The Summer Sketchbook Invitational continues with Davide Bonazzi, who recently visited from Bologna, Italy, and sketched his way from San Francisco to the Grand Canyon. Have a look:

I confess I'm not the kind of artist who absolutely needs a sketchbook when he travels. Mostly I just enjoy traveling light, keeping my eyes wide open and taking pics. I used to keep sketchbooks when I was a student, and later I enjoyed doing sketches on my iPad, but for some reason I didn't become an addicted to sketching.

Recently my girlfriend, who's an illustrator as well, encouraged me to keep a sketchbook. I forgot how exciting this was! I made many sketches during my recent trip to the US; you can see some of these below.

I just used Tombow watercolor markers and I rediscovered the pleasure of drawing on paper, simply using a strong black outline to represent the things I was seeing. No eraser or CTRL+Z to undo what you've drawn here! As an illustrator I mainly use digital tools, and my style consists of "flat," colored shapes, so it's been nice to do something very far from my usual way of working.

I can't say sketching is a relaxing activity: I spent hours standing still in the sun, sometimes with a strong wind scrambling the sheets of paper I was drawing on. After that I used to feel tired but somewhat happy, as after kind of challenging meditation.

Row 1: Views of San Francisco: Lombard Street, the Golden Gate Bridge, sea lions at Pier 39.

Row 2: Views of San Francisco: California Street, Yerba Buena Gardens, houses in Alamo Square

Row 3: Views of Lake Powell and the Monument Valley

Row 4: Views of the Grand Canyon

Davide Bonazzi is an illustrator based in Bologna, Italy. He has worked for The Wall Street Journal, Paramount Pictures Channel, Science, Gatorade, Unesco and many other publishers, advertisers and institutions. His work has been recognized by American Illustration, The Society of Illustrators of New York and Los Angeles, CA, 3x3 Magazine, Lürzer's Archive.
summer_invitational