I had a very wobbly moment today. I wanted to check one of my travel sketch books and I just couldn’t find it! I spent last weekend moving my art supplies into our home office and my husband out ( he’s retired now – why does he need an office?). It’s a tiny space, 2×2 metre , so not much room to lose anything you would think. Wrong! I’ve got a complex system of wheeled storage that I move around depending on what I’m doing and where I need the space. There’s a lot of storage for such a tiny space. And then there’s all the other nooks and crannies around the house where I’ve squeezed in a bit of art ephemera that just won’t fit in that little 2m cube. ( I used to have a bigger room but the prodigal son returned and there went my art studio).
So I emptied drawers, moved piles of books, checked under the bed and in the wardrobe. I found some odd socks, 2 dollars, a missing earring and finally three sketch books – but there’s a lot more than that. I could feel my skin getting clammy and a mild sense of panic rising at the thought I might have lost them. Of course I eventually found them – there’s always that one drawer you forget about even when it’s right in plain sight. The heart rate returned to normal and I sat down for a satisfying hour of memories.
Why did I panic at the thought of losing them? Because these travel art journals bring back a lot of sense memories that I just don’t get from my photos.
I can smell the lavander…
I can taste the salt in the breeze….
I can feel the heat bouncing off the rocks…
I can hear the sound of my laughing children in the room behind me as I sketch at the open window…
I can feel a frisson of fear as my husband stands too near the edge….
I can feel the joy of finally getting to those US desert national parks after a decade of wearing my husband down – he loved it! ( not the wearing down part – the desert colours part)
Travel is a big part of our lives – and travel sketch books have become an integral part of that experience for me.
Lindy Whitton Studio 
🙂 Glad you found them – and that you’ve put the somewhere safe- now just don’t forget.
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They’re just so beautiful. Family heirlooms, like jewels.
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Yes – some rough cut diamonds there!
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These are so precious! I wish everyday that I had kept more detailed journals of our trips. I find that with time and numerous travels, the details have started to fade. These little journals will always be something you can go back to and relive those memories 🙂
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I do love them – The Writer has always kept written travel journals which he loves to dip into but at the end of the day I”m often too tired to find interesting words. A sketch or two a day with a few words can bring it all back years later thogh.
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On many of our travels I’ve often seen people sitting in the midst of a crowd with a sketchbook on their lap – oblivious to the press of noisy tourists and lost in their own world, drinking up the scene spread out before them. Never thought I would ‘meet’ one of those souls someday 🙂 Kudos to you for stopping to smell the roses 🙂
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there are some really beautiful sketches 🙂
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Thanks! I love my sketch books.
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