My hand drawn map of the Dodecanese Island Chain in Greece
Carnet de Voyage or is it Urban Sketching?
I’ve always considered myself primarily an urban sketcher. I sketch from life and want my pictures to tell a story. I’m always sketching people, but they’re not always depicted within a scene, often they’re just a lonely sketch on an empty page. A lot of my time I use my urban sketching activities to practice sketching people rather than telling a story. But for this Greek adventure I didn’t want to just sketch single subjects and use my book as practice, I wanted to do a mind-shift towards capturing moments and encounters. So that when I look back on my travel sketchbook, it triggers memories.
Traditionally, a Carnet de Voyage is a notebook to record daily experiences, encounters, observations and reflections or anecdotes. It’s telling stories – just like urban sketching – but it’s more.
Urban sketching is about telling stories and aways drawing from life.
My travel sketchbook wasn’t pure urban sketching – because I did some of my sketches from photos, and it isn’t pure Carnet de Voyage – because I didn’t include notes or anecdotes in every sketch spread. Instead, my travel sketchbook became a collection of moments or memories that piqued my interest and sparked my imagination.
I endeavoured to make sure I wasn’t just sketching people, and that I flexed my creative muscles to sketch buildings and street scenes. I really wanted to make sure to sketch iconic Greek scenes like fishing boats, beach scenes, and simple houses dripping in bougainvillea.
Sketching a Greek Map of our Travels
As part of me shifting towards creating a Carnet de Voyage to collect pictorial memories, I sketched a map of the Greek Islands we visited during our tour of the Dodecanese Islands.
The location and size of most of the islands were to scale, but the mainland and Crete were further away, so I pulled them into the map and added a dotted line to indicate that there was some space and distance missing from their location and the rest of the map.
Here’s the blog posts with my Sketches from our Travels
Here’s a roundup of the blog posts with my Greek Island people sketches and my other travel sketches (in date order):
- See them all on one page: Greek Island Holiday 2026
- Sketching People during our Planes, Trains and Automobiles Adventure to Greece (Day 157)
- Greek Island Travel Sketches of Street Scenes using Ink and Watercolour to Fine-Tune a Travel Sketching Style
- Urban Sketching my Visit to Crete in my Travel Sketchbook
- Urban Sketching People in Heraklion Crete (Day 159 & 160)
- Urban Sketching People on Karparthos Greece (Day 161-163)
- Urban Sketching my Visit to Finiki on Karpathos in my Travel Sketchbook
- Urban Sketching People on Halki Greece (Day 164 & 165)
- Urban Sketching People during our Day Trip to Tilos Greece (Day 166)
- Urban Sketching my Visit to the Greek Island of Halki in my Travel Sketchbook
- Urban Sketching People on our day trip to Symi (Day 167)
- Add Link to my Overnight Ferry post when published
- Add Link to my Athens post when published
As well as the sketches I did of people and street scenes, I also sketched some subjects and moments that
Carnet de Voyage sketches
I wanted to inject a touch of CdV into my travel sketchbook, and all of these were focused on food and drink. These first two sketches were of Greek products we devoured during our stay on Halki. As well as sketches I also included some text to add some context and interest to the sketch.
Greek Frozen Yogurt Ice Lolly
Fix Beer – the Radler version
Sunday Lunch made by my personal chef
I don’t often sketch food, usually because I’m making it. But my holiday was a holiday away from the kitchen, and so I got a chance to sketch the lunch that was made for me one Sunday. The menu? Baked tomatoes and Feta, Sliced Cucumber and Grilled Halloumi. Delicious.
Portrait of MOH taking a much deserved rest on the sun bed after being my private chef for the day in Halki … he’s getting used to being sketched, even though it isn’t always a complimentary effort. But this portrait is actually quite accurate and I like the simple lines.
Using a Small Format Sketchbook
This is the first time I’ve used these small format 14xm x 9cm Stillman & Birn sketchbooks. I have a set of four different sketchbooks in this size and orientation, but opted to take the Alpha Series one away with me.
The Alpha Series doesn’t have heavyweight paper, which means I don’t feel overly precious about sketching in it – which is often the case when you’re sketching on 300 gsm watercolour paper.
- Weight: 150 gsm
- Shade: White
- Surface: Medium Grain
I made the pages even smaller by using Hahnemühle wash tape to create a border to sketch within, and I like the impact this border has, and was disappointed with the outcome of the page each time I forgot to tape. It really does look good to have some negative space on a page, rather than sketching to the edges.
I’m wondering whether to work my way through the remainder of these small S&B sketchbooks for day to day sketching, or whether I should keep them for travel sketching. They’re a really handy size for toting about all day every day.
Posting my Travel Sketches on Instagram
I didn’t post any travel photos or travel sketches while I was away. I like to live in the moment and be present, rather than get lost in social media. But the downside is that I have 5 weeks of sketches I want to share on social media, and I’ve already been back for two weeks, and I’m still not caught up. It’s a tad overwhelming.
Next time I go away on holiday I think I’d take a hybrid approach and upload the sketches to a draft post on my Instagram, and then add the text before posting them when I get back home.
