I had intended to post some entries on my blog while we were travelling in California, but pressures of time – so little time, so much to see – and a few wi-fi wobbles mean that it’s only now that I’m back home in Norfolk that I can post a couple of the sketches that I did out there.

Ideally, you need one holiday to explore a destination and then another one to go back and paint it. But, who has the time and resources to do that? So, I only got a few quick sketches done while we were away, and you can see two of them here. On the spot pen and wash on a 12ins x 9ins pad of Langton rough surface paper.

Both the sketches were done in California’s amazing National Parks. Yosemite Valley has a huge wow factor with it’s gigantic stone monoliths. Half Dome is just that, like a pebble that’s been split in two. Except that it’s not a pebble, the top is nearly 5,000 feet above the floor of the valley. Awesome, as our American cousins would say. In King’s Canyon park the main feature is the King’s River, which was still a raging torrent at the Mist Falls depicted here. Also awesome and very dangerous – a hiker was swept over a few days before we were there.

I’ll probably do some Yosemite paintings before too long, it will be good to be back out in the studio. But it was a great trip!

We’ve been away for the past couple of weeks, hiking part of the Lycian Way, which is a long-distance footpath along the south coast of Turkey. Very hot, even at this time of the year!

I always take a sketchbook and pens with me on these trips, although often there isn’t much opportunity to stop and sketch. We were walking in a group, organised by Ramblers Worldwide Holidays, and with twenty people chatting away it can be difficult for the artist to find a bit of peace and quiet.

However, the Lycian Way trip was not just walking, there were opportunities to see several historic sites. Roman, Greek and Lycian stonemasons have all left their mark on this landscape. We visited a ruined village, Kayakoy, not far from Fethiye, and while others in the party scrambled over the ruins, I managed to sit down and do this ink sketch in my A5 cartridge paper book.

Margaret and I have been away for a few days, down to Kent. One of those trips that starts with “we’ve got a few days free, where can we go?”. After a bit of thought we decided on Kent, simply on the basis that we hadn’t been there before, at least not for many years. A few minutes, well hours actually, on the internet and we’d booked an hotel near Canterbury. The Pilgrim’s Rest at Littlebourne, which we can definitely recommend as being warm, comfy, and providing an excellent breakfast!

We got out and about walking as much as we could, although the weather was pretty awful on our first day. But later on it brightened up and we enjoyed trudging the footpaths round the area. Of course, I had my eye out for interesting sketching subjects, as Kent is Rowland Hilder country and Rowland is one of my watercolour heroes. Hilder sketched and painted all around the area in which we stayed, and on the Sunday we found ourselves at Faversham, walking beside the creeks which abound in that area. I spotted some old posts sticking out of the mud and knew I’d seen them, or something very similar, in one of my Rowland Hilder books. It was pretty cold so I took a couple of photos and later did this little ink skech that you see here. I enjoyed doing it, and that’s the main thing, perhaps the only thing that matters. It may or may not become a painting later on, but it was fun. Never forget that!