I last posted pages from my Visual Journal on January 25, 2019, and unbelievably, I have continued with my daily practice of painting every day, focusing on color, composition, and making random marks. I have found several benefits from this daily practice. 1) It gets me into my studio. Even though I sometimes think I’ll just pop in to paint a page, I often linger and work on other projects. 2) Because these daily pages aren’t precious or for anything other than fun and practice, I work looser and with more freedom than when I’m painting for a show or a deadline. 3) My practice pages have become inspiration for my paintings in oil and cold wax.
Wall of 12×12 inch oil and cold wax works in progress with photocopies of my journal pages above.
Here’s a smattering of my pages from the past couple of months:
January 26, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 27, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 31, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsFebruary 1, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsFebruary 4, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsFebruary 5, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsFebruary 17, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsFebruary 18, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsFebruary 23, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsFebruary 24, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 3, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 4, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 5, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 7, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 9, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 10, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 17, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 18, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 19, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 20, 2019 Dayna J. CollinsMarch 22, 2019 Dayna J. Collins
I decided to shake things up a bit when I hung my 2019 calendar, thinking I would paint a quick abstract each day in my visual journal. Who knows how long I will maintain this practice, but so far, so good, and today is January 25th.
January 1 Dayna J. Collins
I’ve learned a couple of things along the way. First, it is fun to paint quickly, loose, and free, for no reason other than the joy of painting. And second, as a result of painting quick, loose, and free, I have several ideas for bigger paintings!
My acrylic painting station in my studio. Photo taken the morning of January 25.
No need to share every daily painting, but here’s a random selection.
January 4 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 5 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 7 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 10 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 12 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 17 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 20 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 21 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 22 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 23 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 24 Dayna J. CollinsJanuary 25 Dayna J. Collins
My journal is 9×9 inches, mixed media paper, and spiral bound so it lays flat when it is open. I’ve been using Golden acrylics, a black Stabilo pencil, sharp pointy objects for scritching and scratching, Stabilo Woody 3 in 1 Stabilo pencils, a paintbrush, occasional stamps and stencils, a No.2 pencil, and a palette knife.
We’re back from our six-week plus trip and my blank pages are now plump with found fodder, scrounged materials, a few photos, and lots of writing describing our adventures.
I posted on my personal (and public) Facebook page throughout our trip (Dayna Davidson Collins), so I’m not sharing about any of the trip. What I am sharing are some of the pages from my travel visual journal. In my last blog post, I shared that all of my pages (104 of them) had been pre-gessoed and painted, so all I took in the way of art supplies was a pair of scissors, a jar of matte gel medium, a paintbrush, a brayer, wax paper, and three gel pens – black, white, and red; all my supplies fit in a zip lock baggie.
The daily routine went something like this:
We set out for a day of exploring, hoping to easily find the Tourist Information office so I could gather brochures. Sometimes we weren’t near a TI, so the hunt was on for paper fodder. Art museums were good for brochures, and often their tickets were large and had beautiful art images on them, but there didn’t seem to be as much paper materials as there has been in the past. In a pinch, I bought a bookmark or a couple of post cards so I had images to incorporate onto my pages. Or I picked up bits and pieces of trash or pulled down chunks of posters.
At the end of the day and after dinner, I sat at my makeshift desk or on the bed and cut up images and words to use on my pages. I would make a list of everything we did and saw and began gluing things onto the pages; each day had a two-page spread. I glued, brayered, cleaned up the gluey edges, placed a piece of wax paper over the pages, and weighted them down with whatever was heavy and handy.
In the morning while sipping my cappuccino (which my sweet husband faithfully fetched), I removed the weights and wax paper, grabbed my gel pens, and referring to the list I made the previous day, wrote in and around the images I had glued, recounting what we had done and added details I thought were interesting.
Here are a few photos of me at various points of our trip, working on my pages.
