Travel Sketches

I always travel with a sketchbook and a small collection of art supplies. I bring soft pastels, which I can also turn into paint with water, along with Neocolor crayons and Inktense blocks. It gives me enough to draw, paint, layer, scribble, and work wherever I happen to be.

When I’m traveling, I’m not particularly interested in making an exact picture of what is in front of me. I want to record what the place felt like to me. I exaggerate colors, simplify shapes, move things around, and give more space to the details that caught my attention. A palm tree might become enormous, a boat might be reduced to a few lines, or an entire coastline might stretch across two pages.

I especially love working across a full sketchbook spread. The fold remains visible, the marks overlap, and the pages become crowded with water, plants, buildings, boats, people, weather, and whatever else belongs to that particular day. I like that they still look like sketchbook pages rather than finished paintings.