Armchair Traveling

Several years ago, David and I flew to England to board the Queen Mary 2 for a Transatlantic Crossing.  You can find that story here:

https://betsyblissart.blogspot.com/2023/08/embarking-on-transatlantic-crossing.html

We had a day to walk around the port city of Southampton, England before boarding our ocean liner, and I snapped lots of photos.

It's a delight to go back to those photos and paint from them.  We saw this little cart of herbs near the historic town walls (built in the 14th century!).

I began with a pencil sketch, then added watercolor washes and finished with some line work in India ink with my Lamy Safari fountain pen.  Towards the very end of painting this scene, my Intuition suggested that I add a bit of purple to the shadows around the cart.  The mint plants had lavender flowers, and using a touch of the same lavender tied the scene together.

Do you have old vacation photos that you'd like to revisit?  Sketches of beautiful scenes can be uplifting on wintry, gray February days.

Happy Creating!

Transatlantic Crossing Travel Journal Part I: Arriving in England

This summer, my husband David and I did something we had dreamed of-- we booked a Transatlantic Crossing on Cunard's Queen Mary 2, the most romantic way to travel from England to the USA.

Before we left, I collected a small kit of art supplies: 12 Faber Castell colored pencils, Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens in black, Sakura Koi watercolors and waterbrushes, a mechanical pencil, eraser, pencil sharpener, & a little water mist sprayer. It all fit into a small zippered bag I could stow in my backpack. I worked in a Strathmore Watercolor Journal (140# cold press). I found that sketching simple scenes while waiting for a bus, or at the end of the day helped me to slow down, deepen my experience, and have a record to look back on.

  

We flew into London's Heathrow Airport, and took a bus south to Southampton, the port where we would embark on our ocean journey.

The landscape around Heathrow & along the motorway south of London showed signs of the recent heat wave and drought, with yellow, dead grass.  The fields along the roadway had recently been mown.

Our hotel room in Southampton looked right out onto the port and the cruise terminal.  Every morning,we would awake to new cruise ships docked in the port, often 4 ships at a time.

We could open our window (no screen as they had no mosquitoes or biting flies!) and let the cool sea air refresh our room.

It was lovely to have a few days to sketch gulls and recover from jet lag.