On the Spot in Clermont-Ferrand

Meet 15 sketchers who got a ticket to the world’s largest travel sketchbook festival

Thousands of people congregated in Clermont-Ferrand over the weekend to meet and greet some of the biggest names in the travel sketching universe. In the photo is Paris sketcher Sylvain Cnudde.

Hello readers, and welcome new subscribers,

I am back in Seattle after an exciting long weekend at Rendez-vous International du Carnet de Voyage.

Rendez-vous is the largest and longest running travel sketchbooks festival in the world. It takes place every year in mid-November in Clermont-Ferrand, a remote city in central France that is also well-known for its industry (Michelin) and for a ring of nearby volcanic domes like this one I drew with my urban sketcher pal Cyrille Briand.

How did an industrial city “in the middle of nowhere in France,” to quote some locals who compared it with Detroit, became the mecca of travel sketching?

I talked to one of the event co-founders about that, but first let me tell you about some of the 80 international artists who participated this year, and about the sketching projects they submitted to be invited.

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Sheila Rooswitha Putri

Jakarta-based sketcher and comic book artist Sheila Rooswitha Putri, of Sheila’s Playground fame, returned to Rendez-vous this year with a delightful project about the traditional Indonesian “waroung,” the small, family-owned shops that are very much part of Indonesian identity.