Travel Journals
About ten years ago, I started routinely carrying sketchbooks with me while travelling. At first I just drew, but eventually the sketchbook evolved into travel journals, full of descriptions of and stories about my experiences.
My First Cruise Ship Experience
This first group of sketches is from a transatlantic crossing on the Queen Elizabeth II, from Amsterdam to New York.
The drawings are very loose and free, but there is virtually no context in which to understand them.
Walking In France
The first really comprehensive journal I made was about a visit to France.
I drew this personification of rural France after a day of driving in the countryside near Pau. Our trip took us to Sallies de Bains, a former resort built where salt had formerly been mined. Our trip took us to towns with non-French names like Narrenx and Othrenx and through some of the most exquisite landscapes I’ve ever seen.
In Tours, completely by accident, we came upon a Toy Museum, which was just fascinating. The toys were a combination of your tenderest dreams and your most terrible nightmares, suggesting Jungian archetypes. Some were frightening, some enchanting. There were puppets from the Grand Guignol, wonderful old fashioned dolls with bisque heads and porcelaine teeth, fantastic dolls with the heads of owls and cats, bears and frogs.
Nothing mass-produced: no Barbies, no Cabbage Patch Kids. No corporate logos: plastic french fries in MacDonald’s packaging, tiny Caterpillar trucks, John Deere tractors, miniscule Kitchenaid mixers, all clearly branded so your children can develop product loyalty before they can read.
After we’d been in France a week or so, we returned the rental car and started walking. We crossed the Perigord Valley on foot from one end to the other. Since we always took lunch at outdoor cafes along the way, we had plenty of time to draw the scenery.
Here are some examples:
After weeks of walking the byways of France, staying in pensions and traveler class hotels, I couldn’t resist making this commentary on French beds…which are frequently much softer and much less supportive that my bed back home.
