J’adore Voyager: A Peek Inside My Barcelona Journal

This week’s Peek Show: Between the Covers of My Visual Journals, takes us to one of my favorite cities: Barcelona.

Writing in cafes offers an antidote to the isolation of the writer’s life. So I recommend doing this, even in your home town. Bring your camera and take some snaps of your table. I have a mild obsession with doing this — and these shots go in the journal, eventually. These are the type of photos that are generally only of interest to the writer, even more reason to take them.

Here’s a quick tutorial on an easy way to add some visual elements to your journal: no art experience required.

Supplies: Blank page (or a page you don’t like and want to paint over), any old cheap paint, an old credit card or expired gift card (that you don’t mind wrecking).

Painted Backgrounds: Pour some paint out on a paper plate or scrap paper, and use the credit card to pick up some paint and wipe it over the pages. Experiment with mixing different colors right in your journal. Make a bunch of pages. Try adding borders, strips, scribbles.

Voila! No more blank white page!


In this example, the rubber stamp image was already on the page. It’s an old journal I had lying around from the year 2000, when I was really into my set of Mexican Icon stamps — so I stamped a bunch of pages and then never did anything in the journal.

I have been committed to recycling my old work, and using up supplies I already have, so no new journal was bought for this trip. Thus, this one came in to play.

Any sort of cheapie craft paint will do. If you are someone who paints, your acrylics will work, too, if you make the layers very thin.

In this example, I was cleaning up my paint for the day, so just the dregs left on my palette were scraped on to the page. The numbers on the right page edge are from cleaning off my rubber stamps.

I love the random nature of just slapping paint down on the paper and not trying to make it look “artistic”. It’s part of my creative practice. A way to limber up and stay loose.

Once you’ve got some painted backgrounds, you can go anywhere and not have to travel with paint. Just a pen is all you really need take with you.

Here’s a finished journal entry. I made a bunch of date labels before I left, which I stamped with my trusty date stamp. A gift from my local librarian when the hand-stamped due date went the way of the dinosaur. She knew of my fondness for date stamps. I’ll try and keep them alive in my own small way.

In this entry, I made a sketch of my wine bottle. My selection of wine was based entirely on the beautiful typography on the label. It unfortunately didn’t taste that great to me. I’m sticking to Rioja.

All photos by Lisa Sonora Beam.

For a little background on this weekly series of Journal Peeks, you can read all about it here. Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. 50 New Works + A peek inside my project journal: 1008 Paintings Update #10
2. Digital Nomad Downside: Being away from those you love. How I deal. A journal peek: 100 Dias
3. Visual Journal Technique Roundup: Word Happy
4. Journal Peek: Hundertwasser
5. Visual Journal Peek + Activity: New Moon Intentions