I’m preparing for an upcoming trip to Europe for the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Toulouse. Looking forward to it!

I’ll be teaching how to combine dry media with watercolour during my demo titled ‘Mixed Media Architecture’, and so I’ve been doing a lot of experimentation in the past few weeks to work out what to take with me. There are so many options!

I love making ‘Trip Prep’ into a big personal art project. I know that I can just pack a few art supplies and it would work fine. But I like to take the opportunity of an upcoming trip to do a big review and try new things. For me, travel is a time to focus seriously on my art, and in recent years I’ve really enjoyed experimenting while travelling.

Last year, I had so much fun creating a dedicated Trip Prep Sketchbook and filming a series of videos for my Patreon community as I prepared for a 9-week trip to Europe. I’ve done that again this year.

The first thing I did was rewatch the Mixed Media Review video I created shortly after returning from my 9-week 2025 European trip to remind myself of what worked and how I used the various media.

For example: I used ink and graphite a lot last year for complex scenes when I didn’t have the time or focus for watercolour. Such as this sketch from Poznan in the crazy days before the Symposium.

While I loved doing this style of sketch, this year I want to have a quick dry media full-colour option – especially for gorgeous old towns with lots of colour and half-timbered buildings, which I hope to visit.

So I started a dedicated sketchbook (9×6″ size) to experiment with dry media combos. Here are a few pages from it…

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the Pink City of Toulouse and ways of creating possible Toulouse colours by layering media (wet and dry).

As a result of my testing, I’ve decided to start using coloured pencils again, and I’m particularly in love with all the muted options available in the Caran d’ache Luminance range. These go well with Potters Pink and two opaque watercolours I added to my palette last year (Warm Light Yellow and Naples Yellow Reddish).

I’ve been loving exploring pink options – a hue that I normally don’t use that much!

This photo shows some of my ‘building colour’ tests for the various locations on my itinerary.

I’ve also been revisiting Neocolor II. For various reasons, I’ve hardly used them this year, so it’s been great to work with acrylic markers (a combo I used 18 months ago).

I also filmed a special bonus video all about Neocolor II and why I love using them so much. They are the tools I get asked about most, so I’m really happy to have a good introduction video now.

Another really fun aspect of my Trip Prep project this year has been using photos from my 2026 European trip to test out new media and approaches.

There is something very special about redoing a sketch I did 12 months ago using a different technique and then assessing whether this new approach would have worked better. I can still remember the decisions I made then (often responding to common travel sketching challenges), and it’s been very helpful to consider what I might do differently this year in a similar situation.

I don’t really like sketching from photos of my upcoming destinations, as I’m afraid it might affect my response when I’m actually there. I also prefer, as a general rule, sketching from my own photos, so revisiting scenes from last year has worked well!

Here are some of these quick sketches I’ve done in my Trip Prep book this month:

All of these sketches were done in 5-10 minutes, working small, and with the goal of simply exploring colours and techniques. So they are more ‘colour tests’ than ‘serious sketches’.

This last sketch is the exception. I did this in my 8×10 Alpha during a video call with @francoisechome and catching up on her recent visits to Rouen and Brittany. It was a good opportunity to test my mixed-media tools and techniques in my regular sketchbook. I used Neocolor II, Acrylic Marker, Coloured Pencil, Tombow marker and ink (Fude nib) and this sketch took longer (mainly because we were talking non-stop at the time!)

Note: I think half-timbered buildings might be my favourite architecture to sketch!

I’ve absolutely loved doing this Trip Prep Project in the past few weeks – and filling an entire sketchbook before my travels begin!

It makes me happy to get my coloured pencils out again – but oh! it is extremely hard to limit my selection as there are just so many brands and nice colours to choose from. The last Trip Prep video, featuring my final selections, will be shared with the community later this week – this photo was taken during the culling process.

If you sign up for my Sketching Adventure Community on Patreon for a month or two (of course, we hope that you’ll stay longer!), you’ll be able to watch all of this year’s Trip Prep videos and last year’s ones too.

I will be sharing weekly travel vlogs there too during July and a livestream at the end of the month to share all my travel sketches from France.

I can’t wait to start using all my trip prep ideas on location while travelling!

Thanks to everyone who is part of my Sketching Adventure Community – I’ve loved getting all your feedback during my Trip Prep and especially all your thoughts and questions about using Neocolor II.

Looking forward to seeing some of you in Toulouse!