📝 Travel Sketchbook: San Francisco
Documenting, journaling and illustrating your travels
‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’ — Lao Tzu
During the last week of January, my partner and I traveled to San Francisco on the way to our 2-year adventure to New Zealand. He has family living there so we did a one-week stop to visit them and to try to break the trip to the other side of the world into something more manageable for our bodies and minds. It was my first time in San Francisco and California. Not in the States, though - I have previously visited Chicago and New York but the West Coast is extremely different.
The first day we were in town we visited the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) and I bought a lovely yellow sketchbook with some sort of carvings of an abstract San Francisco. My intention was to start a travel sketchbook: a visual and written memory of this trip to California and observations of this place and moment in life.
Last Summer I worked on a ‘seasonal sketchbook’ very much inspired by Hockney’s Spring in Normandy, observing seasonal patterns and motifs (link below). I like working on repeating specific themes and seasons and I have previously journaled about trips but have always kept the words and the drawing apart from each other.
This time, I am using San Francisco to explore a mix of both - words and images, making the sketchbook more like a travel journal. These are some tips and observations I have found along the way when starting this travel sketchbook:
Do it your way.
There is never a good or bad way to draw! There are no instructions or single paths to follow. There are some really beautiful travel sketchbooks out there and they are all different (I particularly like Paula Bonet’s ‘Los Diarios de la Anguila’). Find the themes you find interesting or exciting (people, food, places, views, architecture, colours…) and use the media you’d like to explore or feel comfortable using. Take in situ notes or sketches or rather journal after the trip, reflecting back and reviewing your journey. Include photographs and collages.
My San Fran sketchbook is a bit of an experiment: I started doing some in situ drawings (urban / rural sketches) but continued to sketch and write after the trip, even going back to fill in the first pages.
In situ sketch of the Panoche Valley mountains © Ana Vila 
Sketch of the Golden Gate Bridge (which I visited almost every day during the sunset and magic hour) © Ana Vila Document anything and everything.
I like to imagine that my San Francisco sketchbook will serve as a memory in the future for a lovely trip at the beginning of a new life chapter - and consequently the end of another one. In the same way we take photographs of any trip, the travel sketchbook can contain any theme, topic, moment, thoughts, or items we’ve found in our travels. Anything you find in your travels that you’d like to remember or that grabbed your attention can make it to your sketchbook: a nice meal, a place, a route, the colours of the sunset…
I have been writing about the journey, drawing and reflecting on the places I visited. Some places, such as the redwoods, that had a big personal impact, I am drawing and painting several times. I either use photographs I took of the trip or draw from memory. I have also used my San Fran travel sketchbook as a design journal - I am taking notes on urban observations and reflecting back and re-designing the urban fabric, realm, and mobility. I use the sketchbook not only to document, but also to imagine.
Driving along Route 1 © Ana Vila 
Sunset at the Pacific Beach in San Francisco © Ana Vila The sketchbook is always open.
Some people might differ on this one and would prefer to keep it a truly exclusive travel journal, but, in general, I like keeping my sketchbooks open, and this has been important to me in this case.
I have done most of San Francisco’s drawings and sketches after the trip when finding some quiet time to reflect, write and draw, and I intend to come back to it from time to time in the future (I still want to draw all the houses!). There’s something really nice about letting that time permeate your life after the trip. There’s a special symbiosis thinking about that week in San Fran, painting and recalling the beautiful redwoods whilst overlooking, from time to time, Auckland’s bay area across the window.
Hiking at Muir Woods © Ana Vila 
Redwoods along the Redwood Creek at Muir Woods © Ana Vila
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Happy sketching!
Ana
Have you sketched in a travel sketchbook recently? It would be great to hear about it! Leave a comment and share your thoughts :)
I love the bold strokes of your drawing Sunset at the Pacific Beach in San Francisco. I totally agree to sketch your way and to sketch anything and everything. It's a good challenge as well. Thanks for the inspiration!