Viewing the world through the sketches of graphic artists

In the age of instant click-and-posts, these artist-travellers slow down to document their experiences

Mar 07, 2017, 09:14 IST7 min

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Allen ShawAge: 43Lives in: Berlin, GermanyFavourite places to travel: Russia, Finland, Czech Republic and Kutch (India).Preferred technique: Watercolours on paper.Occupation: Travelling artist, illustrator, storyteller and co-owner of a design firm.Description of experience: I love the way the spaces and the experiences influence my work. I feel I also slowed down to match the pace of life there. I took more time to soak in the beauty, and these experiences find their way into my sketchbook. The most fascinating part is to be able to revisit them through my sketchbook while sitting in my studio in Berlin: The whole experience comes alive.Lake Lekshmozero, west Russia: July, 2014The three illustrations are from my days spent at Lekshmozero in Kenozersky National Park, west Russia. After the hustle and bustle of Moscow, it was nice to get away to the quiet of an old fisherman’s hut (a log house) and spend some days next to this beautiful freshwater lake.

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Allen ShawI spent hours looking at the tranquil lake. When it got cold in the evenings, I watched it from the warmth of the kitchen table of the log house. Some pages of my sketchbook from this time are soaked in watercolours and the evening sun.

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Allen ShawMy quest for discovering new places, cultures and people through my sketchbooks has taken me to different parts of the world, but Russia was special. I have known Russia from the Soviet-time propaganda material that found its way to my small town in North India. Living in a log house next to Lake Lekshmozero for me was like living a childhood fantasy.

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Ishita JainAge: 23 Lives in: Currently, New DelhiFavourite places: Étretat in Normandy, France, is one of the most beautiful places I have visited. But I love beaches, and I love places with ruins or old monuments.Preferred technique: While travelling, I usually stick to watercolours and fineliners.Occupation: I am a freelance graphic designer and illustrator.Description of experience: I started keeping travel sketchbooks after my first semester at the National Institute of Design. Sketching when travelling feels like the most unadulterated and genuine way of storing special memories. My sketches and notes become like a record for how I feel at a particular place, at a particular time. I see better when I draw. I am fond of drawing buildings and architecture, especially old monuments. I often slip into imaginary realities and different periods of time while sitting in a beautiful place and sketching it. I draw what I see and I like to finish my sketches wherever I am, down to the colouring and writing. (Also, I like to keep bits of paper, tickets, fallen leaves or even dead insects—bugs fascinate me—that I find, in my sketchbook.)Jama Masjid, Delhi, India: August 2016 Everytime I get frustrated with Delhi, I just need a glimpse of some of the city’s former glory and, usually, everything seems better. This was drawn on a beautiful, windy afternoon from top of the minar at Jama Masjid, while staring over erstwhile Shahjahanabad. I love reading about Delhi, especially the Mughal period, and to then go and sit in a place like this and imagine what it would have been like, at that time.

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Ishita JainSacré-Coeur, Paris, France: April 2014I visited the crazy artists’ market at Montmartre and got lost in the weekend crowds at the Sacré-Coeur lawns.

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Ishita JainMusée du Louvre, Paris, France: March 2014In 2014, I was lucky enough to go for an exchange semester to Reims, a small city in France. In my five months there, I never ended up going inside the Louvre. It was, sort of, a conscious decision. The crowds at the Vatican had really put me off, as did the crazy queues for the Louvre. I had the option of spending precious time in lines or going to actual places where famous paintings were made: I chose the latter. The sun went down while I sketched and, the sketch became visibly colder (shakier) towards the right side.

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Antima NaharAge: 39Lives in: Goa, IndiaFavourite places: Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia Isla De Ometepe, Nicaragua Mexico Peru hiking in Norway driving through Patagonia, Argentina.Preferred technique: Pens, markers, on heavy-weight paper.Occupation: I used to be a graphic designer, who grew up in Rajasthan, studied in London and ran a design studio in Mumbai. Now I’m a graphic designer who lives in Goa, illustrates and dreams of travelling the world and making a living through her travel journals.Description of experience: While the two experiences I have shared through the illustrations here can inspire anyone, I’d like to narrate another one which highlights a different side of travel. A side most of us hate—airports! At the end of one of my travels, I was stuck in Bengaluru airport on a day when every flight was delayed indefinitely. Tempers were frayed, kids were crying—there was chaos everywhere. I could have easily been part of this chaos, but my doodle book came to my rescue. The noise, the anxiety and the hours just melted away in those pages only to be interrupted with a “last call for flight to Mumbai”. Just like that I knew that sometimes experiences make the doodle book and, at other times, the doodle book makes the experience.Berlin: 2015 Berlin is a like an amazing warehouse: Every corner is crammed with history, art, music, design, nature and other details. A few days are not enough to explore it, unless you have a friend who is an insider and zips you around on her Vespa. And then you get this page: 1 Vespa, 2 girls and 100 awesome experiences.

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Antima NaharIsla De Ometepe, Nicaragua: 2008-09In 2008 I went backpacking in South America for five months. Every single day was a crazy adventure. This is a glimpse of one such day, on an island with two volcanoes whose lava gave it a form of two half-fried eggs. To swim in a crater lake inside the dormant volcano, we had to trek to the top of the volcano for hours through a dense forest, and come back down all in a day. As I sat counting my mosquito bites, I knew this would be one of my best travel experiences ever.

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