Lonely Planet

A collection of works from Lonely Planet's illustrators and creatives from across the world.

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Hello followers! We’re no longer updating this account, instead, our behind the scenes illustrations can be found on our brand new blog. Here’s the latest with children's illustrator James Gulliver Hancock: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2018/09/13/in-the-studio-with-james-gulliver-hancock-illustrator-for-how-airports-work

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To celebrate the launch of our new title Secret Marvels of the World we chat to Lauren Crow who illustrated the title. We quizzed her on how she tackled this project, the challenges she faced and the techniques she uses to create such intricate, haunting images.

“The project was a continuous collaboration to create illustrations of different shapes and sizes that would work really effectively on each page. I initially worked up roughs based on the dimensions from the brief, in order to make sure the compositions worked. I made suggestions on incorporating the images in interesting ways, such as showing movement of animals across the page. 

I researched different imagery in order to get a good feel for the locations and to use the best angles and perspectives. The main challenge when working in black and white is to capture the impressiveness and beauty of the location, so it’s all about using shade and light as well as intricate line work to make them striking. 

Likewise it would also mean giving as much life and movement as possible to some by using looser line and alternatively using strong straight lines for some of the more impressive architecture. It was incredibly enjoyable to work on a project that involved drawing such an interesting and sometimes bizarre variety of places, objects, animals and people.”

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We chatted to illustrator Rui Ricardo who produces vintage travel posters, inspired by beautiful landscapes and iconic characters from his travels across the globe.

‘When my agents at Folio got me a commission for a Scandinavia feature in the Lonely Planet Traveller Magazine I was really chuffed, I’ve been travelling with their guide books for over twenty years!

I’ve travelled extensively and always travel light - with a small backpack containing only the essentials. I love backpacking without planning, so I never get hotel reservations. Searching for hotels, transport and landmarks is all part of the charm and adventure of my trips. I decided to use all those trips and experiences as inspiration for a personal project and created a series of travel posters inspired by the classic posters of the 40s, 50s and 60s. 

I create these works using  a pencil, a sketchbook and a drawing tablet. After producing rough sketches I add colour by painting basic blocks to get the composition right and limit the variations as much as I can. Ideally I prefer to work with two or three main colours and a few variations. After that it’s time to work on details, highlights and shadows. I always leave every element in separate layers so that I can readjust everything at the final stage.’

Find out more about Lonely Planet Traveller magazine here.

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Lonely Planet writer Bridget Gleeson often swaps her pen and paper for a set of watercolour paints and a sketchbook while she is on the road. The result is an inspiring, unique collection of postcard sized sketches that capture the essence of a destination. It just goes to prove that you don’t need previous skills or expensive equipment to create beautiful works of art. We chatted to Bridget to find out why she started travel sketching.

“I always loved maps. When I started working for Lonely Planet, I’d make my own maps before starting out on a trip, mostly to familiarise myself with the geography and to figure out how long it would take me to get from one place to another. But it was also a way to get off my computer and do something tactile. Like everyone else, I spend too much time looking at screens.

I was feeling particularly burned out a few years ago, on the eve of a trip to Morocco, and my sister, who’s an artist, bought me a five-dollar watercolour set. She suggested I take a sketchbook and start drawing and painting the scenes around me. In Tangier, Marrakech, and Fès, I painted little pictures of mosques and marketplaces. I also started adding colour to my pencil-drawn maps.

Since then, I’ve taken my watercolours everywhere, from Paris to Havana to Tierra del Fuego, from the Grand Canyon to Nicaragua. I like painting architecture and trees. But I’m not an artist: watercolor is a hobby. So I don’t strive for perfection. I do each piece quickly.

Last week I was in Italy and I started painting Manarola, one of the five villages of the Cinque Terre. I suddenly realized the scene was too complicated to paint in twenty minutes. I had a train to catch, so I just did a quick sketch and left it at that. But now I have a deeper appreciation for that beautiful village: the colours of the houses, the dramatic curve of the coastline, the way the whole town is built on a cliff between the mountains and the sea. That’s the great thing about working on a map or painting a scene while traveling. You don’t just snap a photo and walk away. You really have to look at a place and understand how things fit together.”

Find out more about travel sketching here.

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These beautifully illustrated maps of Australia by Linda Fairbairn were hand drawn for the 2nd edition of the Lonely Planet Australia guide, published in 1979 and were used again in the 3rd edition published in 1983. Do you recognise the cities or have vintage Lonely Planet’s on your bookshelf?

“To me, the beauty of travel is the way it’s a 50:50 mix of the experiences you enjoy at the time, along with the memories you reminisce over again and again.

