Lawrence Sketch Crawl

I had my first outing with a sketch group in Lawrence this morning. The weather finally turned good so it was a nice outing. We met at the Visitor's Center and sketched for a couple hours. Then met for a meal and chat. Met new people and made new friends. Wilma went to some fabric and quilting shops while I sketched. We like to come to Lawrence for many reasons.

A couple coal trains passed by while I was sketching. The center is a former Union Pacific terminal. The tracks were literally ten feet from my sketching spot. Boy do they make the noise and actually make the ground shake! When you compare the mass of the train to the mass of the earth, I just don't see how there is enough energy available to do that but there is.

I chatted with two different families that were walking by with their young kids to see the sights. The kids didn't like the trains when they passed, but they sure liked to run around the grounds. There's just something that kids like about trains, and some of us don't outgrow it.

Spring Break 2010

This year we decided to check out Santa Fe for our daughter's Spring Break (her idea). We've visited once before a few years ago and wanted another look. Made a 4-day holiday out of last weekend and took Amtrak from Kansas City to Lamy (closest train depot).



The main purpose of the trip is a family short vacation with a full schedule of things to do. I usually like a loose schedule with a few anchor events, but when time is short ya gotta keep moving. So, travel journaling had to take back seat and I sketched when I could work it in. Luckily I still managed to get most sketching done on the trip. The writing and maps followed when I got home.




That's it for this trip. Don't know if my travel sketch process will stay the same forever, but it works for now.

Trip, Finale

This is the last post for this vacation. It took a month to finish, but that's OK. Plenty of things to compete with journaling time so I'm just glad I could finish it and it didn't become an uncompleted goal. A year ago I knew we were going to Glacier and I knew I wanted to journal it, even though I hadn't learned to journal yet, much less have an on-line blog. So this post is a dream come true for me. I did it!

We're on the train here, coming home. Settling in for another 30-hour ride.


Here's a list of how we fill 30-hours. The first hours go well, but by the time we're approaching Chicago, we're ready to have it over. Then we drive a few hundred miles to get home. Kinda have a tense time getting out of Chicago, but the rest go fine. Then time to adjust to regular life again. Goes by fast and I'm ready to go again. If you like the ourdoors, Glacier National Park is a great place to visit.


Since I haven't done this before I decided to do a spread that covers what I carried and how I approached sketching for this trip. The old memory bank doesn't work as well as it used to. Next trip I'll read this to refresh my memory. If anyone has comments or suggestions on how THEY approach travel journaling, I would be interested in reading your responses.

Pre-Trip Sketches

The wife and I just got back from a 10-day vacation to Glacier National Park in Montana. This is a big trip for us, and the first one since I starting really sketching. It was my time to play with what I've learned and what suggestions I've gathered from my EDM and LTJ communities. My travel journal has begun. This first sketch is blatant copying of an old magazine add that was used in a publication I purchased to plan this trip. It's my private journal (forget the fact that it's shared here with millions of people through Internet). I loved the image and wanted it for my first page.

Since this is my first time for a travel journal, I'll admit I don't know what I'm doing. Every trip won't be done this way, maybe, but until I try some things I won't know what style I like. Here's the first few pre-trip sketches. That's not exactly true. I WANTED them done before we left, but it's not to be. I worked on them during and after the trip, too. To finish the rest of the journal I wanted my digital pictures printed to base some sketches on, and transfer some pictures to the journal. Not exactly fast stuff. I'll post more as I get them done.