday. I was wearing green and purple which I have also thought was very much a Daphne from Scooby Doo signature, so at least now I can instead associate it with spring colours instead.

What were the chances that I would choose to wear that combination on the same day that I decided to go for a walk between the classes and I would walk that way? That I would do this on the narrow window of time that these flowers bloom? Sometimes all the stars fall into line and bring about these small, really inconsequential happenings that do, for some reason, bring some much needed childlike joy to my brain!

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February 9, 2025

Documenting Our Path

Remains of the Day (2025) Mixed Media

So this past week has seemed like I have been throwing loads of balls in the air and seeing whether any land on my head! Sometimes they all landed on my head at once .

This past week in Journaling I have been teaching Gelli Printing as a technique for capturing and documenting a moment. There were some fantastic results, there was also some beautiful debris at the end of the lessons. The technique serves as a reminder that often, the things that we do, result in a bi-product that is sometimes more pleasing and satisfying than our original intention.

Journaling is proving to be a minefield of memories, both for myself as well as my students and clients. Because we talk during the lesson and share experiences (not a requirement to participate, we can just listen to our peers), memories conjure up forgotten similar experiences for us all. I know its a cliche, but talking is precious, we talk, we share and we listen-then we document these memories in any way we like because these precious moments are too much of a treasure to risk forgetting.

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December 6, 2024

Finding My Groove

As I expected, life changed somewhat this year, I left formal education after thinking I would remain involved forever in a job I loved. I fixed some….no, most, of the necessary broken bits of my rapidly and scarily declining mental health and started to find time for dealing with what needs dealing with physically. I developed much of my art practice with new techniques throughout the year. This was mainly because of Project 366 which has forced me to allow daily time for my art and as a result, I feel as though I have practiced ‘extreme art’. The additional skills, as well as being awfully useful as I can now teach more techniques than ever, have released all manner of wonderful chemicals to my brain perfectly complementing those endorphins I get from taking long walks each day.

Additionally this year, I have learned a lot about myself and found ‘where I actually belong’ in the world. As well as being a daughter, a wife and a mum, I feel that maybe life has been like a vinyl record rather than a treadmill and I have finally found my groove. You may well laugh at my cheesy metaphor, (I did) but we tend to see life as a series of milestones, we are conditioned that way. Maybe it’s meant to be a round of possibilities that show themselves at different stages of our life and while we shouldn’t constantly flit from one thing to another : we can settle into something more than once, and we don’t have to be in just one groove forever.

Teaching how creativity can give us the tools we need to maintain a healthy wellbeing is my groove. Journaling has been crucial to developing my own sense of healthy wellbeing is something we take for granted, yet It is in fact a provision we must make for ourselves and it needs checking daily. As an Artist, I take it for granted that creativity is good for the soul, but not everyone sees themselves as creative so how do we encourage exploration of that? Everyone possesses creativity, maybe not in an obvious way, but we all have the ability to mark make, make creative noise or move creatively and we should allow ourselves to do this as much as we give ourselves the time to eat, work and sleep.

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Tag: journaling