Sketchybook

Art-Making While Traveling

Most artists I know (at least, most female artists I know,) lay a little guilt trip on themselves. They plan to travel and they pack some art supplies, telling themselves they are going to make art and have a deeply creative, spiritual travel experience. Then they don't do it, or do it only once, and they beat themselves up for not being a "real artist."

This was me. 

I even wrote a blog entry about it a few years ago entitled My Vacation From the "Shoulds"
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2024 watercolor sketch

​Part of the problem was the way I labeled myself. I had always thought of myself as an "observational painter." I don't know why I thought of myself this way, but I did. So, when I went on a trip I would haul out my little watercolors or whatever and try to paint what I saw. But it always seemed like work to me, and it was a bit draining.

​Not exactly inspiring.

But I don't do that anymore. I no longer put myself in a box. 
I accepted that I really don't want to paint my surroundings at all. 

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I was recently on vacation Mexico.

​Now, I tend to find sketchbooks drab and uninviting, so I decided to make a sketchbook of my own.

I made a lovely hardback cover for it with a cloth binding. Then I collected a variety of papers and some left over painted collage papers. I tore or cut them down to size, then folded them in half to make pages. 

​I used elastic bands to secure them temporarily into the cover. This way I can move the pages around if I want to.

​Armed with watercolor pencils, water soluble pens, markers, and a glue stick, I set up a place on the terrace of our Mexican vacation spot and worked a bit every day. Some of the images are abstract, and some are references to my surroundings and experience. I wrote text in some pages, mostly not. Some are lovely and sweet, a couple are sad, many are funny.

Below is a slideshow of the book. You can watch from beginning to end, or you can pause it and look at the still images by hovering your cursor over it and clicking the "pause" button that appears in the upper left corner.

When I got home, I still had space in my book for more work, so I made a “Chapter Two” page, and kept going. I have no intended narrative in mind, yet I still strive to create an arch of experience while making and viewing the book.
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As I write this, this artist book is a work in progress- there is more to come with this one!

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How Did it Turn Out???

To see how my Sketchybook evolved, you can read and see more in my blog entry  called Structure.