Next time you travel bring a sketchbook
The benefits of travel sketching
This post was originally published on my old blog. As my Travel Sketch Workshop is approaching this April I wanted to return to it and make a couple of updates along the way.
Whenever I go on a trip I carry a sketchbook with me. I have plenty of sketches over the years from my travels. Some are good, some aren’t. Either way, I’m happy to have them as reminders of where I’ve been.
I think everyone should carry a sketchbook and try their hand at travel sketching whether they are professional artists or haven’t drawn since childhood. Here is a list of why keeping a sketchbook is a small but beneficial part of every trip.
1. It’s the best way to remember your trip.
When traveling, sitting somewhere and sketching is the most effective way to recall where I went and what I did. It’s better than taking photographs, or writing about events at the end of the day, or even talking to a fellow traveler in real time. When I look at my drawings from past trips, I have a sensory recall that is beyond just the view I was depicting. It’s a memory that is all encompassing, which brings back the place immediately, as well as where I was sitting, how I was feeling and even what I was thinking about. You sketch, your mind wanders, you sketch some more and then voila, you have a drawing, or something that’s there, some record. Even a scribbly little doodle has brought me right back to where I was, a feeling I just don’t get in any other way.
2. You’re able to notice things you wouldn’t otherwise see and just watch.
Sitting somewhere for an extended period of time, one begins to catch the quiet poetry of life. I almost never stop to pay attention to the continuous pulse of my surrounding environment. But when I stop and draw, I feel as if nothing goes unnoticed. I’m receptive to it all–not just the sights, but the sounds, the smells, the breeze, the temperature, the distinct rhythm of activity around me.
In this fast paced world it’s not often that we take the time to just sit and look. People use to learn about things, just by watching and studying, slowly over time. When I’m drawing, I’m watching scenes before me unfold and it helps me learn about the place I’m in–instead of just rushing through it in a hurry.
3. It’s a way to reflect, muse, think about where you are, what you’re doing.
Along with watching what is happening externally, drawing affects your thoughts internally. When you’re traveling there are plenty of moments to think about schedules, plans, costs, menus, new words, new accents, maps, etc. That is part of the pleasure of traveling. If you sit long enough and draw, your thoughts inevitably begin to penetrate deeper, almost into a meditative state, where the questions and reflections processing inside you are less about the surface aspects of the trip, as many and important as they are. Rather they become more about what’s really happening, not only what the trip is about but why you’re on the trip in the first place. It’s a way to get deeper, and truthfully it’s why drawing for me has become less about the drawing itself, but the process–a way to relax, meditate, and let my mind drift.
Along with this, my sketchbooks frequently have little notes on the side of my drawing that have nothing to do with what I’m drawing itself, but just because my brain is stimulated with different ideas, I have to jot them down.
4. It’s a break from the phone.
This is something that I didn’t feel as acutely when I first wrote this post back in 2014. Like many, I have the bad habit of reaching for my phone whenever I have a bit of spare time. I might be checking in on messages and updates, but often I’m just scrolling away, mindlessly. Repeated again and again in micro moments, it’s something that can consume far too much time over the course of day.
When traveling there are often many moments of downtime, when you are just in transit or waiting, killing time. Sketching during these otherwise mundane moments is a great way to take in a place without even doing anything. It helps to make the most out of your trip. You can stare at your phone anywhere, but when you’re traveling it’s a good chance that where you are, you’ll only be there that one time–so why not make the most of it?
The act of picking up a sketchbook and actively drawing is such a contrast to the passive act of scrolling on your phone. Instead of tuning out of the world, you tune in, looking at everything around you, focusing on details that capture your eye. At the end of it your sketch might only be for a moment where you were able to note something that was around you and you were a part of, rather than some ephemeral background space that you didn’t even notice.
5. It ties you to a spot forever.
When you do a sketch of something you are recording your view from a specific time, date and viewpoint. No matter if I’ve drawn a view that has been rendered a million times or some sudden arrangement that exists only for a moment, that drawing becomes a record of my view that only I have and that will forever connect me with that place or object. There are random objects in museums I will never forget because I once drew them for five minutes, years ago. Then, when I go back and see the objects again, I think–hey, I drew that!
6. You meet people.
Watching someone draw is interesting. It’s not unusual for people to interact with you while you are sketching. I have had many incidents when people have come up to me while I’m drawing who I’m sure would otherwise never talk to me. Often it’s kids. I remember people who I met for only a moment, because they came up to me while I was drawing.
At times we may prefer not to meet people, or to invite total strangers to engage with us. However, one thing I’ve found with sketching is how it can also act as a buffer. Sometimes I’ll convey that I’m not in the mood to talk, I’m just working on my own drawing. I can’t speak for everyone but this signal usually is pretty effective to people that I don’t want to talk to others and they respect that.
