Travel Sketchbooks 2024-25

In 2024 I took a small sketchbook on my holiday to Northumberland. I continued this habit for my next 4 holidays. Overall I've found it a really rewarding practice. I've found it consolidates your memories of a place, your experiences, in a much stronger way than taking a photograph does. I've also pushed myself out of my comfort zone of people and animal portraits, into sketching buildings, interiors and landscapes ( man-made objects are generally not my favourite subjects, I much prefer the natural world.)

The 4 travel sketchbooks Clockwise left to right: My Stationery Watercolour Journal Hot Pressed, Hahnemuhle NOT Watercolour Journal, Indigo Artway recycled cotton rag concertina sketchbook and L,Oeil Watercolour Journal NOT.

I used line and wash techniques for the majority of the sketches. My Rosa Gallery Urban Sketching watercolour set was versatile enough for mixing any colour I needed. Generally, I used a B pencil to do the initial sketch, then a Uni Pin fine liner for the outlines and finally, the watercolour washes. But sometimes I did the watercolour wash first and then lined the details with ink pen, which is my preferred method for looser landscape work.

A well used watercolour set from Rosa Gallery ( supporting Ukraine) and my staple Uni Pin fineliner

All my sketchbooks start with a title page so you know where and when you're going. Including a title introduced me to the world of lettering/typology, which is not my favourite art form but just a little practise has reduced my "fear" in this area.

The front page of my first ever travel sketchbook. I include the dates of the trip and where the holiday took place. A useful tip is including your email address just in case the book gets mislaid.

My sketchbooks usually start with a sketch of the holiday accomodation, often, the interiors have been the only sketches I've been able to do in situ, as our energetic dogs and walking holiday modes don't lend themselves to sitting down in one place for very long. The majority of the sketches have been done from photos, which I personally don't have a problem with but there is some snobbery within the art world on this issue.

One of the beautiful cottages I stayed in which had a huge garden for the dogs to play in.

I think this was my favourite interior sketch. Can you recognise who's on TV ?

Both the above sketches were done in pencil first, then inked and finally the watercolour was added. I really don't mind that the lines are a little wonky, in fact that's what I want rather than an architectural, precise image, I want character!

I've found I really love sketching interiors!

A landscape from one of our epic walks. This is in the cotton rag sketchbook.

As we walk in some massive landscapes, these have been quite hard for me to successfully portray in these small sketchbooks. I've certainly learned and practised various techniques to try to give a feeling of depth on such a small scale. With the above sketch of Red Pike and Chapel Crags, I used a thicker nib pen for the foreground, as the view moves further back I use a finer nib, then a brown ink pen and for the furthest background features, it's just watercolour. This was also painted first then inked.

Beaches of the Llyn Peninsula

I experimented a lot with layout in these sketchbooks, it's the perfect opportunity to test what works. The above sketchbook spread features some of the beaches we walked during our visit to the Lyn Peninsula in Wales. We visited so many beaches I couldn't narrow it down so used this simple layout with multiple scenes which I think looks like a series of postcards.

On the way to the summit of Castle Crag

On your way up to Castle Crag, Lake District, England, you will find the remains of the slate mining industry. Over the years people have made scupltures by balancing the rocks, I love this magical area. It is a very complex view so I chose 4 close-ups to make this layout. The images are from different view points and I've included my Bessie peeking out from behind the stones in one view. I like the technique of making the image burst out of it's frame into the other images.

Scenes from Pwhelli

And sometimes your layout doesn't quite work. This one resulted in a Godzilla sized Bessie looming behind Gimblet Rock. Do you recognice the Chapel from Our Welsh Chapel Dream ?

Berwick Upon Tweed a townscape.

A visit to Berwick provided the only opportunity for a townscape. This was a really complicated veiw and took a few hours to complete. There really is an art in deciding how much detail to include. You can see the tehcnique of using a thicker ink pen in the foreground then finer nibs as you move back into the scene, until only watercolour is employed for the very far off buildings. I do like this sketch and especially love the way the orange roofs contrast with the blue river.

