Art

Retrospective on my cahiers

Posted on by galadriellelovster

Today, I flipped through more than half of my sketchbooks (that I call cahiers ), looking for inspiration, ideas and lists (I am a list maker!). I will be giving a short class on cahiers/art journal/journal in august and I am creating it.

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I always find inspiration in my old sketchbooks, and I find this incredible. It’s old, it’s done, why do I still get so much out of it? Well, for one there are my lists of things to draw that I write before every trip I plan.

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I also try to get out of my comfort zone often and try new mediums or techniques, but I don’t necessarily keep doing them, so going back to old sketches and ideas always sparks new ones!!

 

 

 

I like(d) to write inspiring quotes on the first page of my cahiers, and I didn’t keep up with that so I am rereading all of them today… It’s not an easy task because I must have 40-50 of them!! I have been keeping “art journals” or “artist journals” for more than 10 years now… Time goes by fast! I relive so many things and events with them.

 

My class will be fun! I want to set up starting kits for my students, and I am working on the first exercises that we’ll do.

 

Until next time! xx

My travel Journal

Posted on by galadriellelovster

Hello people of the world! Let me tell you a bit about my travel journal.

Before going on a 3 weeks trip to Europe, I set a goal: to fill an entire journal during the trip with drawings, writing & collage. A real travel journal. I never filled a sketchbook in 3 weeks, so that was quite a challenge!

I chose as my travel journal a moleskine sketchbook, regular size (5″ x 8-1/4″, 104 pages). They changed their paper in recent year and it takes watercolor much better now.

I brought my fountain pens ( lamy safari fine, lamy safari calligraphy 1.1, pilot metropolitan fine, and pilot parallel pen 2.4), a white gel pen (sakura), a glue stick, two waterbrushes, a whiteout pen, and some colored pilot c-4 (not pictured). I also brought 2-3 washi tapes to add business cards and other ephemera in my journal. And finally, my watercolor kit!

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My art material for the trip!

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My watercolour kit

When I chose my material for the trip, I thought about what kind of everyday bag I would carry, how I wanted to record my memories on paper, would we stop often or not?

Before my trip, I filled a page with a list of everything I was bringing, two pages with the itinerary (including the details of the flights, confirmation #, companies, city etc), I wrote my name and address in the front page and emergency numbers on the back. The interesting stuff haha!

I made a little collage of pictures from my journal…

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As you can see there was a LOT of collage, much more than I thought (I bought more glue sticks in Berlin, and a ton of washi tape everywhere). I usually tried to keep interesting bills, business cards of the places we went, some cookie, sugar and coffee wrapping . Drawing over a bill from a nice restaurant or a little cafe enhance the experience, it gives a texture to my background and make my drawing more meaningful in a way.

I also bought beautiful stamps at Versailles, some postcards at different museums for the sole purpose of putting them in my journal. In Berlin, I bought small ziplocs full of stamps for almost nothing! Still can’t believe it, they are mostly all different and so beautiful, as you can see I filled my journal with them and still have a lot left.

I hope you enjoyed this peek into my travel journal! Did you ever journal while on a trip?

xx Gabrielle