This travel sketchbook started in October 2018, the previous three months I was drawing on loose papers originally thinking it’ll be a lighter option, I can send the works to friends at different parts of the world for safe keeping. The problem with that as I then discovered is that it became difficult to keep track of what I’ve done in succession. So even though a sketchbook is more bulky, it lasts long enough to not add weight to my baggage, so back to a sketchbook I went.

The beginning of the sketchbook started in Cambridge, U.K. and proceeded to lots of safari sketches and people in Kenya. I try as much as I can to draw from life, but it’s not always possible. I also drew a lot of travel belongings, attempting to record usage, and utility. There was a lot of sketching during our 60 hours of transit between Africa and South America where all I did was sleep, eat or sketch. Airport lounges and travelling people are fascinating, a human (behaviour) safari for me.

Arriving in Chile, I continued drawing people in markets, streets, parks, bus stations, and in cafes. After some moving around between mountains and deserts, I got more interested in drawing some of the places we went while at the same time learning about the indigenous cultures through it’s museums and artworks. So the sketchbook is currently on it’s way into becoming more of a record of cultural anthropology, observing Pre-Colombian cultures through sculptures, textiles and ruins as we arrived in Peru at the end of 2018. I’ll be updating the progress of the sketchbook on future videos, but if you don’t want to wait, there’s always Instagram. I post quite religiously, and as often as I could.

Polymath_punk is the place for what I call my visual meditation.

Olijstudio_travels is all the drawings all the time.

And the food Instagram is obviously still in the same place.

I am continuously working on experimental videos on slow travel, I call these fifteen seconds reminders, and the silly stuff like Decapitated by mirror Series, which is black and white selfies of mostly my head. ​ Look for these hashtags on IG:

  • #fifteensecondsreminders
  • #Decapitatedbymirrorseries
  • #olijstudio
  • #olijstudioinsouthamerica
  • #olijstudioinafrica