Tag: Travel journals

Filling up My Travel Journal

May 25

Dear Liza,

When I travel, I walk miles every day and take way too many photographs. And since I know I won’t remember everything, I write and draw and collage into my travel journal. Here is the page that shows our train ride journey from Charles de Gaul Airport to Lyon.

I try to write with accuracy about where we go and what we see, and how I feel about it. But my art …. Is somewhat less accurate.

And that’s okay! Sometimes I work from my photos, trying to make things look just right…

.

And sometimes it’s more of an impressionist collage sort of thing, like this page filled with coffee bags.

And MAPS!! I love maps, and they help me make sense of what I saw and where I was. Our long hike up the Croix-Rousse neighborhood ended up looking like a board game.

And then I feel the need to sketch some more. It’s my book, after all, isn’t it?

The problem (is it a problem? Or an opportunity?) is that my Journal is filling up fast. I will need another in a week or so. Do I get the same size? This one is 8.5 by 11 inches, and I like having the big pages to play with. Since I don’t carry it with me, it’s not really cumbersome.

I’m sure Bridgett will help me find an art store that will help me solve my dilemma.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Completed Travel Journal

Dear Liza,

Now that I’m back home in Portland, I can sit down and do the finishing touches on my Danish travel journal.

I had fun drawing, painting, and inking scenes from our trip. I know photographs are more accurate, but I like being able to give my own take on things.

There are lots of flowers, of course. Denmark in summer is glorious with wild flowers!

There are maps, too, like this one of our three day road trip around the Southern Archipelago.

And this one, of the ferry service in and out of Svenborg, copied from a board by the ferry landing. There are also drawings of the wonderful play area by the Egeskov Castle. I love my bouncing stick people!

The sewing project for Liza that was on my mind and in my hands found its way into the journal.

And you can tell I am getting braver with my drawing when I make an attempt at Liza. I certainly don’t want to botch the picture. But a photo from Elbaek Skov inspired me.

I can’t yet do justice to the beauty of the place or the girl, but I can stretch my limits and get better.

And that closes the book, so to speak, on my Denmark travel journal. Where will I go next? Stay tuned!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Danish Travel Journal

Dear Liza,

Yep, there is a new travel journal, and it’s heading your way! I will be bringing it this week when Grandpa Nelson and I visit you in Denmark.

As usual, I started with a nice thick mixed media spiral bound sketchbook. Their paper is good for writing, collage, and even watercolors, if you don’t get too wet.

My front cover is frenetic and busy, like I am feeling about the trip. I used a weird polar map projection and a compass rose to show travel, a flag and color scheme for Denmark, and words to tell about the excitement of anticipation.

Since most of our travel once we get to Denmark will be by car, my inside cover shows a road trip. The background started as a celestial map, and you can still see some of wording under the grey acrylic. I wanted a grey and red color scheme, and found all those little figures in a magazine ad for Target. Posca marker let me write in WHITE.

Since the back cover represents the end of the journey, it has words like ‘exhausted’ and ‘I had an enormous breakfast’ as well as things I hope to see. And just because I had them, I included the Danish national anthem in Danish and English.

Since every trip is different, every travel journal is different, and I can’t promise anything special. But I’ll show you what I come up with. Heck, you’ll probably see some of what I’m drawing while I’m drawing it.

And I will like that very much.

Love,

Grandma Judy

My Completed SOAK Journal

Dear Liza,

Having spent a few days making the cover of the SOAK Journal, I spent another week filling the whole thing up!

The cover got the year and title, just in case I get to go to another SOAK event.

Since I wanted to record my activities and feelings accurately, many of the pages are all about words. Lots and lots of words.

But SOAK is such a visual treat, it would be a crime to leave the Journal un-illustrated. I did what I could while camping,

And did more detailed work once I was home.

Flaps, fold-out pages and pockets allowed me to include parts of the SOAK booklet and the stickers that were handed out.

Overall, I feel like I captured my experience pretty well.

Now, I can put the SOAK Journal on the shelf to enjoy later.

Meanwhile, I have another adventure to prepare for!!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Belated Travel Journaling

Dear Liza,

Your Auntie Bridgett Spicer is an amazing artist. Not only can she create delightful comics like her “Auntie Beeswax” and wonderful paintings and collages, but she can draw and vacation at the same time. Here is a page from her sketchbook of our trip.

Her brain works like that.

Mine does not. I made a really cool cover for my travel journal for our last trip to Europe,

but am only now (three weeks after we got home) finishing up my account of our journey. Here is a page showing our train ride from Amsterdam to Utrecht.

I started with good intentions, but then it just got away from me.

I happily sacrificed journaling time for time spent with family in wondrous operas, delightful museums, and fabulous gardens.

So now I’m catching up, and I’m glad I waited. Not only is my Journal a more interesting synthesis of the journey, with my own sketches and all the sorts of paper you collect on a trip, but I am getting to re-live the whole experience!

It’s like watching my favorite movie all over again.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Back Home Again

Dear Liza,

I miss you already. I miss your snuggles and your smarts and your silliness.

But we had to come home

To get back there, we had a three hour flight from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, a two hour layover, and then a ten hour flight to Portland, and finally slept in our own beds. Sort of.

Jet lag, for whatever reason, was worse coming west this time. I’ve been awake at 3 a.m., napping all afternoon, and brain dead most of the time, for two days now.

But this morning, I got to go work in my veggie plot in the rain. While we were in dry, cold Europe, Portland had rain, rain, and more rain. But spring is coming and eventually I’ll be able to plant. So today I weeded and raked and put up the ladder, tomato cages, and trellis.

As an inside project, I’m working on the memory book of the trip, sorting museum brochures, tickets and café receipts, then snipping and gluing them down.

It’s a good mental exercise and a way to remember our wonderful time in Utrecht, Paris and Copenhagen with you all. I know I will cherish it, once my brain is operational.

See you soon, my girl!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Back to Collage

Dear Liza,

I had a lot of fun making the illustrations for your story, and I learned a lot about composition and color while I was doing it. Now I’m back to making postcards with it.

I used one of the first drafts of the ‘people’ in your story for this one, along with the intense colors from our Portland Art Museum magazine. The words are the packaging from the Awesome Socks I get every month from your dad. I love their motto, “Don’t forget to be awesome!”

This cutie-pie pirate skeleton dude was in an Animation magazine and just needed an acrylic speckled beach and some vivid sky, again from our PAM magazine. The tricky part was cutting out all those skinny bones! The sun helped fill up that bare corner.

Auntie Bridgett’s adorable cartoon of an artist’s mannequin was in a years-old pile of scrap paper. I used it and a page from an out-of-the-garbage Rand McNally Atlas to make this card about heading your way soon.

My most recent project is the cover for my travel journal for the trip. Pages from the Atlas, joined with a fashion eyeglass picture, a scene from the AAA travel magazine, and a bunch of words made it look just right.

And yes, I admit to altering the map of Europe so that Amsterdam and Paris would fit in the same pair of glasses! So sue me.

Love,

Grandma Judy