What to include in your travel sketchbook
A map of my vacation’s itinerary across the western Mediterranean sea.
I often fantasize about the person I think I am, and that person sketches and draws furiously on vacation. I see others online, who come back from travels with beautifully and ornately decorated sketchbook pages, and I think well if they can do it, so can I! But that’s the thing, it’s a fantasy and every time I go on vacation I bring a bunch of art supplies, and every time I fail to fill pages and pages. I’m generally lucky if I sit down at all over my holiday to doodle or write something down.
And so I thought that my April 2024 cruise around the Western Mediterranean would be the perfect time to change that fantasy and bring it into reality (spoiler: it was not and I did not)!
Art Supplies brought:
-Hahnemuhle Watercolor Book A5 (8.3 x 5.8 inches) 200gsm Portrait
-Polaroid Hi-Print - Bluetooth Connected 2x3 Pocket Photo, Dye-Sub Printer
-Watercolor palette
-Assorted Tombow Pens
-Assorted Zebra Pen Fineliners
-Glue stick
-Binder clips
-Tracing Paper
-Pencil, eraser, pencil sharpener
So like I previously said, despite bringing all these supplies and the best of my intentions I worked in my sketchbook for maybe one hour on this trip. And you know what, I realized that’s totally ok. I was traveling with my partner and I was having fun being in the moment with him and not trying to be productive for my social media or blog back home. The fantasizing Katie forgets that vacations are a place to unplug from my normal routine and just relax, and those downtimes where I technically could have been making art were much more enjoyable just laying on a beach chair and doing absolutely nothing.
Regardless of not really getting started on my actual vacation, I knew that I really wanted to do my best to capture this vacation in my sketchbook. So upon getting home I got started on creating spreads of the different days on the trip. Like I mentioned before, my partner and I took a MSC cruise around the western Mediterranean so it was an eventful trip with each day porting in a new location. On the trip I took over 1,000 pictures, so I drew most of my inspiration directly from them. Below along with my final sketchbook pages, I will go over my creative process and give tips that I used to fill these pages in!
I warmed up with my first spread by drawing mainly doodles
Travel Sketchbook Tip #1: When in doubt, doodle!
This is the only piece of art I worked on during my vacation. I was a little overwhelmed by the blank page and not sure where to start. So I began doodling things. The things I doodled on this first page didn’t really matter, whether they were extremely relevant to my travel days, or just doodles loosely associated with my travels (waves, fish and the octopus). It was freeing to let go of the idea of a “perfect travel sketchbook spread” and just draw silly things, like taco bell tacos, and I love the way this spread came out.
Day 2 in Tunis, Tunisia. I let the colors of the day (blue, white and yellow from the sun) dictate the colors of the spread.
Travel Sketchbook Tip #2: Break up the white space before starting.
This is a trick I use a lot in my sketchbook when I don’t know what to draw and I am overwhelmed by looking at the empty blank pages. Even before thinking of what you want to draw, break your pages into smaller areas with at least 3-4 boxes. Now you can focus on one box at the time and build your spread out from there.
For my Tunis spread I knew I wanted to dedicate a large portion of my page to the tile motif on the right, because a big part of my day in Tunis was being inspired by all the beautiful ceramic tile work. But for the left page I had no idea what to paint so I broke the page into three sections (in half horizontally, then the bottom in half again vertically). By shrinking the space and using the first tip above, I started drawing doodles from the day like the ceramic pot and blue door gate.
Another good example of breaking up the white space is below with my Tuscany spread. I split the spread into four equal boxes by writing the day’s itinerary (Livorno-Siena - San Gimignano) across the two pages directly in the center.
Day 3: Palermo, Sicily. I love keeping track of the food I ate abroad, here I ate an interesting sandwich combo of fried eggplant and fried potatoes.
Travel Sketchbook Tip #3: Add a picture or a flat souvenir to the spread
After watching Peggy Dean’s travel sketchbook class on Skillshare, I was quickly influenced to add a mini-photo printer in my life and travel sketchbook routine. I ended up choosing the Polaroid Hi-Print - Bluetooth Connected 2x3 Pocket Photo, Dye-Sub Printer, and I like it because it easily syncs to the photos on your phone via Bluetooth and is small and portable. I like to add a picture to each spread and paint a frame around it with a color that fits into the spread’s color palette. It helps to break up the page and white space, and adds an extra personal touch that I personally love.
Day 4 Naples, Italy. I used my mini photo printer to remember Francisco, my Pompeii tour guide who loved to say “Mamma Mia"!”
Travel Sketchbook Tip #4: Include notes for yourself
This tip is obvious, but even just adding a few words here and there breaks up the artwork and adds a genuine touch to my spreads that I really love. I started off very verbose in these spreads and wrote down less and less as the spreads went on. But I love whatever notes I decided to include, because some of these things I probably wouldn’t remember without writing down. Like how the bridge in the little town of Rupit in Spain could only hold 10 people at a time, or how the street food stand in Palermo played great techno music!
Day 5: Tuscany region, Italy. The town of Siena is split into districts that are represented by a different animal, I chose a sticker from the snail region.
Travel Sketchbook Tip #5: Collage a paper souvenir (ticket, receipt, etc.) into your artwork
This tip I got from Ohn Mar Win, and her incredible sketchbook spreads. I saw her come back from a retreat where she had glued a ticket stub into her spread so that it worked perfectly as the body of a house in her landscape piece. I decided to bring a glue stick with me on my travels and glue whatever tickets or pieces of paper I got from the day. I did not plan out what I was drawing before I glued the souvenir piece down, you can see I glued the tickets in the middle of the Sicily and Tuscany pages, knowing that future me would just have to make it work. Having these tickets as part of my artwork makes these spreads so much more precious and meaningful, and I love the texture and the unexpected element it adds to the artwork.
Day 6 Marseille France - Collaging the Mucem ticket into my art spread makes this drawing much more interesting and engaging to look at.
Travel Sketchbook Tip #6: Embrace your fears
I am not a fan of drawing buildings. They have a tendency to come out wonky, probably a perspective problem. So while I usually avoid painting buildings, or other complex subjects that require the ability to convey depth, shadows and proper perspective, I decided to embrace my fears and draw buildings. How else am I going to improve, right? Well I am shocked to write that I really surprised myself and am really happy with my efforts. Below is a Medieval drawbridge in Catalonia, Spain, and usually I would have avoided drawing it, along with the complex Marseille Cathedral above. But by letting go of the idea of perfection and embracing the idea that this sketchbook is really only for me, I was able to enjoy the drawing experience and find progress in my skills by giving myself credit for doing hard things.
Day 7 Catalonia region Spain. I embraced my fears by drawing complex buildings and I surprised myself with what I accomplished.
Did I miss any obvious tips, or do you have any specific that you have developed over the years? Comment below! I would love to hear from you and hear what you like to include in your travel journals. And if you read this far and enjoyed it, subscribe to my newsletter below, I send out (sometimes) quarterly emails with my art and blog updates. Thank you SO much for reading!