Travel Journalling Tips

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This article is written by Francesca Albini

A cruise on the Nile may sound like a calm, relaxing experience, but the truth is, most of the excursions start at 4-5 am, you are often dragged from one monument to another, and in the evening there may be special dinners, dances, music and other entertainments. There are only a few moments where, if you have the energy, you can sit down and sketch, glue, paint, or write.

I find it is actually better when visiting a completely new place to absorb the atmosphere and collect material to then work on my journal once I’m back home. I make mental notes about things like colours, sounds, impressions, temperature. I write key-words  and a few diary entries on a document app on my mobile (I handwrite too, but calligraphy is not what I do best). I also have a folder to collect ephemera, ticket stubs, postcards, brochures, and, why not, the letter paper of the hotel or boat I’m staying in.

I hardly use my big camera these days, I prefer a more compact one, but still with an slr chip. I also bring with me a few plastic cameras and mobile camera apps. I very often find that the lo-fi images record the atmosphere better than the higher quality ones. Lo-fi also means you can capture images quickly, for instance when riding on a coach (less pixels or 35mm film are faster).

Here are three spreads from my Egyptian trip.

The first is more collage-based with bits of ephemera, my cut-out diary entries and some photos, one of which printed on a piece of brown manila envelope.

Art Journalling by Francesca Albini

 

The second is a sketch of the view from the boat. I laminated the book I’m working on with rice paper died with a tea bag. I used pencil, gouache and bits of coloured tissue paper. The reference for the image were a photo I took and some quick sketches I did on deck at the time.

Art Journalling by Francesca Albini

The last spread shows three photos I took, the one on the left is a candid taken with the good compact kept at waist level, the two on the right were taken with a 35mm plastic camera. I spread brass, ochre and white acrylic around the pictures and completed with rough homemade eraser stamps of birds and palm trees.

Art Journalling by Francesca Albini

 

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Francesca is a visual artist using pretty much everything she finds around her to record and relive feelings and memories of places and emotions. She collages, paints, draws, photographs. Francesca loves mixing modern technology, such as mobile phone apps, with the simplest of tools such as glitter glue, crayons and other children’s art supplies. Read her blog at http://franjournal.blogspot.com/

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Altered Book Art Journal by Wendy Whipple

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Wendy Whipple saw our shout-out for mixed media art journal photos, and was happy to pass along some pictures of her altered book/art journal.

“The theme of the journal is belly dance, and how I came to it,” Wendy says. “I found a book entitled Evening Class to use (my classes were at night) and then I discovered the first couple pages contained words that actually were relevant to MY story. Kismet!”

Here are the first 10 pages of Wendy’s gorgeous art journal;

Torn and cut mulberry paper, surrounding the book’s title, appropriate because my belly dance class was – in fact – an Evening Class.

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The edge. Each of those fringes attach to a tab. Each tab is a section of a journal I wrote for the 8 weeks of my first session.
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More mulberry paper (the back side of the title page) and the painted first page, highlighting words that were already there. The pocket tag has a picture of me as a baby, and a little journal note on the back.
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More highlighted existing words. Facing page has dance-related quotes, and a dancer I painted with acrylics on a paper towel (I don’t know why I did it, but it looks cool). 🙂 I used chalk pastels to edge around the quotations to make then stand out.
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The big image is from a newspaper article about Dancing with the Stars if I recall correctly, but the swirling skirts and bare waist of the dancer reminded me of a belly dancer.
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Colored pencil, pen, and computer-generated clip art. Journalling in my own wretched handwriting.
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Facing page: computer generated journalling – much more attractive! and an embossed block of a paisley design using clear embossing powder.  The other in-progress pages look very much like that purple page: a printed block of journal on a plain painted background. I have yet to enhance, embellish or junk them up further… although I am itching to do so.
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Wendy lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and daughter. She’s played with mixed media art for several years, but has only been “serious” about it since 2007, starting small with ATCs. In addition to paints and glues and shrink plastic, she enjoys photography, belly dancing, and online gaming. (For the Horde!). More of Wendy’s work can been seen at her blog The Creative Miscellany.

Thanks Wendy for sharing your art journalling adventures with us.
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Expressive Art Workshops

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The Expressive Art Workshop e-Course offers you a daily starting place to contemplate your life and point you in the direction for developing a  self-reflective, daily journal. 20 minutes each day will put  you on the path of cherishing your own inner life and finding out what uniquely matters to you.

As you regularly begin to map out your inner world and ask yourself good questions your unique direction in life becomes more clear. Small changes can begin immediately and step by step you begin to become familiar with the landscape of your own desires and what is needed for you to live a consciously rich and intentionally authentic and creative life.

Click here for more information.

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Creating a Mixed Media Art Journal

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Creating a mixed media art journal page uses many of the mixed media techniques we have discussed previously. Art journalling give you a chance to bring all of those techniques together to create a piece of art that is uniquely yours.

Start with a book ready for altering, a sketch book or a notebook. Open to a new page and give both pages a good coat of gesso. Remember to be aware of the brushstrokes or scratchings you put into the gesso; these will still be visible and add texture to the finished design, after the paint has been added.

Next add some colour. Here I’ve chosen a green and a purple, both craft paints. They have been added at a diagonal, using first a dry brush, then a wash after the first layer is dry.

Adding green paint to mixed media art journalAdding purple paint to art journal

To tie the two colours together and to “dirty” it up a bit, add a little black paint, using the edge of a credit card to create thin lines.

Adding a little black to an art journal

To add further layers, paint on some tissue paper with matching colours and tear into strips. These can then be stamped and edged with black ink. Glue these onto the page. Ink used here is Brilliance Graphite Black. Stamps are from See-D’s Perfectly Paisley set (#50326).

Adding colour matching layers to add texture to background

Now your page is ready for journalling. I have used a white and a black gel pen of the Uni-ball brand. Both wrote well and dried on the paint. Take care when writing onto layouts; you may need to heat set your writing with a heat gun. Also some pens don’t write well on gesso.

Writing added with gel pens onto art journal

The brilliant aspect of art journalling is that you can write about anything; it does have that journalling aspect to it! Lately I have had the words from Pink’s song “I don’t believe you” going through my head. I have written the words out, as best as I can remember them. And like any song that just keeps going through our heads, I may not have started at the beginning, or finished at the end, or repeated the right bits…. but it is a reflection of the melody that is flowing through my brain.

Detail picture of art journal layers and writingWriting detail in art journal

I hope this introduction to art journalling will inspire you to give it a go. If you have completed some mixed media art work or altered book before, then the step to journalling is taking faith in your handwriting and what you want to say. If you are just beginning, then the best way to learn is to get started, start painting, start stamping, start writing. Only then will your skills grow.

And remember that this is for you, so choose the colours and images you love. You don’t need to share it with anyone. And don’t worry about your handwriting ~ while you may not like it, it is a part of you and that is what we are putting into our journalling.

If it all goes really bad… you can always gesso over it and begin again. But please sleep on it first; you may be surprised how a fresh set of eyes can appreciate your own work much better in the morning!
Happy creating!

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