My family is going on a road trip this summer so I’ve been trying to get ready sketchbook-wise! I always love documenting our vacations in some sort of illustrated/scrapbook format, and I’ve been trying to figure out the ideal tools and drawing style that will be the most fun this time around.

To nerd out, I’m going to review and reflect on what I did for past trips so far…

JAPAN 2023
For our Japan trip I used a Traveler’s Company notebook with pockets. I knew we’d be visiting a lot of touristy places and probably have a lot of papers and tickets and things collected on the way that I could cut and paste with.

CHINA 2024
Before heading to China, I was gifted some fun art supplies from Ooly, so I brought those along and did a lot of marker illustrations with some scrapbooking too.

PHILIPPINES 2025
In the Philippines, I knew we would mostly be spending time with family and not do as much touristing, so I opted for just using micron pens in a tan papered sketcbhook (also from Traveler’s Company).

This time, we’re taking a road trip to California and visiting a couple of national parks along the way. It seems I’ve been using Traveler’s Company exclusively so far for these travel journals…do I keep up my streak??

I’ve been into fountain inks and watercolor pencils lately so I’d like to incorporate one or both, but we will also have limited storage space so I don’t want to bring too many supplies. I feel like there will be some good scrapbooking material along the way too, so I want to leave room for the possibility of incorporating those things as well.

I’m also going to try to get my almost 5 year old to join me in a daily travel sketchbook habit, but her (infuriating) way of using a sketchbook/notebook is to just open it to a random page in the middle and start drawing, rather than starting on the first page and going consecutively, which drives me crazy, haha. But maybe I should just let her be a free spirit, instead of trying to impose structure?! We’ll see how that goes.

Right now I’m thinking of finding a sketchbook with some kind of smooth mixed media paper that will take ink well. And maybe something small, so it’ll be easy to carry around and whip out of my pocket without too much of a hassle. Excited to see what I end up with!