While maps naturally need to fulfil their navigational role, I feel the medium should also be part of the message. Using line types and symbols the map needs to reflect the essence of the region so the traveller can feel a connection to place both during the visit, as well as years later, when this relic paper map will guide them back over a bridge through time and enable those fun adventures to come to life once again.

The pictorial maps I hand drew in pen and ink for the 1979 edition of Australia (when the book was barely 10mm thick) all have a quirky, approachable style verging on a mud map appearance akin to one you may have even mapped out yourself!

I like my pictorial maps to have an explorer feel about them that leaves an element of discovery up to the user. Travel maps to me are all about where your story and the story of place meet.”

Linda has since gone on to found Journey Jottings.

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Lonely Planet Online Marketing Coordinator, Joe Davis, is recently back from a yoga retreat near Ericeira in rural Portugal, where he kept a travel sketch book.

“The idea of a retreat is to relax – something that I’m not very good at. I’m always cramming too much in to a trip so I made the conscious effort to switch off and spend some time with my sketchbook. The first thing I noticed was how vibrant the colours were, especially during sunrise and sunset. 

We spent the weekend in Casa Paço D’Ilhas, a rustic converted farm with stunning grounds. The artistic attention to detail made this place a pleasure to draw. I was fascinated by the tropical plants, especially the aloe vera and cacti. I’d go back each day and look at the plants in a new light, using different colours to convey them. I limited myself to three colours: blue, green and red, which forced me to think differently and tied the sketches together. I used a mix of pencil, pro markers and pen, in that order. I love the effect that overlaying black pen onto blocks of colour has – suddenly a sketch can come to life with a few scribbles of detail.”

Find out more about urban sketching in our article, Sketching for travellers: reasons to swap your smartphone for a pencil or paint.

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To celebrate the release of our new Lonely Planet Food titles we chatted to the cover illustrator, David Doran. David reveals how he transformed his initial sketches to the finished illustrations.

'When I was first approached by Lonely Planet with the subjects of spicy food and superfood, I worked up a selection of sketches and concepts. It was important to ensure the images had the right focus and balance of lifestyle images, ingredients and examples of food. Once the layout was approved, I then proceeded to develop the final artwork by hand and eventually digitally.

We discussed working with a grid-style layout. It captures the content of the book as a whole and felt like a great way of reflecting the variety and abundance of foods available from many corners of the world. Colour palette was key to these illustrations; with The World's Best Spicy Food, I focused on warm colours, and with The World's Best Superfoods, I knew I wanted to feature a fresher palette of greens and lighter tones. As someone who loves to travel myself, and has long used Lonely Planet guides, I was thrilled to be involved in such a great project.’

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We went behind the scenes with illustrator Owen Gatley to find out how he sketched and illustrated the cover of our latest title, The Honeymoon Handbook. Above you’ll see the progress of his designs.

‘I initially presented a couple of ideas for the front cover, the first being a ‘just married’ car, driving along the dramatic Amalfi Coast, the second, a couple riding a Vespa through a quaint Italian street. After settling on the latter, I started to sketch the back cover scene adding more couples, eating and drinking al fresco, to really hit home the honeymoon theme. I then started bringing in some colour to give the design team an impression of how the final might look.

Once the team were happy, I went forward with the final. The first version I drew up had more peachy stoney hues, but after some feedback, we settled with the more bluey palette you can see on the final product!’

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Junior Designer at Lonely Planet, Hayley Warnham created the beautiful, minimalist cover art for our recently released four-part Travel Literature series. We asked her to share the thought process behind creating them.

‘The books all feature richly varied tales of travel and adventure from around the world, from life changing food encounters to unexpected stories from unexpected places. I wanted to keep everything in series so each cover was based on a similar structure and template utilising minimal collage elements and subtle colours to reflect the content of each book.’

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Rich McCor is the creative photographer behind the Instagram account @paperboyo, whose paper cut-outs re-imagine world famous landmarks. Here are some shots he has created especially for Lonely Planet Kids as well as some behind the scenes shots from the road.

‘Someone once described me as a non-destructive vandal; within the confines of a camera viewfinder I transform landmarks with bits of crafted black paper and then capture the moment in a photograph. This idea started as a hobby, a way to photograph my home city of London in a new way but then the hobby got out of hand. Now I travel the world, transforming the skyline around me everywhere I go from New York's Statue of Liberty to Hong Kong's Harbour. I love that my photos make people think, smile, laugh... and wonder how on earth a guy has managed to make a living out of doing this.’

