The Art {Journal} of Travel
Travel Vignettes
Art journaling the world as you actually live it.
A journey to a new place and a journey across the journal page are the same pilgrimage — both take you to the centre of your own heart, travelling the outer world and the inner one at once. A travel journal is a container for the conversation you’re having with your adventures, and with your life. It holds the memory long after the trip has folded itself away.
I’ve been keeping travel journals since 2013 — Paris, Venice, London, Thailand, Bali, New York, New Orleans, Norway, and the Blue Mountains on an ordinary ferry day. Not sketchbooks of monuments. Journals of the conversation. Travel Vignettes is where I teach that practice.
Dedication
This workshop is dedicated to my mama, who gave me the travel bug and spent her last days doing what she loved — travelling; to my nana, who also loved to travel; and to my daughter, forever ready to spread her wings.
A six-week mixed media journey
Watercolour, pen and ink, collage, photography, writing, ephemera. Fifty-seven lessons. More than thirteen hours of video. Built across years of real trips and the long returns home between them. This is not an urban sketching class — it’s an art journaling practice, a way of experiencing and metabolising your one wild life, wherever it takes you.
6 weeks ·
57 lessons ·
13+ hours of video
lifetime access.
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![art sketchbook image of watercolour palette and brushes with Galia Alena]()
Anticipation
Preparation before you go: journals, supplies, the travel kit, the portable practice you carry in your pocket. How to arrive already looking.
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![many travel art journals and travel sketchbooks laid out by Galia Alena]()
The Journey
The heart of it: catching memories, travel photography and writing, text as design, maps, patterns, stealing like an artist, embracing the wobbly line, ephemera, and demo spreads worked from real trips.
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![Sketchbook spread of Norway, comfy chair with a view of snowy Tromso and Solbolle pastries]()
Integration
Bringing it home: reflection, binding, making covers, and where the practice goes next.
“I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world. ”
“One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things”
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page”
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![13 mOOns — dialogues with the Divine Feminine]()
Gathering Memories
A Retrospective Travel {Art} Journal. Born of stillness (Covid) . A retrospective journal, an excavation of trips already taken, built into a handmade accordion book with a plaster cover and layered pages. A love letter to somewhere, someone, or some version of yourself that deserves remembering.
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![A single Bali journey in a concertina sketchbook — temple doors, the flowers of Bali, worked on location and finished back home.]()
Bali Edition
A concertina sketchbook telling two stories at once — the flowers of Bali down one side (ink on location, watercolour in the moment and at home), and everything else the trip held down the other. Born from the challenge of returning to a place already loved, and finding a new way in.
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![Travel Vignettes with Galia Alena Europe spread — Prague, Norway, Switzerland Bern]()
Europe ’24 Edition
Prague, Switzerland, Norway and Amsterdam — tiny vignettes in grid format, mixed media layering, and Sensory Stories worked from smell and felt sense rather than appearance; buildings and rooftops. (32 videos.)
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![Travel 25 workshop with Galia Alena Paris, Barcelona, Marrakech and London]()
Travel ’25 Edition
London, Paris, Marrakech and Barcelona — maps revisited with new approaches, painting food (the "What I Ate in Paris" series), lots of master studies, and other inspiration born of place & experience.
Take a look Between the Covers
I’m Galia Alena — visual poet, photographer by training, and founder of the Art is Magic school. I’ve been art journaling since around 2009 and keeping travel journals since 2013; Travel Vignettes gathers years of that practice into one workshop.
All the juicy details
How it works
Is it for me?
If you love to travel — or to remember your travels — and want to hold them in a way Instagram can’t, yes. No experience required; you’ll be guided gently.
What will I need?
A simple travel kit of mixed media supplies (full list inside). Nothing fancy.
How long do I have?
Lifetime access, at your own pace, with a community space to share your pages.
Is this urban sketching?
No — it’s an art journaling practice. Sketching is welcome, but it’s about the whole conversation of a place, not architectural accuracy.
Come and make with us
The workshop lives in the Art is Magic studio, with lifetime access and a community to share your pages in.