All My Journals

Journaling is part of my everyday life. I start each morning writing in a journal just to clear my thoughts and organize my day. Those pages often end up with lots of doodles and ideas popping up in the margins.

My visual journals I do more sporadically. I meet with a sketch group once a week, which is probably the only thing that keeps me on a regular sketching schedule. I usually draw with ink then add bits of watercolor. We visit various places around Portland:

I really enjoy journaling when I travel to capture bits of my trip. Leigh inspired me to do a page of "inchies", tiny drawings, while I was in Mexico. A quick way to get a page full of local color and detail.

I also like to work in a visual journal where I work quickly without a plan. This allows me a place to loosen up without fear of the results. (Many of them are just plain ugly when I'm done!) These often are based around collage:

Or painting:

And finally, I like to keep an idea book going for possible future projects. It's a mix of photographs, magazine clippings, sketches, color palettes--anything that attracts my attention. This one contains a quilt from an art magazine and notes about what attracted me to it, a mask from the newspaper, and sketches I did of rain on the window that I thought would make interesting stitch patterns.