Visual Journaling

I spent the entire day yesterday working on a journal Victoria gave me--a blue square journal (I call her Little Blue)  that closes with an elastic band and whose pages are thick and thirsty enough for inks, glue, chalks and water colors.  (Hand-Book Visual Journal by Global Arts.)

One of the Craftsy teachers said, "A journal is not a place for finished products so much as it is a process of learning to pay attention and observe things more closely, to celebrate the everyday." If used as trip journals, pages can be prepped with color and borders (or "activated," as one teacher calls it)  before the trip, then filled with notes, travel memorabilia and drawings on the trip.

My first Chic Sparrow journal--a turquoise leather cover--was used for pictures and cards and handwritten notes I've saved over the years.  When finished, I took out all those insert notebooks and put them in a special place to look at whenever I need a hit of love, then inserted four fresh notebooks. You buy inserts at Etsy, Amazon, or Chic Sparrow according to the size of the leather cover--A5, B6 Slim, etc.

I used my second Chic Sparrow--a smaller one with a red pebbly cover--for notes on photography online classes.

Now, Little Blue--along with a small notebook I bought in Virginia years ago made out of antique postcards--these are where I'm playing with lines, colors, marks, and words.

Yesterday, I pasted in old postage stamps, tried out lettering, played with chalks and water color pencils, and learned a lot about the ways different materials behave on these papers.

Craftsy, now Bluprint, has a class called Essential Techniques for Capturing the Energy of Places by James Richards--which pairs well with their classes by Judith Cassel-Mamet in Expressive Journaling.  I stayed up til 2 a.m. watching these excellent classes!

I've always thought I'm not an artist because I don't have the slightest talent for drawing, but these classes are teaching me that drawing is learnable and that there are other paths to image-making besides drawing.  Visual journals combine sketches, scribbles, collage techniques, and mixing various media.

One tip I particularly like it turning smart phone pictures to monochrome--and then using the photos as guides for drawing.

From James Richards, I learned that the human body is "eight heads tall."  Who knew?

Judith Cassel-Mamet demonstrates a really cool technique for making books out of paper bags--which Day and Elena and I made together at the lake.

You need three paper bags for each book (white or brown).  You fold each in half, put them together by sewing a seam down the spine, and then thicken it up with collage and watercolor papers.  The paper of the bags doesn't work well for water colors, but if you cut a square of watercolor paper, you can glue it into the book.

When you fold the bags, then put them together in books, the openings of the bag leave pockets--which makes this a good travel journal.  In the pockets, you can put maps and found objects, business cards, menus, etc.