Europe 20 Virtual trip begins

April 27, 2020 | 2 Comments


Today I officially started my virtual trip to Europe (see Saturday’s article for more info) and I had so much fun pretending to head to Rome.

On Saturday I had prepared some prep pages – my itinerary and my packing list and today I did a number of sketches so I’ve already filled up 4 double page spreads in my book. It’s a great start to my big virtual trip!

I’m recording all my sketching in my Instagram stories – including time lapses and video snippet of my sketches. So I will be giving lots of tips and also sharing how I incorporate my SketchingNow concepts into my travel sketching. I’ll also be sharing a lot about how I design my pages and make decisions about where to locate my sketches on the page and what approach to use.

The big thought of the day is how much I love designing my sketchbook and telling a story of my adventures. It felt really great to create these pages today even though the sketching was purely warmup and nothing special.


Here are the pages in my book so far:

 

My plan as it is – and for the record I have to stick to my itinerary and not simply jump around Europe. I’m going through my trip as planned.

The text block is a brain dump of my thoughts before I started the journey. This is a tradition which I do every trip after I finish packing just before I leave. Normally I don’t share it but I’m okay with you reading it this time!

 
My usual packing page. I have literally packed my art supplies, but the clothes sketch contains a few items that don’t exist (ie. I was planning on sewing them over Easter but that didn’t happen!) And just for the record, I’m not going to be wearing these clothes over and over for the next three months!

I got my empty suitcases down to sketch and then looked for some photo references from previous trips. It appears that I rarely take photos during my long haul flights so I didn’t have much to choose from.

I did a few layover sketches in Dubai and then I ‘spent’ the second flight sketching the brushes which I have decided to take on this virtual trip. I ‘arrived’ in Rome at 10pm and as per last year, I went out to get some food and do a super quick sketch. You can see last year’s sketch here.

BTW I’m uploading larger versions of these sketches so if you click on any image you should be able to read my notes.

I’m really looking forward to doing some virtual Roman sketches tomorrow!


 

2 Comments

  • Shannon B Davis says:

    Wow, you really went to the next level – itinerary pages, empty suitcases! I chuckled at your sketch of the virtually empty flight.

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