However, the older I get I find I enjoy engaging with passersby as they give a curious peek, a nodding smile, or a small little comment that’s only a miniscule moment of interaction. It may not be a huge deal, but when traveling in a foreign country I’ve found these moments to be quite special as the sketching itself acts as a bridge to communicate with others.
7. It acts as a journal entry/diary, a record of what you did that day.
My travel sketches are less about making great drawings, they’re more to get a sense of what I did and saw during a particular day. Sometimes it’s simply a view outside a hotel room or a bus station somewhere. The best part about this is that drawings don’t have to be good, the same way journal entries don’t have to be “good.” It’s a personal record, and a sketch is very effective at capturing not just the time and place of where I was but even the type of mood I was in.
In this sense, sketching is never a waste of time. Even with drawings that I don’t like initially, in retrospect I’m happy to have made them. They stimulate my memory. Bad drawings of mundane objects in the pages of my sketchbook help me recall moments from my trip just as much as the good ones do.
8. When traveling on a budget it’s a free/very cheap way to spend your time.
Sketching is free! All you need is a sketchbook, or some scraps of paper, something to draw with and you’re good to go. If you want to spend some time and sit around, with just a bit of spare change, you could sit out in the cafe patio for two to three hours and simply draw to your heart's content, take a sip of coffee, look around, draw some more.
9. It’s a place to practice and play.
Anyone can express themselves through sketches. Look at children’s drawings. Drawing is a language and like any language one needs to practice and play as much as possible to become fluent. In order to be a truly eloquent draftsman one needs to devote countless hours to the study of drawing. As with any language, there are countless mistakes and errors that one makes along the way of getting better. Sketching when you travel is a great way to practice the craft, all while not being so hard on yourself–you’re working on the fly, capturing new sights, and often on trips there is plenty of down time to spend a few half hours here or there and just practice.
10. It stimulates ideas for new projects.
Sketching while I’m traveling has led to many bigger projects, ones that involve many hours of development in the studio and which I eventually had shows around. I’m sure that if it weren't for keeping sketches while I travel I wouldn’t have thought of the ideas for those projects in the same way.
Similar to how film composer Danny Elfman came up with his original theme for the 1989 film Batman by humming into a tape recorder in an airplane bathroom, these little vignettes serve to activate ideas for projects that can be developed further at a later time. While babysitting my nieces and nephew on a trip to London, I observed how parents would chat and gather at the playground. The quick sketches I made then led to a series of paintings of animals in different environments.
11. It's a way to share.
Before phones and even cameras, the way that people can show what they saw on their travels is through their sketches, drawings and paintings. Now we have all kinds of tools where we can share in real time where we are in the world. However, there is something very intimate about holding one’s sketchbook and looking through the sketches that they made on their travels. It transports you to travel back with them and see their world through their eyes.
I have seen pencil and ink sketches of Buddhist temples in Cambodia, fjords in Norway, pyramids in Egypt, and cows in Wisconsin that have brought me right along on voyages in ways that feel so tangible and direct. It’s a sensation that I don’t receive when looking at photos which although may be fascinating and beautiful to look at, feel more distant. Also, the descriptions that one can share about what they drew tends to have a specificity and familiarity with a place that comes from the time it spent working on the drawing. This feeling is palpable and illuminates why carnets de voyages and their reproductions were so important and successful for centuries as a way for people to “travel” to places through these images.
12. You just might come up with something you’re proud of.
You may even want to show it and maybe it will even be something that you could print and give as a gift or hang up on your wall, fridge, online, wherever. But even if you’re not necessarily brimming with pride about the piece itself, most likely you’ll be happy about having that little souvenir of what you did that day. Think about how many countless hours we simply coast or grind though, without anything to show for it? A drawing, whether it’s a masterpiece or a silly doodle captures where we were and what we did just for that one moment in time.
Beautiful work!
Jun! This was so nice to read, I think you really described all the reasons that sketchbooks are precious especially while traveling. I have always admired traveler’s sketchbooks when they are filled with colours and scribbles and notes. This winter I went to Egypt with the family and I took with me two new sketchbooks and one with postcards to be drawn. Such expectations! 😁 Hahaha… I have to say it was almost impossible to make the time to sketch in the places that I would mostly like to be alone and enjoy it. And then I had empty waiting time in places with nothing as exotic “Egyptian” as I would like. I still sketched and it was a wonderful way to fill my time but I certainly didn’t come back with the beautiful colourful sketchbooks that I had imagined. Next time I will only take a small one and if I fill it up, napkins are paper too. 😉