travel sketchbook: a winter weekend on the cape
Last month, we spent a long weekend exploring Cape Cod with my aunt who lives near there. Since moving to the East Coast a little over six years ago, the Cape has become one of my absolute favorite places. It’s mostly known as a summer destination, but I think it is so beautiful and peaceful in the winter, too. The colors and textures of the landscape always inspire me and this time around, I put together a handmade booklet to fill with sketches and memories from our weekend.
I have long drooled over so many other artists’ travel sketchbooks, but I’ve struggled to keep my own until this trip. Lately, I’ve been feeling really inspired by people who have made their own little booklets to document their travels like this one and this one. I find that I’m drawn to ones that have lots of texture and feel a little messy without totally sacrificing a sense of cohesion. I love when people layer in ticket stubs, receipts, and other little tidbits from their travels. I decided to give it a go myself and thought our Cape weekend would be a good practice run.
I wanted mine to feel like something somewhere between a sketchbook and a scrapbook. I picked a few different papers that I had in my studio and followed these instructions to bind them with just a needle and some embroidery floss. Ultimately, I think giving myself the constraints of limited materials and just a few pages to fill, as well as making my own sketchbook with different textures and colors of paper, ended up making it much more manageable and fun to actually use throughout our trip. In this post, I’ll share more about some of the spreads.
Materials:
A very limited color palette of colored pencils (greens, browns, white, and cream)
2 different graphite pencils (HB and 7B)
A fineliner
Sid and I spent an evening walking in Ellisville Harbor State Park, and there were so many different views I wanted to capture that I decided to split the left page up into panels. I’m really happy with how the color palette I brought with me suited the colors I saw in the landscape this time of year, and I’m so glad I brought the white colored pencil as it really pops on this toned paper. I’ve been slightly obsessed with drawing trees lately, so it was fun to draw the wonky branches and multi-toned bark of the trees along the path to the beach.
On the right, I wanted to capture the cozy dinner we had that night, including the delicious menu that Sid prepared for us and the table decorations my aunt laid out that made it feel so warm and inviting. I used my favorite Tombow Fudenosuke pen to sketch a few of the objects on the table. I love this pen because it allows me to vary the line easily by applying different pressure. We always have good wine at my aunt’s place, so that had to be included, of course!
One of the things I love about the coast on the Cape is how it feels so expansive and open, so I wanted to save the middle spread for a panoramic scene, and I ended up choosing this view from Gray’s Beach Boardwalk. In the surrounding marsh, there were these brown grasses and I wanted to separate those from the sandy areas, so I used a paper bag from a purchase I’d made that day to collage. This was a fun way to add some of the texture and layering that I really like in other artists’ sketchbooks. I liked mixing it up between drawing and cutting and pasting. I felt very crafty!
We went for a long walk on Howes St Beach until our noses were a little frozen. It was low tide at the time, so the beach felt huge, especially without the summer crowds. There was also snow on the beach, and yes, that song was stuck in my head the entire time. There really is something kind of magical about it.
I wanted to mix photos with sketches for a more scrapbook-y feel, so that’s how this spread came about. We ended our afternoon with tea at our beloved Dunbar House, so I added the teacup in the corner. Drawing the doily was actually one of my favorite parts of this sketchbook! Honestly one of my big takeaways from this project is that drawing with white colored pencil on toned paper is really fun.
I used the panel format again on the left to try to capture different elements of the landscape at Sandy Neck Beach from the snowy dunes to the grasses rustling in the wind to the dramatic clouds. It was a super windy day this day, and it was fun to watch the seagulls playing in the wind. I love when other artists use negative space in their sketchbook, so you can see where I gave that a try on the right. I wanted to give the seagulls plenty of space to stretch their wings and fly.
I’ve been having so much fun with my Tombow pen so I wanted to play around with drawing the different ingredients for the dinner I cooked when it was my turn. (By the way, the recipe I used is from one of my favorite cookbooks lately, Dinner in One, and I highly recommend.)
On one of our afternoons, my aunt and I strolled through downtown Plymouth and had fun exploring all the little shops, including some antique stores. One shop had a collection of Victorian-style valentines that had been mailed during the early 1900s, and I just loved them! I bought one and made a little envelope at the end of my sketchbook to keep it safe. I also tucked in a note with moments I wanted to remember from the trip.
And that’s it! I’m so happy with how this turned out, and I think I’m going to love looking back on this as time goes by. I’m feeling inspired to make similar handmade sketchbooks for each trip I’m taking this year, adjusting the papers and color palette I use each time to suit the different locations.
I would love to hear how you like to collect your travel memories! Let me know in the comments!
Posted March 7, 2024
