Arctic Circle Residency Planning – favorite travel sketches

​Since I’m planning out my sketching supplies for the Arctic Circle Residency, I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite travel sketches and thought I’d share them.

​Great Basin National Park hike, 2019
I love this one because I did it really fast. We were hiking and it was cold at this high elevation where we stopped at a pond to have a snack. We also needed to hurry up and turn around so that we would make it back to our car before sunset. I wanted to sketch and Toby said, Okay you have 10 minutes – go!

Nine sketches of Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, 2020
We camped at Devil’s Tower and the only thing I could think about the whole time – even waking up in the middle of the night – was sketching it.

Grand Tetons, 2020
Same trip – we didn’t camp here, but we spent a couple of hours just hanging out with these beautiful mountains. I tried to sketch every single thing I could see.

Cape Cod, 2017
An older sketch – I made this one specifically to prepare for a class I would be teaching when I returned, but I can’t remember what the class was. You can tell this is a sketch I made on vacation because I obviously took my time with it to get all of those layers.

​Monument Valley, 2021
We camped in Monument Valley, then drove through it the next day. I made these on the road.

Santa Rosa Sound, 2023
I made these sketches very intentionally, knowing I would make work about this trip. This was a family trip with my Mom and siblings and nieces and nephews, and I’m glad they all just let me do this thing.

Curt Gowdy State Park, 2020
This is another camping trip – in the morning after one of the best camping nights ever, I sketched our little temporary home. I ended up making a painting of this subject.

Rangitoto, 2023
One of my favorite travel sketching experiences ever. I went for a walk by myself sketched Rangitoto – it was very meditative.

Loch Ness, 2024
Another meditative experience, getting to know this space and watching the conditions change as I sketched.

Amsterdam, 2019
Just to show that I don’t only sketch nature when I travel, here is my final sketch from the 2019 Urban Sketchers Symposium. This sketch always makes me think of the great visit I had with Liz Steel while sketching the marina and museum in the distance.

​Traveling and experiencing new places, and getting to know those places by sketching them, is very important to my art practice. I’m grateful to be able to travel as much as I do, and for how travel has shaped my work.