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LONELY PLANET’S BEST IN TRAVEL 2017

To coincide with the launch of Best in Travel 2017 list we grabbed some time with the super busy and talented designer Jacob Rhodes to find out how he created these cool icons that are so instantly recognizable on lonelyplanet.com.

Best in Travel 2017 is Lonely Planet’s biggest campaign of the year. It features the top countries, cities and regions you to visit in the year ahead, as picked by our panel of travel experts. 

‘For Lonely Planet’s Best In Travel 2017, I was asked to design 30 icons to represent the best countries, cities and regions, to visit in 2017. When designing icons, the most important thing I try to achieve is consistency. If one piece varies from the rest, it will stick out like a sore thumb. Each icon has the same stroke-width and has at least one element breaking the circle. I also try to keep a similar amount of negative space and keep shapes as geometric as possible. This allows the viewer to recognize the icon instantly.

Sometimes the design doesn’t represent the destination in the most effective way, so revisions are made. As you can see for Colombia, we went through a couple of iterations before nailing down the final icon. I find that landmarks or animals relevant to the location work best.

I enjoy the process of zoning in and nudging these small shapes around in Illustrator until it feels right. I hope these add a bit of distinction and character to each list entry, and are enjoyable to the viewer! I look forward to designing next year’s set...’

You can see all Jacob’s icons in situ on the new Best in Travel homepage now! 

Get ready to to rewrite your bucket list...

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Ever wondered how the eye-catching illustrations were made in our new title, The Best Things in Life are Free? We asked one of the Illustrators, Owen Gatley, to talk us through just how he went about creating them...

‘For most of the spreads I illustrated in this book, I was asked to pack in as many of the activities suggested in the text as possible, so the challenge was to achieve this in a clear, communicative and fun way (without making things look too jumbled and awkwardly thrown together!).

After sketching out a few ideas for each ’scene', playing around with composition and different elements referenced in the text, I settled on one rough for each spread to take into Photoshop. I then worked up neater versions on the computer and started experimenting with colours, trying to find the right palette to fit the location. Colour has an amazing ability to create a sense of place and location. For example the warm yellows and oranges of an African plain or the cool, crisp blues and turquoises of an alpine lake. It also plays a big role in my illustration so I often spend a good amount of time trying to get this right

Once I was happy with the colours, I started to work up the final pieces, working straight into the computer with a wacom tablet. I sort of go between digital painting and ‘cutting out’ textures I’ve previously scanned in (paint strokes or pencil rubbings usually) to achieve the final aesthetic.

I really enjoyed working on these illustrations, it’s always a pleasure to research different travel locations and discover the hidden gems of this incredible world we live in, even if it’s just from a computer…’

--  Lonely Planet’s The Best Things in Life are Free is packed full of money-saving tips, tricks and recommendations for the best-value sights and experiences around the world.

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Illustrator James Provost takes us behind the scenes in his studio to show us how he created the super technical illustrations for Lonely Planet’s latest title ‘How to Pack For Any Trip’. 

‘Evolution of Luggage was one of the first illustrations I worked on for the How To Pack book. After reading the brief, I started with some thumbnail sketches to check with my art director that I was heading in the right direction. Next I drew a tighter, more refined drawing to add more detail, visual interest and context. Finally I scanned the drawing and digitally inked and coloured it.’ ‘Pack a Backpack is one of my favourite images from the book. As a technical illustrator I love doing cutaway illustrations, and as an avid camper the subject matter is close to my heart. A few days after I wrapped up the illustrations for this book I was able to put these techniques to the test. I packed up a backpack for two weeks of travelling around Costa Rica with my wife. We got drenched in the rainforests but our gear stayed dry as a bone.’

Look out for Jame’s illustrations coming to life through GIFs on our social media channels!

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These striking illustrations are the genius work of Ross Murray who illustrated Lonely Planet’s upcoming Epic Bike Rides of The World book. We asked Ross to tell us why he chose the locations, colours and composition of each piece.  

Epic Bike Rides of The World ‘For the cover, the aim was to create an illustration that was emblematic of an ‘epic ride’ and because the book highlights amazing cycleways all over the globe it needed to be a universal image that wasn’t obviously based on a specific location. To help give it a broad flavour I used quite a diverse colour palette. 

As with all the illustrations in the book, I deliberately styled them to have a point of difference to the photography. Illustrating in a ‘vintage travel’ style is something I do a lot, but with this series of images I stepped slightly outside my comfort zone and experimented with more shapes and different brushes. I’m pleased to say I really enjoyed it!’

Europe ‘Europe is well-known for its cycle-friendly cities and Copenhagen is no exception. It was great fun capturing the colour and atmosphere of Nyhavn.’