Art Gallery, Llanbedrog, Pwllheli, Wales.

My fear/dislike of drawing/painting buildings had to be tackled head on, and it only took a few sketches before I can honestly say I was enjoying the process. This gorgeous gothic mansion, Plas Glyn-Y-Weddw is now an art gallery in absolutely stunning settings. Buildings like this are really complex and need to be simplified, I've not painted every brick I can see, just given a few indications. The perspective isn't perfect and there is a wonk to the drawing which I think adds to the charm.

A well deserved refreshment stop.

Food and drink still life makes a good subject for a travel journal, and I can still remeber the delicious shandy after a long 5 hour walk in the sunshine. I usually find still life art boring because that's all we seemed to do for A-level art, when all I wanted to do was portrait work. But this little sketch has memories and meaning associated to it, so it's not boring at all.

Fungi in the Lake District

I'm a keen amateur naturalist ( it's very important to add the A and L) and especially love fungi, so I really enjoy including these nature spreads, which look really effective in your sketchbook. I enjoy the whole process of finding the specimens in the wild, photographing and identifying them, then recording them in my sketchbook.

Animals on the Llyn Peninsula

This page was created using artistic license, these were animals we saw or heard ( in the case of the cuckoo) but it's so difficult to get good wildlife photos without specialist equipment and waiting around, so I used images I found online to make this spread.

Scene around Ambleside

People are my favourite subjects and I really like to include them in my sketches. These were scenes showing people feeding the birds by the lake. I find these sketches the easiest and most rewarding type to do.

On the summit of High Crag

This sketch has it all, a landscape, people and my dog Max. Drawing the figures was the easy part including the landscape takes a bit more thought for me, but I think this scene worked well, the figures are tight and detailed in comparison to the landscape behind them which is looser and more abstract.

Self portrait in a hot tub

I like to include a self portrait or two in each sketchbook, just to prove that I was there. This is one of my favourites as it's quirky ( unflattering) and the lighting was really striking. Self portraits are a great way to practise portrait painting and you're always available to sit.

Bessie my darling Border Collie girl

And finally the most important subjects in my travel journals are my dogs. My professional artist work is mostly animal portraits so it's my comfort zone. Here's my Bessie on High Street when we experienced a spectacular cloud inversion. I want to do a series of larger works featuring dogs in landscapes and this image will probably be included in a larger painting. In fact I have a huge pastel piece on the go at the mo.

Max the crazy Border Collie

Here's my other dog Max in a typical relaxed pose having his tummy tickled via foot. I do enjoy the quirky things they get up to, the only problem is getting the photograph taken as the dog does the funny thing.

Conclusions

I would highly recommend anyone staring a travel sketchbook it is so rewarding and great to look back on. Out of the sketchbooks I have used my favourite was the Hahnemuhle, the paper has some texture, which worked well with watercolours but not so much texture that it interferred with the smoothness of the ink pen. The colours on this paper were very vibrant and I would highly recommend.

The L'Oeil sketchbook was good too but it is slightly more textured which can mean the ink lines are not as smooth and the nib gets worn down quicker.

The My stationery Jouranl was Hot Pressed paper which means it's very smooth and I'm not used to working with this surface. The ink pen wnet down very well on this surface. I don't think the landscapes came out as good but the portraits and nature sketches worked well. I think the texture to the other journals just adds something to the landscape sketches.

The Indigo Artway journal was quite strange to work with, the paper was extremely absorbent and this has resulted in more muted colours when the sketches have dried, this also meant it was hard on the ink pen nibs. It was an experience to use but I wouldn't recommend this to a beginner. I hope you've found this post interesting, so the next time you're on holiday take a sketchbook with you, you won't regret it.

Typical Lake District Weather Selfie