I’ve finished another page in my “Inspired by Brett Whiteley” art journal. For this page I used a section of one of his paintings of Tuscany, and I also copied some trees (on the bottom left and right of my page) from his Tuscan paintings. I love itlay and tuscany so it was delicious to make this page. I love the stencil I used in the centre too! The woman is from a 19th century painting. I imagine she is reading a book about Tuscany!
Here are some of the pages I made about Tuscany in my travel journal. I started them when we were in Tuscany but I probably finished them in Cornwall as I could not find anywhere to print photos in Montepulciano.
The first week in Tuscany we spent in an Air BnB apartment in Lucca, along with my daughter, my niece and my sister. It was gorgeous.
I don’t really want to say too much about these pages, if you click on them you might be able to read some of it if you are interested. In this one above I created a pocket behind the photograph, where I have stashed some tickets etc.
This one on the left I used no photos, only pictures from pamphlets and flyers. We saw some opera arias one night, it was a highlight.
Ok this one below is about Paris not Tuscany. We had 3 nights there before we headed off to Tuscany. It was very special for me because I had both my beloved offspring there plus my niece and nephew. We had a 3 bedroom Air BnB apartment in the 14th arrondisement.
After Lucca we caught the bus to Florence for 3 nights…..such a romantic city! Once again we had an Air BnB apartment, this one with an amazing view of the Duomo, as you can see in this photo.
Even though it was only May, the Uffizi gallery has such long queues that we decided not to bother. We did see some other art in Florence though, I think it was the Pitti Palace gallery and also San Marco abbey.
After our 3 days in Florence we hired a car and visited a few small Tuscan towns.We had 2 nights in San Gimignano, an ancient hilltop town with lots of high towers.
Our final week in Tuscany was spent in Montepulciano, another hilltop Tuscan town with lots of ancient buildings. We had a car during this week so we made quite a few excursions to neighbouring towns including Cortona, Pienza and Montalcino. There was much drinking of wine and eating of pasta! We had family around as well, my sister had another apartment across town with 3 of her offspring, and we had Katy in our apartment. Lots of fond memories! Gerrit bought me this wrapping paper with the beautiful Florentine pattern, so I used it on a few of my Tuscan pages.I’m glad I made the effort to make this travel journal. It wasn’t always easy to find the time to work in it, but I persisted. By the time I returned home, after 4 months, the journal was full and very fat, almost to the point of the spine breaking, but not quite. It’s wonderful to have it now as a record. I love looking through it and remembering!