Scotland Sketchbook, part one

A FEW DAYS IN SCOTLAND, 
Aka "I thought there would be dumplings on this hike."

my sketchbook diary, part one.

A few months ago, Katrin and I had the incredible pleasure to lead two sketchbook retreats in Scotland. We spent more than a month traveling around and taking our time to draw as much as possible.

(we are headed to Portugal next! You can take a peek here. Sketchbook Retreat in Portugal)

The first image (above) was drawn in my sketchbook and colored in Photoshop. The rest are all unaltered scans (or photos) from my sketchbook.

I make an effort to not draw every single thing that happens. Instead, I focus on specific moments that stood out.

Before the retreat started, we explored a bit.

Our son had an earache and was seen by a doctor and prescribed medicine. It was all free, which was unexpected since we are used to the opposite treatment here in the US.

We did the Duncryne Hill hike, which is known as "The Dumpling" for some reason. We forgot to mention to our son that it was just a nickname. At the top of the hill he was suprised to learn that there were no dumplings on the hike.

One thing that I like to do while keeping a travel sketchbook is to draw something that I obsessed over before the trip started. I want to see how much of a role it ends up playing during the trip. For Scotland that object was a 35mm camera. I wrote about it more here. GHOSTS CAUGHT ON FILM.

Midges are tiny, biting bugs. We were warned that they could be bad, but it was mostly fine.

On the first day of the retreat, I drew this intro page for the week.

The next day we took a trip out to Loch Lomond, which was gorgeous. As a sketchbook activity, we imagined who or what was living in the lake.

My wife is very good at finding little bugs.

You can't go to Scotland and not draw at least a few unicorns.

Another fun activity was to draw four random shapes and try to fit sheep into them in some way. 

Here are mine.

Near the retreat venue was a lovely animal sanctuary called Harmony Fields. We spent a long time there meeting the animals and drawing them.

One of my favorite moments of the trip was seeing my son smiling while sitting on a tiny, pop up stool and drawing a tiny horse named Hamish in his sketchbook.

Here's a great joke that Kate, one of the attendees made while we were at the Sanctuary.

Here comes Hamish!

I'll be posting the second half of my Scotland sketches soon!

While working on this post, I found this random illustrated fact that I drew 10 years ago about Scotland! It was later included in my book, RANDOM ILLUSTRATED FACTS.

 thanks for reading,