The first part of my three-week trip to France was a 4-day road trip with my friend Kerstin from Mannheim, Germany.

Our itinerary included

• a few hours in Wissembourg
• even less time in Saverne
• overnight in Obernai
• a visit to Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg
• overnight in Ribeauvillé
• one and a half days in Strasbourg.

What a beautiful part of the world!

We ended up sketching complex scenes and doing a lot of mixed media experiments. It was a case of straight in at the deep end!

My goals for this trip were to do more full-colour sketches and explore ways of combining opaque and transparent media. I tried a lot of different things during these first four days and refined a few new techniques!

I was extremely happy with what I achieved during our time in Alsace. As mentioned in my Reflections article, all the trip prep work I did really paid off.

And just for the record, half-timber buildings are definitely my favourite style of architecture to sketch at the moment!

Thanks, Kerstin, for making this trip happen and all the inspiring art conversations. It was wonderful to sketch alongside you in Alsace!

Here are the highlights of our mini road trip…

Wissembourg

First sketch in France, standing up and being interrupted by a car whose driver parked right where we were standing.

Lunch and a view of a crazy tall roof.

Saverne

Sketching from a cafe and fighting jet-lag. For the record: this was not the most complicated half-timber building we could have sketched from this position.

Obernai

View from our hotel room…

…which we sketched the next morning!

We needed something calmer and simpler for the next sketch.

Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg

An impressive castle…

…but it was hard to find a good view to sketch it from (which wouldn’t result in a stiff neck!)

So we did two quick sketches (10 minutes and 15 minutes each)

And then sketched from the nearby cafe.

Ribeauvillé

I called Ribeauville the “neocolor town’ as the colours of many buildings exactly matched my Neocolor II selections!

A lovely end of the day sketch!

A simpler subject sketched after running into a few friends!

Shari, Brenda and Suhita were in Ribeauville too – teaching a joint workshop! Small world indeed!

Strasbourg

This is the classic view of Strasbourg Cathedral, which we didn’t get to sketch (too hot and too busy!)

But we did find a spot under some trees to do a backlit sketch of it.

A leisurely breakfast!

The gorgeous Petite France part of Strasbourg – sketched early morning before it got too hot.

  
A crazy street view sketch – I was in a flow state when I did this.

Another experimental sketch of the cathedral.

Here is a close up of my favourite parts of the sketch.

A quick sketch of a lovely dark half-timber building on the main square. (Another sketch done in flow state)

An evening sketch (9pm) of a building that felt very Parisian to me.

 
All these sketches used a combination of media, as you can see in these screenshots from the videos I filmed for members of my Sketching Adventure Community on Patreon. I loved documenting my sketches in this way (if you are a paid member of my community, here is the direct link to these videos).

It was such a special 4 days of sketching – I had so much fun playing with shapes, colour, pattern and texture in mixed media. Thanks again to Kerstin for making it happen!