Africa ‘Mount Kilimanjaro looms large in this scene. A lot of the cycleways across Africa are fairly off-road which create plenty of opportunities to take in the stunning landscapes.’

Asia ‘This image is based on the Mai Chau district in north-west Vietnam. The countryside dazzles with texture and highly saturated colours which I did my best to capture!’ 

America ‘Another continent of seemingly endless diversity. For this one, we chose the landscape of the Arches National Park, North of Moab, Utah. The area is famous for its natural sandstone arches which makes for some otherworldly scenery. I tried to accentuate this by adding the moon and using an unusual triad colour scheme.’

Oceania  ‘The route I based this illustration on is in the Yarra Ranges in Victoria, Australia. It’s an eerily beautiful journey through Mountain Ash trees and some incredibly rich flora and fauna. Tucked in among this scene are some of the local wildlife.’

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Lonely Planet writer and urban sketcher, Simon Richmond shares some of his superb sketches from the road and tells us the stories behind them. Simon has written for Lonely Planet since 1999 and worked on guidebooks for India, South Africa, Russia, Malaysia and Singapore, to name a few! 

Wat Ho Pha Bang, Luang Prabang, Laos, November 2015

‘Often I sketch directly with black pen but sometimes, if the image is particularly complex or I have more time as I did in Luang Prabang, I will sketch out in pencil and later complete with pen. I was also sketching this initially in the heat of midday so it was far more pleasant to get the bare bones down and add detail later in the cool interior of a cafe using a photo as a reference.’

Naoshima Bath - I Heart Yū, Naoshima, Japan, August 2014

‘It’s bad form to take photos inside Japanese onsen and it’s not such a good idea to sit around scribbling in a sketch book, either. However I Heart Yū on the island of Naoshima in the Inland Sea is such an unique place - a contemporary art installation as well as a functioning communal bathhouse - that I just couldn’t resist! Nobody seemed to mind and yes, there really is an elephant statue on the divide between the male and female sides of the bath!’

Bronte Beach, Sydney, Australia, January 2013

‘When I lived in Sydney, one of my favourite ways to spend a sunny day would be to head to Bronte for breakfast or a coffee and then follow the coastal path via Tamarama (where I’d pause for a sunbathe and splash in sea) to Bondi. I retraced these steps on my last visit to Sydney, adding in time to do this sketch first at Bronte.’

Luang Prabang Night Market, Laos, November 2015

‘Sometimes it’s also not so convenient to sit down immediately to sketch a scene I like, as was the case in this busy night market, and so this postcard sketch was completed from a photo I took at the time. I loved the patterns and bold colours of the paper parasols and lanterns.’

Tōkaikan, Itō, Japan, August 2014

‘After a busy day researching the hot spring/seaside resort town of Itō on Japan’s Izu Peninsula, I sat on the riverbank opposite this old inn, now a national monument, to sketch the building. I was staying here for the night (it’s now occupied by a fantastic traveller’s hostel) and so following a relaxing dip in the inn's onsen bath, I completed the painting capturing the scene at twilight.’

See more of Simon’s work and find out more about urban sketching in his latest article for Lonely Planet: Sketching for travellers: reasons to swap your smartphone for a pencil or paint 

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These stunning illustrations are by Hayley Warnham, Junior Designer at  Lonely Planet who used collage to create these colourful works for our upcoming The Best Things in Life are Free title. We asked her to tell us her ideas and thoughts behind her work.

‘The first illustration swoops through European locations where I wanted to highlight an array of exciting strolls for those on a budget. Whether it's walking by the Trevi Fountain in Rome, La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona or the streets of downtown Belgrade - prepare to be inspired for free!

The second illustration highlights just some of the awe-inspiring scenery that can be witnessed in America’s National Parks. I wanted to capture all the fun and adventure of the outdoors, reflecting America’s wild side through a playful collage.’

Keep your eyes peeled on the Lonely Planet shop, The Best Things in Life are Free is due for release in August 2016.

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This drawing of Ocean Beach International Hostel in San Diego is by Joe Davis, Online Marketing Coordinator at Lonely Planet.

San Diego calls itself ‘America’s Finest City’ and its breezy confidence and sunny countenance filter down even to folks you encounter every day on the street. It’s the nation’s eighth-largest city, yet we’re hard-pressed to think of a place of any size that’s more laid-back. Read more on Lonely Planet

Joe says:

‘This particular piece was drawn after a 3 month road trip across the US in pencil, pen and watercolour. I deliberately used an array of colours in an attempt to capture the vibrancy of this little hostel I stayed in, located in the bohemian surf haven of Newport Avenue.’