Home again home again....

I'm home. I almost can't quite believe it. 4 months of travelling, having completely new experiences, meeting amazing people again or for the first time, trying new foods, being blown away by incredible music and art, exploring, adventures unplanned, surprises and sooo many good times and great memories...... and now it's all over. it's a bit of a spin out to be back to the same old-same old. as nice as the comforts of home and a bit of routine are.... I was in JAPAN last week!!

But I have to say it is nice to be back to my studio, cold and wintry though it is. The one major issue we've had to deal with on our return is that we have to move out of our house because the landlord has decided he wants to move back in. and we've been trying to decide... do we rent again or do we buy? can we buy? going crazy with house inspections and bank managers, trying to figure out if it's all possible. not exactly the relaxing welcome home we were hoping for, but maybe it's the bit of excitement we needed to avoid the post-travel blues :-)

A few nice things on an illustration front though are that I was accepted to the stylefile which I applied for before I left. It is a great resource for publishers to find australian illustrators so I'm very glad to be a part of it. Also the Illustrators Australia website is up so I need to get my stuff on that as well.

but until then here are the last sketches from my travelling moleskine:
we went to a park/zoo near our friends' house in Gothenberg and saw some moose! they're such funny creatures.



Japan was fantastic and we definitely didn't have enough time there. I am 100% going back there someday, maybe to study, who knows?



and that's all she wrote folks! The end of my travel sketches. thanks to anyone who might have been checking in along the way, hope you enjoyed them, I certainly enjoyed making them and it's such a great record of our trip now (along with the 26 CD's full of photos and videos of course!)

xx

Europa

we've been skipping through countries lately..... from France to Italy, one night in Switzerland and now in Sweden.

it's all been about visiting friends so it's a great part of the trip. I met some of Andy's friends in Genova,Italy who I have been hearing stories about for years; we met some friends of mine in Zurich who I know from travelling around Australia together years ago; now we are with some mutual friends in Gothenberg for a week.
next stop (and last stop) is Japan for our friend's wedding. I love Japanese art and aesthetic so I'm really excited to go there for that reason (as well of the wedding of course!)

it's hard to believe that our 4 months of travelling is almost over. it's going to be great to get back home, to my bed, my studio, and some semblance of healthy eating again! but at the same time I don't want this trip to ever end. "real" life seems so far away, but it's going to slap me in the face pretty soon!!

but for the moment I still have a week to go so yipee!

here are some recent sketches:

Paris french onion soup


Genova, Italy - I loved how all the buildings were painted pink and yellow, such beautiful meditteranean colours. it was funny on the train to zurich to see how all the bright colours changed to brown and grey the farther away from the sun and sea we were.


One of our friends here is Sweden grew up on farmland and we went to visit her hometown and lots of cows and woolly sheep. this picture was inspired partly by a children's book i bought where sheep were done with just splotches of paint (will post about the books I bought when I get home) and also because I had made a dark smudge on this page by accident, so turned the smudge into fingerprint cows! Fun!

my next post might be from home!!xx