Working at a table in Dubrovnik, Croatia.Working at my desk in Vienna, Austria.Sneak attack as I worked at my desk in our Berlin, Germany apartment.
The Pages. As I mentioned, my travel journal has 104 pages, so I’ll share a sampling of my two-page spreads, in no particular order.
When we got home, I had a few blank pages remaining, so I printed off some photos, inserted those on the last pages, then added my completed travel journal to a stack of pages from previous trips.
104 journal pages104 painted journal pagesSouth American trip, Southwestern USA trip, current trip (just waiting for an embellishment to grace the cover).
Creating a journal for this trip has been a highlight and a labor of love. I started working on it about four months ago, tearing watercolor paper into 9-1/2 x 11 inch pieces, gessoing the front and backs, and then painting the pages in a variety of colors. By doing this Herculean task in advance, all I need to take on the trip in the way of art supplies is a pair of scissors, a jar of gel medium, a paintbrush, and Uniball pens in red, white, and black. Presto – instant art studio. At the end of each day I will glue in the ephemera I collected, and write little notes and summaries about what we did.
The Trip
We try and take a big trip every two years. Last year would have been our year, but the stars didn’t align for us to be able to plan to get away in the fall. When January of this year rolled around, we started dreaming and scheming and settled on eastern (central) Europe. We worked with a travel agency to help with the planning, and that proved to be a great decision. They worked out all of the details to get us from one place to the next, and gave us limited choices of where we would stay. We’ll have an initiation city tour the first morning of every city where we stay, and then we’re on our own (We’re starting in Dubrovnik, Croatia and working our way north, east, west, and continually north, ending in Berlin). You know we’ve got some good stuff planned – on the beaten track, and definitely off the beaten path. Can you say Sniper Alley? Thank you Atlas Obscura.
The Packing
We’re trying to pack light and compact, each of us taking one medium suitcase and a carry on backpack/messenger bag. For those who know us, packing light isn’t our thing. But probably one of the most important decisions, is what books to take. These are the two main ones I chose (thanks to Joni, who recommended The Art of Fielding).
Getting Out of the House
Howard is busily working late into the night thanks to a one day trial that was supposed to be over last Thursday, but turned into a 4-1/2 day trial and concludes tomorrow. His three days to get work wrapped up and ready for him to leave, dwindled down to just tonight and half of tomorrow. But some of it will all get done.
Tomorrow is my hair day, a three-hour ordeal, plus several more errands . . . and maybe one final trip to our downtown bookstore. Today I met with my friend Jami, who will be house sitting for us and keeping company with our six-toed cat while we are away. So many details to attend to.
Friday morning we will be picked up by Sam and Stewart and escorted to Portland. We’ll treat them to lunch, and they will deposit us at the Portland Airport. And it begins.
Deluxe taxi service from Sam and Stewart in 2015.Deluxe taxi service from Sam and Stewart in 2015.
NOTE: I won’t be blogging during our trip as I sometimes have in the past, it is just too time consuming. But I will be posting on my Facebook and Instagram pages, so if you’re interested, follow along.
I’m home after travelling 16,293 miles over six weeks. I visited seven countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina). We cruised for a month, then spent a week in a San Telmo apartment in Buenos Aires, where we met up with our oldest daughter, Melissa. Gratefully, she spoke fluent Spanish (and danced a mean tango). We crossed the equator for the first time, and rounded Cape Horn during hurricane force winds. I read five books, three of which I gave five stars (Orphan #8, The Invention of Wings, and All the Light We Cannot See – because I know you were wondering which ones received five stars). At various times, my husband was told he looked like Nick Nolte (hopefully not his mug shot photo!), Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd), Richard Gere, and a new one, Jeff Bridges! I collected rosaries throughout South America and I journalled our trip onto pre-painted and aged pages, so when I got home, it was pretty much complete. I took so many photos and posted them on my personal FB page throughout the trip (Dayna Davidson Collins), so for now I’ll post just a few from Buenos Aires, where we concluded our trip.
