Road Trip!

We recently returned from a 17-day road trip to Colorado and Utah.  I've tried to post a video from the trip journal that I FINALLY finished, but it must be too large.  I do have a couple of shots that I can put up.  The first is of me and Katrina Lund who is the Community Artist for the year at Arches National Park just outside of Moab, Utah.  The second one is from the last day of our trip, at Mono Lake, California.  Both of these were serendipitous sketching occasions in that we went to both locations after changing our planned itinerary.  Interesting how things can work out.  We were fortunate to see so much natural beauty on this trip!

I very much enjoyed figuring out how to fit sketching into my travel routine, especially as it involved traveling with my husband, visiting friends, and being very active.  Basically, I would draw a little on site, take a photograph, and finish the drawing and add the color and text later. I did a fair amount of writing in coffee shops!

One of the things I wanted to figure out was what I would need in terms of materials.  I learned that I would prefer to have carried a smaller sketchbook that was specifically dedicated to the trip.  I will probably take a moleskine next time, not that I think it's the best paper, but I do like the hard cover and it's a good trade-off. I really liked the Mountain Smith lumbar pack that I had bought, and I put it to use in each of its three configurations: as a pack, a shoulder bag, and a bag with handles.  I carried two aqua brushes, two brush pens, a fountain pen, a white sharpie, a brown sharpie, a Winsor and Newton travel paint set that I had used up the pans from and replaced them with tube paints, a mechanical pencil, a glue stick, and a kneaded eraser.  Oh plus a tiny, tiny gouache set (which I didn't actually use.)