The one thing I can do, is draw. Watching this makes me just want to go out and draw. Nothing is more intimidating than a clean white paper. Once I start, smudge, erase and draw it is freeing. Painting is more of a challenge. I forget that the simple thing is sometimes rewarding too.

I visit Pluscarden Abbey frequently and have known the monks for over 20 years. A holy, blessed place - thank you for presenting this so beautifully and respectfully!

I love old buildings such as this. There's so much character in them.

Wow so beautiful. It's so amazing to see such old buildings. As an American I've never been able to experience such an old place. I hope one day to though. Great video as always. Much ❤ from Nashville

Your videos are always soul-healing. 💕Thank you for sharing. 😊

Wow! I love watching you work on anything, but this abbey is so beautiful, meaningful and historic. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Love your drawing it’s fantastic

Thank you for sharing this! A beautiful Abbey and a great video! The light shining through the windows in the chapel was inspiring! Loved the architecture and your drawing the exquisite windows!!! I'd like to visit the UK someday! Especially appreciate your videos from Scotland!!! A grateful California Gramma ❤

Great job Sarah very painstaking Love all your videos

Good job holding that phone and sketching at the same time.

Venice is my absolute favorite place in Italy! I went for 10 days but I could have stayed longer. It's so full of great places to paint and things to do!

Wicked drawing xxx

wow love your drawing skills

Thanks for sharing your visit to the monestary with us! I didn’t realize any Catholic monestaries from that time had survived. I don’t sketch as much as I want to, but I do like sketching everywhere I visit. Sort of a daily appreciation of being on vacation and memento of that trip.

symmetry - is also my main challenge, great video as always

You could offer "Sketching Italy with Sarah Burns -- A Week Exploring Italy's Small Towns." I would sign up!

wow, you're so lucky to have such great buildings like this nearby.👍

Loved the sound of the graphite going across the paper in nature. I am so glad you decided to tape it - i don’t think you needed the big camera… the quality of the video was great! (I know your arm was tired though :)). Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your honest videos, they have been therapy for me after the loss of my dad. I have been watching for a while now… have definitely been blessed by your work. Be encouraged, you are very much appreciated.

You’re so talented!

I love sketching old buildings. This is now on my list of places to visit with I come to Scotland next year. I looks like a very interesting place.

Your doing a wonderful job drawing ., to answer your question I clicked on your video because Scotland has called to me since my youth I don’t know why but I live in the Bahamas

Your drawings of the building are extraordinary. I think you'd be amazed by the medieval buildings in italy. I was just in Vasto, on the Adriatic coast. It's a good place for historic buildings, because they're contained within a smaller space than say Rome or Florence and, crucially, nowhere near as many tourists getting in the way of sketching. Theres Lucca, with its medieval wall, but you need to get up early before the tourists. It's my favourite time - watching the town wake up, the early morning sunlight. Pisa has beautiful scenes to draw and paint, quite apart from that building! Another place would be Lisbon. Again, it's smaller, it's medieval city contained rather than spralled. There's a beautiful monastery just a short tram journey away too, along the river. The possibilities are endless, but I'd start in small medieval towns in Italy.

Try a soft REXEL carpenters pancel

This was such a lovely place to view and to listen to your thoughts as you narrated . I especially feel that I benefited from watching you sketch and listen to your thoughts while you draw. Thank you again Sarah for bringing us along and sharing your creative journey with us. You are very appreciated. ❤

Lovely drawings Sarah. My favourite city is Prague with it's gorgeous gothic buildings, they are so inspiring.

My place to go is Scotland so I'm enjoying your videos! Thank you for sharing!

Thank you Sarah for sharing your sketching trip, your drawings are wonderful and so inspiring. Beautiful building……….

I'm also an artist and planning to move to Scotland next year. One of the things I'm looking forward to the most is painting all the beautiful old buildings and ruins covered with moss and overgrown nature. There's something about being in a place that's so old and filled with so much history. It makes you just stand still and stare in awe and wonder at the idea of what once was. ❤️

That was beautiful and totally inspiring. Thank you for sharing. I always look forward to your videos.😃

Since you mentioned the difference between traditional graphite pencils and mechanical pencils: The best of both worlds for me is a clutch pencil. I use the ones by Faber Castell, they make them up to a 6B and they have these thick leads for the softer ones (4B, 5B, 6B) and slimmer leads for the harder ones (3B down to 6H). You can use them on the side for thick marks, you can sharpen them to a fine point. They have these special, very small sharpeners for just the lead, with or without a cover to collect the graphite dust. You never have to deal with the tip breaking of and jamming the sharpener. The pencil (casing) is always the same length, no need for extenders... If I could bring only one drawing utensil to a plein-air sketching session, it would be my 4B clutch pencil, hands down. :)

I have one for your travel list, a place that recently got onto my bucket list: the Rainbow Mountains in Peru. Thanks for sharing this really peaceful video Sarah!

