Travel Sketching

A Journey Around The World – Leaving Yellowstone

Travel Sketching, Trip Around the World 2013

Driving To Badlands National Park, South Dakota           May 24, 2013

This morning we were camped at Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park.  It was very cold and so we didn’t waste any time packing up.  We still had a little more to see before heading east to South Dakota.

Our first stop driving along the Grand Loop was Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River heading towards the north east entrance.  It was near Tower Fall that we spotted the bear that I illustrated above.

The bear was on a mission to go some where and so I have tried to give this picture a sense of movement by using line, brush stroke and rhythm.

The watercolor painting of Upper Falls, Yellowstone River was a study done with only red, yellow and blue.  Mixing all of your colors from just three colors is a little more work but the resulting picture will have more harmony.  I am starting to paint more with a limited palette as I feel that this will improve my work.

As we headed east on Hwy 90 into Badlands National Park the landscape changed to this exotic mix of grass land with sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires.  The cattle grazing in this landscape make for an interesting composition in the third picture.  I added black pen to this watercolor as I felt the picture needed something to help with the starkness of the black cattle.

A Journey Around The World – Grand Teton National Park, WY

Travel Sketching, Trip Around the World 2013
Mountain Bluebird, Yellowstone National Park Watercolor
Breakfast at Colter Bay Campsite

Camping at Colter Bay, WY.                                  May 23, 2013

For most of the day we were driving around the northern part of Yellowstone National Park near Mamoth Springs. There is so much to see in the park that you really could use a week just to cover the main sights.  That afternoon we headed south to Grand Teton National Park which is just ten miles south of the Yellowstone  southern park border.

My  first view of the forty mile long Teton Range was breath taking. I thought that we might see some interesting and beautiful places on this first leg of our journey to Boston but this was amazing.

The watercolor  painting I have done of the Mountain Bluebird was painted from a photograph that Lyn took.  We found that these birds were elusive and it was difficult to just get a good photo let alone sketch this bird from real life. The sketch of our campsite is typical of my loose sketch book style. This style of loose drawing is a lot of fun and offers a nice change from doing a more formal watercolor.

A Journey Around The World – Yellowstone National Park, WY.

Travel Sketching, Trip Around the World 2013
Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park
Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park

West Yellowstone, WY, USA                     May 22,2013

As we drove in from the west side of Yellowstone National Park, we passed Tilted Lake and encountered our first bison.  The bison are grazing near the road and don’t pay too much attention to you.

That night we camped at Madison Campground at 6,800 ft.  We set up camp early and drove to Lower, Midway and Upper Geyser Basins. The board walks offer a chance to get close to the geysers and feel their heat and steam.

From am artistic point of view I was amazed by the variation in colors.  I found that painting some of the thermals offered the opportunity to work with some colors that I don’t always see painting the Canadian landscape.  Some of the thermal pools have this beautiful turquoise color a long with bright oranges and violet.

As a final thought for today I have found that so far this trip has offered a lot of different potential scenes for me to paint and sketch. I think it is good to try painting subject matter that is new or out side of my comfort zone.  The sketch of Old Faithful was my first attempt at painting a geyser.

A Journey Around The World – Milk River, Alberta

Travel Sketching, Trip Around the World 2013, Uncategorized
Hoodoo’s at Writing-on-Stone, Watercolour
Mule Deer Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, Watercolour and pencil

Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park                            May 19, 2013

Leaving Banff, Alberta; we drove to Calgary and then south to Milk River, which is very close to the US. border and Montana.  This would be our last stop in Canada before heading south to Yellow Stone National Park.

Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park is a small nature preserve (18 sq. km.) that straddles the Milk River.  It contains the greatest concentration of rock art on the North American Great Plains.  We spent the night camped here near the river.  The next morning I was up early to paint and managed to do a couple of good sketches.  The Mule Deer that live in the camp ground make easy subjects as they allow you to get reasonably close.

I was also fascinated by the sand stone formations called “Hoodoo’s” that make an interesting subject to paint and sketch.  Some of these formations look like other worldly creatures.  The Blackfoot Peoples considered this place very sacred and were probably the ones who created many of the rock carvings and paintings.

A Journey Around the World – Banff, Alberta, Canada

Travel Sketching, Trip Around the World 2013

The Castle in the Rockies, Banff.                       May 18th, 2013

We were back on the trans Canada Highway heading east to Banff, Alberta today.  Lyn and I lived in Banff from 2000 to 2004 and so as we are driving along past so many familiar places it was easy to reminisce about our experiences.

The title of today’s blog is a reference to The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel that was built in the 19th century as one of Canada’s grand railway hotels. It is nestled at the foot of Sulfur Mountain very close to the natural sulfur hot springs and a short walk from downtown Banff. The hotel was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway and was advertised as an international tourist resort.

The watercolor sketch of the Banff Springs Hotel was done on location at a Place called “Surprise Corner” on Tunnel Mountain Drive.  It offers an excellent view of Sulfur Mountain and the hotel. The other two sketches are of Cascade Mountain and The Sawback Range.  The sketch of Cascade Mountain is a less typical view and is usually seen in photo’s as the back ground to a picture of Banff Avenue.  “Rain Storm over the Sawback Range” was also painted on location just west of Banff on the 1A Highway that is a great alternative road to take if you want to go to Lake Louise from Banff.

