Selections From My England & Romania Sketchbook

I’m back from our three week trip to England and Romania, a success on all counts! It was lovely to be in England in May, my first trip there in eleven years. Not much had changed…the countryside was still beautiful, the beer was excellent and I was able to get a nice selection of flower garden seeds at a big Garden Centre. I loved seeing Stonehenge again and we finally got to really explore Avebury, which we’d only had time to drive through on a previous trip.

Here’s a album of sketches, plus a couple of watercolors I did (Sakura Micron .01 pen on paper):

At Heathrow waiting for the rental car — In San Francisco waiting to board and then at Heathrow waiting to get the rental car. It’s fun sometimes to just find something to sketch right where one is.

And on to Romania, a country that I had never been to before. I did a little research and ended up booking a tour to the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania in hopes of experiencing the largest surviving areas of the ancient forests that used to cover Europe and seeing European brown bear, of which there are close to 5000 in Romania, the largest population of any country in Europe. I succeeded on both counts and and all that and more will be the subject of a couple of upcoming blog posts.

View from the restaurant patio where I and my driver/guide had lunch en route

Scenery near a monastery that we hiked up to. In the foreground is a haystack

The third day we went on an eight hour hike high up into the mountains to what is called The Alpine Hut, which is where I did this sketch — The second day we went on an eight hour hike high up into the mountains to what is called The Alpine Hut, which is where I did this sketch. And had a well-earned beer.

Another view from The Alpine Hut, which was between two ridgelines in the sub-alpine zone

After a week in Romania, we went back to London for three days, catching the “Sargent and Friends” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery on the last day. We also spent time just hanging out at Trafalgar Square, where I did these sketches.

Sir Edward Landseer's lions at the base of the Nelson Column, Trafalgar Square — Sir Edward Landseer’s lions at the base of the Nelson Column, Trafalgar Square

Quick copy of a dog in a painting by Murillo; people at Trafalgar Square

The Egg and the Dome of St. Peter's from the window of our Airbnb apartment in Soho — Way in the distance we could see the Egg and the dome of St. Paulr’s from the window of our Airbnb apartment in Soho, which had the most amazing view of the city

On our last day, we spent the afternoon at St. James Park, which had great birdwatching and many very old trees. I got out my watercolors, finally, and did a couple of small paintings.