Travel Sketching

Travel sketching is a unique way to record travel experiences while immersed in a new place. What better way to capture the flood of fresh sights, sounds, and smells by slowing down and drawing them with your own artistic interpretation? With that said, sketching on location and really anywhere outside of a controlled environment like an organized desk will present unique challenges. Sometimes it’s thrilling and relaxing. Oftentimes, sketching in the middle of public space might seem silly and hard to manage. The value of the sketch increases over time, as mundane experiences are filtered out of memory. The real challenge is committing to sketching despite the discomfort and unpredictability inherent with this activity. 

It helps to think of this creative practice like a puzzle, swapping different supplies in your everyday carry and trying different drawing subjects until it becomes second nature. There will always be some sort of obstacle that comes with sketching outside your home. A little strategy and a well-thought-out setup can make the unpredictability more exciting than burdensome. Read ahead for a variety of materials and methods to approach sketching on the go.

Choosing a Sketchbook

The best sketchbook to use for travel sketching is one you will instinctually pull out to capture something you want to draw in the moment. It doesn’t have to have to be fancy, professional, or even be made for sketching. If it’s a joy to use and you reach for it without any second thoughts when the urge to draw strikes, then it’s the best sketchbook. Think about features that help your creativity flow uninterrupted and are comfortable to use. These are a few questions to consider when picking out a sketchbook:

• Do you prefer unique textured paper or a smooth surface?
• Do you want to combine writing and drawing on the page?
• Will you use wet media like watercolors or dry media like color pencils?
• Will you use a mixture of materials?
• Does the sketchbook need to lay flat?

• Do you need to pack light?

Part of the appeal of some popular sketchbooks and journal systems is the ability to customize them to your needs and interests. Decorate the cover with stickers from your travels or add a leather cover that will weather and age beautifully as it's used over time, attach charms as a reminder of a personal sentiment.

There’s no harm in keeping it simple either. If portability is most important to you, choose a smaller notebook, maybe one with a lightweight flexible cover. There’s a range of notebooks available that can fit in your pocket or slim enough to fit in a small bag with all your other essentials.

Building a Sketching Kit

It can help to start out with a minimal set up with a sketchbook and one or two drawing tools. A pigment-based, waterproof pen and a pencil are more than enough to make a nice sketch. Between those two items, there are myriad of options to explore before you start adding more supplies to your kit. If a simple setup doesn’t excite you, there are ways to use more interesting materials without overpacking or requiring a lot of time to sketch. We created a list and gallery of favorites to help design an adaptable kit for your sketching needs.

Compact Supplies

Consider bringing smaller supplies like pocket pens, mini pencils, and multi-pens. There are many smaller versions of supplies available that are easier to tuck away in a pouch, some even small enough to fit in a wallet.

Travel Watercolor Kits

Travel watercolor kits come in a variety of sizes and the paints will last a long time before you need to replace them. To make them even more travel friendly, add a waterbrush to the kit. 

Waterbrush & Water Soluble Supplies

Waterbrushes are a special brush designed with a reservoir to hold water. The brush can dispense water onto paints to activate them and to clean the brush without requiring a separate container. 

For an ultracompact watercolor kit, you can pair a waterbrush with other water soluble art supplies such as markers, watercolor pencils, and fountain pen inks. 

With watercolor pencils, you can load the brush with paint by brushing the lead of a watercolor pencil as if it were a watercolor half pan. Wipe them clean with a napkin and they’re ready to store away with the rest of your supplies.

To get more variations in color and value from markers and fountain pens, you can spread the ink using a waterbrush to mix or dilute the ink on a mixing palette. With markers, simply draw on the mixing palette and add small amounts of water to dilute the color. If you use a fountain pen with a piston filling mechanism, push out a drop or two of ink onto the mixing palette and use a waterbrush to change the saturation of the ink. If the ink is a multi-shader or has shimmer this can quickly add a lot of interesting effects to your drawing.

Novelty Supplies

Novelty supplies match up well with a minimal setup. Use a rainbow pencil to unify a simple ink sketch by adding a fun background. Color in parts of a sketch with a wild metallic or gel pen.

Accessories

Lastly, simple accessories like pen pouches and clips make a huge difference while drawing on a trip. Pouches keep your supplies organized. They might even keep you from overpacking. Clips hold your pages in place so you don’t strain to keep your sketchbook open. Other useful accessories to bring along are stencils, compact rulers, and washi tape.

What to Draw

With most creative endeavors, there is no right or wrong. With travel sketching in particular, let observation and curiosity lead the way.

Doodle shapes and symbols to relax and slow down when travel is overwhelming and fast paced. Adding a date and location might be enough to call back the memory of that particular moment. Or, the resulting pattern can serve as an interesting background to add photos or text on top.

Though drawing people can really put your skills to the test, try drawing people from a reasonable distance who might be sitting or waiting. When people are moving quickly in your environment, pick one article of clothing to draw over and over, make up characters inspired by who you see, simplify people to silhouettes, or draw your fellow travel mates. 

Look for visual elements in your surroundings like signs, lettering, packaging, architecture, and vehicles. Even ordinary scenes like meals, simple objects, and the view in a hotel room can spark nostalgia when you view them in the future.

Nature offers an abundance of things to draw. You can zoom in to draw the details of flowers and plant cuttings or draw a scenic landscape.

Of course, your travel sketching does not have to be strictly sketches. There's no rule to say you can't create a spread with a combination of journal writing and photos using a portable photo printer.

Be Resourceful

Don't underestimate DIY tools, affordable office supplies, and recycled materials. Sometimes these are the best items to facilitate creativity. Coming up with your own non-traditional supplies will naturally happen with experience as you solve problems on the spot. Whether it's from fumbling through an overpacked pencil case or losing track of a pricey art supply. These are a few examples non-traditional sketching supplies you can use:

• Vinyl sticker backings can serve as a portable mixing palette. 
• Repurposed tins can hold watercolor half pans or messier types of art supplies like oil pastels.
• Use a rubber band and binder clips to keep your notebook open and your hands free to sketch. 
• Revise your sketches with sticky notes when a sketch goes awry. 
• Used up gift cards can double as a washi sampler or mixing palette. 
• Collage with ephemera collected on your travels.

The Final Piece: Travel

When it comes to travel sketching, it’s ok to loosely define the "travel" part of travel sketching. Bring your sketching kit along on a day trip to a new city, on a camping trip, or an appointment. Travel sketching on shorter trips will make it easier to plan for places with limited space and restrictions. What kind of sketches can you make with a sketch kit that fits in your pocket? Maybe you can’t sketch on a moving bus, but you can sketch on a moving train all thanks to motion sickness. If you fall in love with sketching landscapes, you might need sun protection or bug spray in your kit. Embrace the adventure inherent in travel sketching. Even if something doesn’t come out the way you hoped, you’ll be surprised to see how meaningful it will become when you look back and think about the experience. 

If you've tried out travel sketching, what are some of your favorite supplies or drawing subjects? We’d love to hear about your tips and tricks in the comments.