Make your next vacation an ART vacation

How to enhance your vacation with art

As a graphic novelist, I set my books in places that appeal visually to me like Iceland, Sweden, and most recently an island in Maine. Coincidentally, these are also places I would love to travel to, so a book is the perfect excuse for a vacation spent making art and doing project research.

These trips don’t feel like work to me since it’s a stage of the graphic novel process that I love. And looking at a place through my artist/writer lens makes me so much more present in the moment and it also stays vivid in my memory longer.

And doing research pushes my spouse and me to do things we wouldn’t normally do. For example, I asked my obliging spouse to lay on the bottom of a viking ship replica in Iceland so I could get a sense of the scale of the ship. I’m not sure that he really needed this experience in his life, but it’s a fond memory for me nonetheless!

Of course, I end up drawing more like I did last year on Vinalhaven Island in Maine:

And not only do the book projects bring me to interesting places, but some or all of the trip can be deducted as a work expense if you’re a freelance artist or writer.¹

How art/research can enhance your vacation:

1. Making art is fun and vacations are a good excuse to make more.

2. It gets you out of your comfort zone and experiencing new things.

3. You meet more people who you wouldn’t normally meet.

4. It’s a fun thing to do collaboratively with loved ones (if they’re game for it).

5. The experience and memory is more vivid.

6. Depending on your professional situation, some or all of it may be counted as a business expense for taxes.

But like anything, if the trip doesn’t have some balance, it can quickly turn to becoming less enjoyable.

How to ensure it doesn’t stress your vacation:

1. Make a commitment to put aside the art or research if it’s taking away from other important parts of the trip (like spending time with loved ones).

2. Prioritize enjoyment. If it stops becoming fun and feels like a burden, stop doing it.

3. Have parts of the trip that are more research heavy than others. For example, I spent a day at a living history museum in Stockholm as research for a book set in medieval Scandinavia, but the next day we just did touristy things. Here’s a photo from that:

I’d love to hear from you—do you go on art or research vacations too? If so, where have you gone?

Leif love

We have not yet successfully taught Leif to swim, but we’re hopeful we’ll succeed this summer. We’re open to suggestions as to how to get that to happen! We spend so much time near water that it’s dangerous for him not to know how to swim.

Take care and keep creating!

-KWM

1. Always consult a tax professional :)