Last year, I traveled to Japan to visit my friend who was teaching English at a high school over there. The beginning of my trip started out a little rocky; the 2nd leg of my connecting flight to Tokyo was canceled due to a typhoon, leaving me stranded in Texas for a day. Luckily, I sneaked onto a flight the following morning, sitting in the center of a 5 seat row. The first two pages are my fellow passengers to the left and right of me.

When I finally arrived, my friend was kind enough to let me tag along when she went to work. I had a blast drawing the high schoolers because they were so lively…but it also made it hard to capture that spirit. I was also intrigued by their little nuances in how they wore their school uniforms. So much personality!

This was the first time I tried to really document another location with sketches. It was extremely fun, and now when I look back at these sketches I can remember more specifics than if I just shot it with a camera. For the sketchbook, I used a water brush, watercolor pencils, pencil, and Sakura Microns/Copic Multiliners. The moleskine’s thick paper held up pretty well to the water media, but it’s hard to make a mark with straight up water color. I found I had to draw with the water color pencil and then apply water to the line to make it keep. I’ll try to find more time later to post more from my travel sketchbook…unfortunately at work we’ve entered crunch mode so updates will be sparse.