Cascade Mountain, Banff, Canada
The Sawback Range in Banff National Park, Canada

 

A Journey Around The World – Revelstoke, BC, Canada

Travel Sketching, Trip Around the World 2013
Road side stop near Revelstoke.
Looking up stream from the Natural Bridge in Yoho National Park

Driving the Trans Canada Highway                    May 17, 2013

The first real day of travel took us from Richmond, BC. to Revelstoke, BC. along the Trans Canada Highway.  It felt a bit surreal leaving Richmond and traveling east knowing that if we continued to travel east we would be home again in Vancouver in eight months time.

After driving all morning we stopped in the afternoon at the town of Salmon Arm.  We visited the cemetery there to pay our respects to Lyn’s grandparents and great grandmother.  For us it seemed appropriate to start the trip by paying our respects and thanking them for setting the ground work for the life we lead today.

Our first night of the trip was spent camping in Revelstoke at the KOA camp ground.

A Journey Around the World – Day 2

Travel Sketching, Trip Around the World 2013

Richmond, BC., Canada                              May 16, 2013

Having left our mountain home in Squamish, BC. we drove down to Richmond, BC., just outside of Vancouver near the Frazer River.  We spent a couple of days here to make sure that we had everything we needed for the long trip ahead.

We had some time on our hands and so we took advantage of the opportunity to be tourists in our own back yard.  We went to the nearby fishing village of Steveston where I did some sketches of the water front. Steveston is known for its commercial fishing port and was historically a salmon canning port.

A Journey Around The World, Painting and Sketching

Travel Sketching, Trip Around the World 2013

The Start, Day 1, Leaving Home                                   May 15, 2013

Three years ago my wife Lyn and I did a trip around the world. As a way to do justice to an eight month back packing adventure and to clarify the story of our journey I am going to post paintings and sketch’s starting from the beginning of our journey back in Squamish, BC, Canada.

Lyn and I had been planning this great adventure for some time and so when we sold our house in Squamish we had a big garage sale and put the remainder of our belongings into storage.  With that done, we loaded up the car with camping gear with the plan of driving across the United States to Boston as the first leg of our trip.

Here is the story of our trip in sketch’s and paintings.  Driving down the Sea to Sky highway from Whistler on our way to Vancouver, BC. we spotted a mother black bear and her cubs.  We thought this was a great omen of things to come and a great way to leave our mountain home.

Follow us a we go back through a trip that took us to 96 cities and 15 countries on our eight month journey.

A Fresh Approach To My Watercolour Painting

Travel Sketching

When I am painting outdoors and time is limited, I will often sketch and paint in a different style than I would if I was in my studio.  The style that I use in my sketch books is often pen and ink with watercolour washes or pencil drawings with watercolour washes.  Its all fun either way and to approach a piece of paper as if it doesn’t matter about the outcome of the art work is liberating.

I think that the field sketches done while I am traveling are a big part of what I do and so I recently created a new gallery on my web site called “Travel Sketches” under the Painting Galleries section.  Not all of these sketches were created on location in some distant land but were recreated in the studio in this “lighter style”.  I have included a few examples from a trip to Nepal where my wife and I were hiking the Annapurna Circuit.  The picture at the top of this post is an example of one my studio paintings.

Yaks near Manang, 11 in. x 15 in.
Leaving Upper Pisang, 11 in. x 15 in.
Kathmandu, 9.75 in. x 13.5 in.
Nepalese woman in a temple doorway, Kathmandu, Nepal, Watercolour and Pencil sketch, Available for sale.

Travel Sketching

Travel Sketching

Travel sketching for me is a great opportunity to motivate and improve as an artist, as well as creating a visual diary of the places I go.

Two years ago I was fortunate in being able to travel for eight months to South America, Africa and Asia with my wife Lyn.  We visited fourteen countries on this trip and I sketched and painted as much as possible along the way.  At one point in Africa I no longer had a camera to back up my sketches and it was at this point that I really started to sketch in earnest as I had no other way to record visually what I was seeing.
This was an important moment of understanding for me in that it made me realize that I should approach all of my sketching moving forward as if I don’t have a camera and this is the only opportunity I would ever get to record what I was seeing.  This idea is a gentle reminder to me to do my very best while sketching on location and not to think that I can complete the picture later in the comfort of my studio.

When I look at the sketches I did on location on this trip I am transported back in my mind to that experience.  For me these drawings and paintings are very personal, in the same way a written diary can be.

Today I would like to show you some sketches from India and Nepal.  These two countries are enough to keep me busy producing watercolour paintings for a long time.

Sketch books I used while traveling
Lake Pichola, Udaipur, India
Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Upper Pisang Village, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal
Gangapurna Lake, View of Annapurna 4 & 3, Manang, Nepal
View of Annapurna and Gangapurna from Thorung Phedi
View of Mukinath, Nepal
Shika, Nepal