The first application was to cover chip board pages in white gesso and then a layer of hard pastels in various colors was added just before the gesso dried. Acrylic inks applied over stencils created another layer.
Students travelled through Europe visiting a myriad of countries including Prague, Germany, Scotland, England and Iceland. One page was dedicated to creating an acrylic painting. The results were stunning!
An Icelandic landscape and a Picasso inspired painting.
With travel and exploring new places there are ample opportunities to collect photographs, maps, museum brochures, postcards, and a whole host of ephemera. Pages are the perfect place to use these found papers for collage. Combined with acrylic paint, one-of-kind papers made from National Geographic pages using Citrasolv, and stencils, each page becomes a work of art. The best part is… subway ticket stubs, a bakery paper holding the croissant purchased while waiting in line to see the Eiffel Tower, a leaf picked up while walking through a park in Austria, or a paper placemat from an Indian restaurant in Maastricht…they are FREE ephemera and make for the most interesting collaged pages!
Photo image transfer gives each page a personal stamp. As pages take shape with layers of mixed media techniques something special happens…the opportunity to savor the places we have been. Our memories come alive through the process of art making. Visiting foreign lands are life changing experiences and the visual feast needs to become more than just a memory, it needs to be shared as an artifact. Creating travel pages is just the place for this to happen.
Whether it is Medieval art or postcards from a museum, it is all fair game for creating travel pages.
Fused shopping bag makes for a great journal page. With an iron on a medium setting, place 3 to 4 bags together with the “star bag” on top. Lay parchment paper on top of the pile of bags, and parchment underneath the bundle. Iron away, slowly, to fuse them together. Trim to the right size, and hole punch the edge… wa-la… a page of texture and a reminder of shopping at Harrods!
Photo image transfer with acrylic paint and some vintage letter stamps, a family heirloom one of the students brought to class for all of us to use.
Letters made with clear tar gel and acrylic paint.
Stencils and drips make for interesting backgrounds.
A little Monet inspired painting
Teaching Travel Pages was a wonderful experience for me, and the pages created by each student were full of interesting subjects, techniques, color combinations, and layers of collage. Every student had an approach that reflected their personal travel experience. Each page was unique and demonstrated a flair for using ephemera from their adventures to make artful pages. Maybe it is time for you to pull out those maps, brochures, postcards, photographs, ticket stubs, crumpled napkins, and found papers to create an artifact of your travel escapades. It is easy to put a travel journal together using some of the techniques I have described, it just takes time, a precious commodity…but it is worth the effort!
