Travelling with Ink: Architectural Milestones
The Identity: Reclaiming the PenTraveller
For years, my practice existed under the moniker of the PenTraveller—an identity born out of live urban sketching on the streets of Melbourne, driven by an urgency to document the tempo of the city. But when the world closed down in 2020, the physical traveller went silent.
Confined to the studio, my practice pivoted inward. I became consumed by the discipline of hyper-realism, trading rapid gestures for hundreds of hours of solitary focus, 0.05mm nibs, and the microscopic mechanics of horology. Yet, in that intense pursuit of technical perfection, I felt the absence of the narrative that first set me in motion.
The Philosophy: Internal Transit
Travelling with Ink was born from the need to bridge those two worlds. After a necessary pause to reckon with creative burnout, I returned to the drawing board with a different question: Does a traveller have to physically cross borders to experience the world?
The truth is that the most profound journeys happen directly between the pen and the tooth of the paper. This series marks a deliberate departure. Rather than treating architecture as detached tourist scenery, I use these monumental structures as physical anchors for lived memory, displacement, and internal transit.
The Series: Monuments of Passage
What began as an inquiry into structural form evolved into a deeply personal dialogue. These four landmarks—spanning London, Paris, San Francisco, and Sydney—mirror my own trajectory: tracing the journey from a young girl in South Korea seeking freedom in a sketchbook, through global migration, to the life I have built here as a mother, finally anchored in the country I call home.
Every steel rivet, stone carving, and suspended cable is drawn by hand through an unhurried, obsessive accumulation of ink. They stand not merely as monuments of stone and iron, but as markers of human persistence—and proof that home is something you build, one line at a time.
Artwork Specifications
Medium: Fine nib archival pigment fineliners (0.05mm–0.2mm) on 300gsm–640gsm Arches cold pressed cotton rag
Availability: original drawings available
Studio Process & Archival Footage: Documented on YouTube at youtube.com/@pentraveller