Travel Sketchbooks

Laura generously posted her enviable list of travel sketchbooks on her blog, and though I don't have nearly as many as I'd love to own, here are a few I really love:

Watercolor Journeys: Create Your Own Travel Sketchbook by Richard Shilling. These delicious watercolors are examples of his gorgeous work from travels around the world plus commentary on various 'how-to's" I love his style and the bits of ink he uses in his watercolor work.

My Italian Sketchbook by Florine Asch. Though Asch has written many travel sketchbooks, the ONE I HAD to own was of Italy -- a wonderful book that includes a few images of my beloved Sicily. Her sketches are looser in some ways than Shillings, but equally charming. Whenever I need a dip back into this fabulous country, I turn to this book.

Colors of France: A Painting Pilgrimage by Margaret Hall Hoybach and Joan Brown. This little known book was written and illustrated by a woman I knew when I lived in Charleston. We both belonged to the American Pen Women, Charleston Chapter, and while I was there because I wrote, Maggie was a painter -- and her watercolors were stunning even then! I found this book and fell in love again with her style. She illustrates her pilgrimage to Giverny and some of the most beautiful sites in France.

A Watercolor Journey through Charleston's Magnolia Plantation and Its Gardens by Margaret Hall Hoybech. Done in an earlier style than the book above, the sketches are wonderful. As someone who has worked and lived in Charleston and visited these gardens over and over again, I love the sites Maggie has chosen to paint. My only negative comment about this book is that the paper on which it is printed tends to make Maggie's light-filled watercolors a bit flat. How I WISH the publisher had printed this on glossy paper to accent Maggie's awesome style.

A Petoskey Watercolor Journal by Catherine Carey. This is a journal-sized, thick-papered, charming book of watercolors illustrating sites around Petoskey, Michigan. It, like Shilling's, is a combination of journal and how-to book. What I like about this book beside the loose, easy style, is the reminder that I too don't have to travel overseas or far away to 'see or sketch through a traveler's eyes' the charm of my own town.

When I visited Sicily, I kept a collage journal as I hadn't begun sketching. It's here if you 'd like to take a look.

ENJOY!