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
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Age: 35
Lives in: New Delhi, India
Favourite Places to Travel: I travel without bias, but I do love going back to Paris, to the Provence region in southern France, and have recently fallen in love with Japan. I also love the excitement and sense of discovery in places foreign to me, like Mexico.
Preferred technique: While travelling I open myself to influences from my surroundings. For the sake of convenience and frugality in packing stationery (I’m quite a hoarder!) I lean most heavily on a set of fine-point pens and a small travel case of watercolours used along with a Pentel water brush. But I’ve also used black pencils, coloured pencils, brush-pens, neon and metallic pens, and so on, depending on the place I’m in and the lettering/art/visual influences I become inspired by. And I do a lot of lettering and calligraphy in a range of styles, of course.
Occupation: I own Turmeric Design, a studio that specialises in graphic and branding design, particularly for upscale hospitality and retail businesses. I also work as an illustrator and hand-lettering artist on commissions. I am a guest faculty member at India’s top design schools, and run workshops on calligraphy and working with type.
Il Santino, Florence, Italy: May 2016
I document meals on my travels, not only because it’s convenient to draw while sitting in a pretty space, but also because food has such significance while travelling. Local food discoveries become extra delightful. Meals shared with people, or eaten while soaking in the surroundings, feel like luxuries. This page is from an evening in Florence, last May, when I wandered into a tiny bar in an alley off the tourist map.
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A Good Traveller Expects Nothing and Finds Everything: June 2011
I was couch-surfing in Barcelona and found myself living in the home-studio of a Spanish musician. On a relaxed summer afternoon, watching the sun bathe the living room in golden light, I felt centred, blessed and content.
This drawing of Joe’s living room transports me to that moment when so many cherished things about travel came together: Travelling with a few belongings, few attachments and fewer expectations; the noticing of, and being fully present in, ephemeral moments that powerfully transform me; being open in my explorations of the outside world, returning home to find the inner one polished. Everything falls in place, everything is enriching and everything helps me grow.
3/12
Age: 35
Lives in: Tacoma, Washington, USA
Favourite places: My travel blog focuses on North America, so I’ll just list my favourites there. New Mexico and the San Juan Islands make the cut, as well as New Orleans, the California coast, the Palouse region of south-eastern Washington state, the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming, New England (especially in the fall), Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Bryce Canyon in Utah. There is beauty to be found everywhere, if one is only willing to look for it.
Preferred technique: Ink and watercolour.
Occupation: Full-time artist and illustrator.
Description of experience: I love to document my travels through drawing rather than photography because it forces me to slow down and really look at my surroundings. Because I’ve taken the time to study the subjects of my drawings, I remember my travels much better. Also, when I look back on a drawing, I remember everything about that day. Drawing extends the experience of a single moment into something that lasts forever.
Adobe House with Hollyhocks, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA: August 2015
I love the American southwest for its rugged beauty, brightly coloured desert landscapes, and rich culture influenced by American, Spanish and Native traditions. Santa Fe is beautiful at any time of year, but I always associate it with summer, when the hollyhocks are in bloom.
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Eastsound, Orcas Island, Washington, US: April 2012
Orcas Island is one of the San Juan Islands, an archipelago that forms the maritime boundary between Washington and Canada. The San Juans are one of my all-time favourite places to visit and draw. The islands are impossibly beautiful, with tiny villages and dramatic, rugged landscapes. The best part is getting there on the ferry; the boat weaves through the archipelago, passing through fjords, fog banks, and the occasional pod of killer whales.
5/12
Age: 43
Lives in: Berlin, Germany
Favourite 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, 2014
The 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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I 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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My 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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Age: 23
Lives in: Currently, New Delhi
Favourite 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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Sacré-Coeur, Paris, France: April 2014
I visited the crazy artists’ market at Montmartre and got lost in the weekend crowds at the Sacré-Coeur lawns.
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Musée du Louvre, Paris, France: March 2014
In 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.
11/12
Age: 39
Lives in: Goa, India
Favourite 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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Isla De Ometepe, Nicaragua: 2008-09
In 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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