Watercolor Travel Sketchbook Tour
Over time I have started to give themes to my watercolor sketchbooks by choosing subject themes like floral, animal, or patterns, or by focusing on the materials used like watercolor vs gouache, etc. I think giving themes to my sketchbooks has allowed me to grow in new ways as an artist and has also allowed me to batch my art. The theme for this sketchbook, a Hahnemuhle Watercolor Book A5 (8.3 x 5.8 inches) 200gsm Portrait, was travel based. I brought this book on my travels with me with the intent of leaving my comfort zone and painting on scene, and while there has been some improvement for me with that goal, most of the art completed in this book happened after my trips. I am very proud of the work I I accomplished in this sketchbook and love to see the different styles that organically emerged along with my own progress as I get farther along in the book.
Here I am highlighting some of my favorite spreads and showing some of the inspiration, but to see all my work in this sketchbook, along with my other sketchbooks, click here.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
The first painting of the sketchbook. I started this painting on site at the Rijksmuseum gardens in Amsterdam and took reference pictures to finish at home, combining elements from both pictures below.
I was sent to Amsterdam for a work conference in July 2023, and extended my time there by a few days to spend time soaking up all the amazing culture that Amsterdam had to offer. I started this sketchbook in Amsterdam with the painting above of a garden surround the Rijksmuseum. I found that I applied way too much water on site and needed to let it dry, so I took the reference pictures above and finished the painting later at home. This painting is special for me because it is so far out of my comfort zone in terms of composition, subject, and painting in public. I think its important to identify parts of your work that you particularly like or are proud of. In this painting I love the way the background hedges with the statues turned out, along with the sitting man on his phone. I learned from this painting that you can imply a lot without too much detail.
Breakfast in Amsterdam. Trying to push myself out of my comfort zone again and record it! I loved the design on the cup on the right with the cafe logo “De Uitsmijter’ and yes, I like a lot of beverages with my morning meal.
I take lots and lots of pictures when I travel…
….because I never know what will inspire me to create or re-create later. For mid-July it was surprisingly overcast and rainy while I was in Amsterdam, creating a moody atmosphere for my windmill photo and painting below.
Tuscany, Italy
Working through my fear of painting buildings in perspective I am so pleased with how my Tuscany spread came out, especially how the building from Sienna in the upper left. Inspiration pictures below.
The second half of this sketchbook became dedicated to the travels I took in April 2024 on a MSC cruise around the Western Mediterranean Sea. Instead of painting subjects that took up the entire page like I did in Amsterdam, I decided to take more of a scrapbook approach to try to be looser and lower the boundaries to create while on vacation. I also borrowed an idea from the fabulous Ohn Mar Win, and glued pieces of paper from the day into the spread and worked over the paper to make it part of the piece. I write about this tip, along with my other travel sketchbook tips I collected while making these pieces that I wrote about here. This makes it harder to create on scene, but as I said, I created most of my art after the trip, once I was back home
Catalonia, Spain
Pompeii, Italy
I started adding borders to my spreads and got inspiration for this border from a painting inside the Pompeii laundry house!
Tunis, Tunisia
All throughout the Mediterranean I found the sun motif, but became particularly enchanted with the sun tiles I found in the medina of Tunis.
On any vacation with me you will find me taking pictures of any and every tile I see! I am fascinated with tile design and have been find myself painting tile designs over and over again within my work. For the piece above, I used different tile designs I found during my time in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, and sits on the Mediterranean sea just West of Sicily. I found the sun motif to be used in all places in the Mediterranean we visited, and it is a very common motif world-wide, but I loved the Tunisian representation of the sun with feminine features like eyelashes and red lipstick and surrounded by lemons.
Hampton Beach, New Hampshire
My fiancé and I got kitties early in the summer preventing us from having beach days until they were old enough for us to leave for an extended time, and we decided that time came end of August. It wasn’t the hottest of days but we stubbornly packed up our beach gear and I brought my travel sketchbook, my small paint palette and a water brush pen and created what turned out to be one of my favorite spreads of the book. It is far from perfect, but its colorful and fun and I love it. You may also notice that there are some orange streaks of paint underneath my painting, or the green streaks of paint on my Pompeii spread above, and that is because I am working from the technique of pre-marked papers; a technique I picked up from Emma Carlisle and Ohn Mar Win. By prepping the pages ahead of time with random swatches of color, it can help you overcome the fear of the blank white page, and also give cool effects to your finished piece.
I created this piece completely on the beach, a first for me, and I do think feeling like no one was gonna walk up and seeing what I was going to paint helped me create more easily.
First full spread completed fully on-site, and at the beach to boot! A water brush pen, a small watercolor palette and not worrying about the outcome allowed me to create this colorful and beautiful sketchbook spread.
Lessons learned: As an artist, I think it is incredibly important to take stock of your work and look for themes, patterns, and areas of growth or in need of improvement. I think it is also just as important to have fun, so as I look back through this sketchbook I try to remember what I felt really good about creating, what surprised me, and where I would like to go next with my art.
Continue to challenge myself. I think I am notoriously bad at drawing and painting houses/buildings and people. While I really didn’t work too much on drawing humans in this book, I put a lot of work into drawing buildings and I feel like I have improved massively! I stopped letting the fear prevent me from painting buildings as a subject and just letting go.
Focus on what is fun. While challenging myself is important, so is having fun. I learned this about reading books a long time ago, if reading a certain book isn’t enjoyable, stop reading it! Same goes for art, its not meant to be tortuous, and the world won’t end if you don’t finish a sketchbook spread.
Don’t worry too much about being accurate. Documenting travels through sketchbooks is for myself and it’s not a test to having perfect perspective, details or shadowing. Let go and create for yourself.
Simplifying makes things easier. When a subject is too complicated, simplify it! Again, no one needs a perfect replica of a building or statue you saw, the best art makes you feel and that can be done without complicating everything.
Stop letting perceived judgement of others prevent you from creating art. This is one I definitely still need to work on. When I paint in public, one of my fears is of what others are thinking. It’s like I am judging myself through the eyes of strangers, which cannot be accurate in my head, and only prevents me from creating freely.
And as I am finishing this sketchbook up, I already ordered another one, and I have decided to continue with having a travel themed sketchbook to fill in the same way I did here, with memories and joy and continuing to push myself out of my comfort zone and create in public. Thank you so much for reading, if you would like to updated on my blog and art please subscribe below!