Both of us look for beauty in our surroundings. Even though every ounce adds up on a long-distance backpacking trip, we chose to carry a small camera, sketch paper, and a variety of pencils. Here is some of the art we brought back from our time on the trail. Enjoy!
Daughter spends hours creating imaginary characters. While on this trip, she worked hard at adding action to her drawings.
Influenced by spending so much time in the woods, she drew both whimsical and realistic images of things she discovered along the trail. One afternoon she dissected a number of acorns and drew what she found inside the shell.
Scenes like this one near the Blackburn Trail Center led to both a drawing and a poem:
Up! Down! Up again!
Steeper up!
When will we be there?
11:00. 11:45. 12:00. 1:00.
Finally!! (Oh,nice view…)
I prefer to use color in my drawings, like this reminder of a rainy day:
Daughter remembered the day this way:
Storm
Wet, Cold
Pouring, Sloshing, Sliding
Walking in the rain
Drizzle
My heart sings when I see beautiful colors in nature, especially when the color “pops” out from a darker background. When trying to capture those scenes on paper, I love the saturated colors I get from Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils:
Finding beauty and making art on the trail added to our enjoyment of our grand adventure!
(HERE‘s a post with scrapbook pages made after another backpacking adventure…)
The Big Epic 
Love all the ways you guys “mined” your trip to get maximum benefit out of the journey. Glad you took the time and brought along supplies for doing art. Daughter shows a lot of promise with her art, imagination and creativity. Yes the colors of those art pencils are great. Over the years I have created art myself from photography, pen and ink, watercolors etc. Even managed to illustrate a small book with portraits of all the signers of the US Constitution, and did architectural illustrations for several walking tours of the homes of historical Capitol Hill in Washington. Good luck with whatever lies ahead for you both. The journey continues. Tom Ruhf
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