motetus

I would make a boring and terrible travel writer, so my three weeks in the USA are going to summarised in a handful of photos, with minimal droning on. And a couple of sketchbook pages, except those are entirely unrelated to anything I saw on holiday, because I refuse to pretend to be a Proper Artist.

Totally a fresh and original tourist photo of San Francisco.

An adorably froggy at the California Academy of Sciences.

Then we rented a car and drove up highway 1, which was a very pretty drive, despite the heavy rain that started and how the very winding road meant I was demanding PULL OVER OR I PUKE every 15 minutes.

Eventually the rain got so bad that we thought sod it, we're staying indoors and gluing ourselves to the internet all day. Luckily I had

bauble to ~~harass~~ keep me company in chat and demand I draw her dodgy pencil things from upcoming chapters of Sex Bucket, so here is Arthur as a hot academic.

Redwoods, sea lions and more rainy beaches from Crescent City (depressing dump of a place, but the surrounding area is gorgeous).

I still couldn't shake off

bauble and her incessant demands, so here are more sketchbook pages (so much for my plan of taking it along to draw, um, trees and stuff), this time of a younger student!Eames to match the previous academic!Arthur, and a couple of quick, rather dodgy, photo studies of young Tom Hardy to warm up and get familiar with his stupidly pretty face.

We eventually made it up to Portland, which is a city I like a lot, mostly for the food and how a man can walk down a street with a cat on his shoulder and no-one really gives a shit. I ended up at Powell's, where I bought the only Sutcliff book it had. I already own The Lantern Bearers, but this was the first edition with lots of really lovely ink illustrations, so I couldn't exactly not have it. Here's a copy of Aquila from the first chapter - drawing them out really makes you notice how cleverly the lines flow and curve into each other.

Then it was on to Hawaii, which was... not as bad as I was expecting? The enforced socialising was pretty awkward at first, and I grumbled a bit at staying at a characterless luxury resort which is not my kind of thing at all, but the two mornings we got to escape to go diving were fantastic. I saw green sea turtles, reef sharks, moray eels, octopuses and barracuda. No rays, which was a little disappointing, but there were dozens of humpbacks and their calves around, and it was so cool hearing them sing to each other while underwater. It's going to be hard getting back to Scottish diving after that. :(

Sorry,

goblin_dae, I completely failed to get more than one photo of Hawaii for you. If it makes you feel any better, this was the one moment where there was a bit of sunshine and everything looked really pretty. You'll have to go for yourself, but also take me along so I can learn how to surf, yes?