I recently went on holiday interrailing around Europe, through Italy, Austria and Germany - and of course did lots of sketching! I took an A6 Seawhite Travel Journal sketchbook to document our travels, below are some of the spreads I created. (Most were done on location but a couple were coloured later / drawn from photos.)
Travelling does involve a lot of waiting around at stations and airports, but always a good opportunity to sketch! I really enjoy sneakily drawing people out and about.
This was actually my first time ever on a plane, it wasn't too bad! Again, a good opportunity to draw everything I can see around me and really capture the scene in my sketchbook.
The views from the trains around Italy were amazing, the looming mountains in the distance, cute little terracotta roofed houses and miles of green vineyards. Riding the trains was a great way to see the sights, my whole camera roll is filled with videos of the views.
I often hoarded receipts from shops, restaurants and train tickets for my travel journal - sticking these things in adds to the scrapbook vibe I was going for, and helps to aid your memory when looking back through your travel memories. Drawing what we'd bought from the shops was fun!
Some of the sketches ended up unfinished, I guess due to the nature of travelling and being on a tight schedule sometimes, but I quite like that. It makes the sketchbook as a whole more genuine, rather than being too polished.
Food was something I sketched a lot of during this holiday, we ate a lot of delicious pizzas! Also I wrote a lot of notes just to myself, to help me remember things from the holiday when I look back at the journal in future.
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Sitting in this pub (Gasthaus) in Austria, with a warming bowl of soup and a radler whilst it bucketed down with rain outside is one of my favourite memories from the holiday. I had lots of time on this sketch as we waited for the rain to stop!
Both of these scenes I actually sketched just from photos whilst in the hotel in the evening. Interrailing did have some quite stressful and tiring moments, so it was nice to take a few hours away from running around and just draw and relax.
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Our last day of the holiday ended up being torrential rain in Munich (and I'd learnt the hard way that my coat was not waterproof!) so a lot of it was spent drinking tea and eating pastries. Honestly though, it was fun to sit and sketch anything, and by this point I'd got so used to drawing everyday that it felt like second nature!