Current Project -- Europe 2011 Trip Retrospective Journal

I had started a Retrospective Trip Journal in January, and was making good progress through it (I got through ten years, to 1994!) when I decided to put that project in hibernation and work on our most recent trip, our month-long whirl-wind trip through Europe!  I was feeling the pull to jump to that trip since it was our most recent trip, therefore the most fresh in my mind, and certainly deserving of its own sketchbook.  I decided to use a Fabriano Studio sketchbook I bought recently on sale, and this has 12 sheets of cold press watercolor paper (for a total of 24 pages).  So I constructed a "budget" of how many pages I could allot to a particular place.  In total, we visited 14 places in Europe, so for some places I could only allot 1 page to that place.

Fortunately I took lots of photos on our trip so I have many references to sketch from.  Also, as I remember eating certain delicious foods in Europe, like baguettes, cheese, chocolate, and gelato, I am able to find photos online for reference too.  I also thought I'd include logo sketches, like Trenitalia logo, or the sign for Mary's Hotel in Paris where we stayed at, all easily found online.

For the cover of the book I had photoshopped a line of our train travel route on a map of Europe and pasted it onto the cover:

So we started our trip in Paris, and I ended up using 3 pages for that place, which will force me to reduce to one page for another place:

We next rode to Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland and had a wonderful two days there:

I am currently working on finishing up our time at the Cinque Terre region of Italy (one of my favorite places of the trip!):

This project has been a lot of fun, and a great way to reminisce on a truly wonderful trip!