Forcing Myself to Use My Sketchbook Again

Going on a solo trip to a book festival

Last weekend, I was invited to Pennsylvania to attend the annual Harrisburg Book Festival!

Harrisburg is a four hour trip away from New York. Unfortunately, the festival started at 10am so instead of waking up at 5am to take a train in, I decided to travel in a day early and stay the night. Now usually, I’d bring my iPad on this sort of trip. I had a couple shows I wanted to catch up on (mainly trash reality tv) and my original plan was to veg out in the hotel room and watch some mind numbing television in the form of Bachelor in Paradise and FBoy Island.

However, a little voice in my head nagged at me and said “Lian… you haven’t had a creative boost in a while. Maybe you should be ‘healthy’ and force yourself to do some drawing and writing on this trip.”

I ignored it at first and packed my iPad regardless. That is until I picked up my bag in the morning and boy oh boy, was it heavy. So I took out my iPad because I wanted to save my shoulders and I knew I should probably listen to that little voice in my head anyways.

So, I present to you, the sketchbook pages I did on this short trip.

Some small drawings of people at the Amtrak train station. There was a lot of scrambling and running around as always.

The train ride was around 3.5 hours and it was incredibly rocky. We passed through Trenton, New Jersey and there was a slogan on a bridge saying “TRENTON MAKES, THE WORLD TAKES.” Bitter much? Sounds like Trenton has some issues to work through.

Anyways. we had a brief layover in Philadelphia and I accidentally made awkwardd eye contact with a construction worker taking a break hence the blank stare on the orange shirt man on the right.

After 3 hours, I arrived in Harrisburg in the late afternoon with nothing to do. I checked into my hotel and decided to visit the Midtown Scholar Bookstore which was hosting the book festival. And by god, that bookstore is DOPE as hell!!! They literally won Bookstore of the Year this year and I can see why.

I ended up sitting at the bookstore and did a little drawing of the cafe.

Inside and outside the bookstore

Afterwards, I got a little hungry and decided to hit up Broad Street Market across the street and drew this little comic of my experience: