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Travel Journals

Overview of this page:

  • Finding time to make art

  • Why an accordion fold book is the perfect format for a travel journal

  • Applications for the IB classroom

Finding opportunities for creativity

If you’re anything like me ( Shannon), as an art teacher, you might struggle to find time to tend to your artistic practice beyond the demands of the classroom. Theoretically, our numerous weeks of vacation could be times to recharge creatively, but this time often gets chewed up into smaller pieces as we manage doctor appointments, visiting ailing parents, picking up a neglected social life, or tending to our home life after months of distracted efforts. Meanwhile, the travels we take during vacation can be transformative. 

Travel whisks us away from the clutter of daily life and can be an incredible stimulus for making travel sketches or paintings and generating future artwork possibilities. And this usually rings true for teachers and students in equal measure.

Before my holiday to visit family and friends in wintry South Africa, I was poking around at my local art store and serendipitously stumbled upon an accordion sketchbook. The timing was perfect, as I’d already been planning to take my travel set of watercolours and brushes along with me. At the onset of filling in this sketchbook, I didn’t plan for it to become anything at all. As I worked on this throughout an extensive road trip, the process grew on me. I want to share this journey with you as this book form has excellent potential as a tool or project in the classroom.

Why an accordion book is the perfect format for a travel journal

I’ve often travelled with a small watercolour sketchbook instead of the standard, heavier option. My recent experience with the accordion book was so positive that I foresee making more of these travel journals on future trips. What is an accordion book? Also known as a concertina book, this format uses one long, continuous piece of paper folded back and forth, as the name suggests. Here’s what there is to love:

  • They contain fewer pages than an ordinary sketchbook, making them portable and faster to fill up

  • The composition is not fixed; images can easily flow or wrap over multiple pages

  • The unfolded book allows you to see the entire project at once

While I was lucky to pick up an accordion sketchbook that was ready to go, with quality watercolour paper, anyone can make an accordion fold sketchbook! It’s the most accessible book form to make because it doesn’t require sewing or special bookbinding tools. It consists of a single piece of paper folded into equal sections. Because an accordion fold sketchbook can be custom-made, one can make it as small or big and as long or short as desired. As you’ll see in my project, a hardcover adds a nice touch, but it’s not required to do the job!

Applications for the IB Classroom

In making a travel journal, the artist is asked to take the time to observe and appreciate the places they visit mindfully. By bringing this art form to your students, you’ll discover numerous applications for the IB classroom. When direct observation is encouraged, students will be asked to slow down and notice small architectural details, the lighting of a particular season, or the prominent colour palettes inherent within different settings. 

Here are a few suggestions for how and when to employ travel journals with your students: 

  1. Material Considerations:

While the previously mentioned accordion book option yields many possibilities, lined, pocket-sized notebooks are affordable, accessible, and can be appropriated for drawing and writing. What’s key is that the travel journal is small and not cumbersome for the user.

  1. Pre-IB:

If you have the luxury of contacting your IB Visual Arts students before starting their first year in IB, consider assigning students a set number of pages to complete in a travel journal during the preceding summer. As students may need more instruction at this stage, some visual journal prompts may be helpful to get them going. 

  1. During a mid-year holiday:

Once your students are on a roll in the school year, take advantage of their school holidays to assign some light work. Depending on what’s happening in your classroom at that time of year, you might ask students to focus on specific subject matter, themes, material explorations, or techniques in their travel journals.

Alternatively, if you want students to brush up on a particular skill, such as life drawing, ask them to fill their travel journals with figure drawings of people they observe while waiting at an airport or hanging out in a park.

  1. Summer vacation:

The summer between the first and second years of IB can often yield breakthrough ideas as students more fully absorb and process their learning from the previous school year. To harness this, students might use a travel journal as a way to capture points of interest discovered in the summer (either at home or on a trip).

  1. Starting Points:

All of the possibilities listed above should be harnessed as starting points for future projects and can easily be incorporated into the Process Portfolio.

Resources

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Sources:

The images above were taken by Shannon Brinkley of her own work.

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