Loved seeing this video after watching the Patreon video (which was AWESOME); so nice to see more details of the beautiful building. The stained glass is incredible, I love how artists used the scenes in the glass to share stories. So many places I’d love to visit with my sketchbook! I’d like to go back to Ireland as well as some spots we visited years ago throughout England (years before I painted). It’s always been a dream to visit Italy and the French countryside. I need to retire to have the time, but I need to work to have the money… so there’s a bit of irony there 😅.

I really loved this one Sarah. Even more than the Patreon version. Thanks for bringing us along.

One of the places I've been moved to see for my entire life (but haven't yet had the opportunity to visit) is Pompeii, Italy (and its sister city, Herculaneum). I'm a huge lover of ancient history, so it would be a dream to get to visit and see the ruins - and an even bigger dream to paint them :)

Even though your drawings ended up quite neat, I really loved the relaxed vibe of your sketching. I’ve found the same with mechanical pencils vs. wood ones - there’s no match for the convenience of the former… but somehow still no substitute for the emotion and flexibility and poetry of the latter. The sound of your pencil on the paper was especially soothing ✨ I may have to put this video on heavy rotation for the lovely way it relaxed me ❤

800 year old??? OMG !

Lovely setting…excellent sketches! Thanks for sharing..

Ooooh you will have a blast in Italy! My advice as an italian and as an aspiring urban sketcher, give smaller towns a try if you can. Rome, Florence, Venice etc are obviously beautiful cities with lots of incredible landmarks, but are also understandably crowded. There are so many non-touristy places that would be the plain air artist goldmine. Almost every small town has a castle and other medieval buildings - and many have Roman ruins to draw. Just to give you a few random examples, take a look at Matera (Basilicata), Castiglione della Pescaia and Volterra (Tuscany), Pietrabbondante, Pietracupa and Sepino (Molise, my utterly underrated region).

it's really impressive that the footage turned out that steady considering you were holding the camera with one arm! I can be holding my camera securely with two hands and it's still shaky as anything haha 😂😂

Ohh yes, I am definitely enjoying & inspired by the subject of the abbey! So many details, views, & perspectives to draw or paint. Thanks for sharing this wonderful subject & adventure with us. Enjoy your weekend! Ireland 🇮🇪, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, & Hungary 🇭🇺 are the countries that are on my list to visit with my sketchbook in the future. These are the countries of my family history.

What a magnificent place, so serene

wonderful 😊

So beautiful! Thank you for sharing such a lovely experience.

That was great and inspirational!

Your drawings are so beautiful. They capture the soul of the buildings. Thanks for sharing and the tour of places I'll probably never see. Happy Fall.

Beautiful place! This video really inspired me to work on my drawing skills!

Absolutely beautiful Sarah x Nell I'd love to visit Italy, Croatia and Sweden!

LOVED this video. Thank you so much for sharing. As you know, we don't have the truly old architecture here in the U.S. My dream is to sketch and paint old buildings, villages, and cathedrals in Italy, and also Greece is on my bucket list for old fishing villages as well. I totally get the intimidation of sketching beautiful architecture. I want to in the worst way but need to improve my drawing and perspective skills more to try and lessen my frustration and not get so overwhelmed.

Thank you so much Sarah for sharing your process and your work here. I am so excited because I just ordered your brushes. I am a watercolour artist and quite a geek when it comes to pigments and brushes and materials. I know what an expereince it is to use the right materials and what a difference that makes. So I was so impressed watching you working with them. I have just started to use gouache and your videos are so helpful and inspiring. Have been looking for adequate brushes which are soft but manageable too. Can't wait for your brushes to arrive. Greetings from Germany 🌺

You are AWESOME. Thank you! Italy is my dream place too but it looks too hot in the summer though. So my dream trip is winter indoors or spring and autumn outdoors.

6:40 I am like you as well. There are many subjects that I would like to paint or sketch but I do not feel ready to do so. I just practice on other subjects until I feel ready to tackle th subjects that intimidate me.

Old buildings seem to develop an atmosphere - I suppose it is imbued by those who inhabited it.

I think often about how nice it would have been to sketch in European cities on my backpacking trip years ago, especially since I was travelling alone and would have had the time and freedom to do it. I just started drawing/ painting this year and would love to go back to some locations and try urban sketching, Rome, Istanbul, Paris, Norway and Greece would be top choices !

Have you been to Iona Sarah it is beautiful such a tranquil place.

What a treat this video is! Lovely combination of the area and then of you actively drawing. I love my Blackwing Pearl! This seems like it should be common knowledge, but I'm fascinated by how you sharpened that point; it looks like a knife rather than a sharpener. Is there a particular method you use for that, or are you just focused on the result of uncovering the graphite? Thank you for this. I'm inspired!

Modern architects could never build something like this

Hi, thanks for this. What type of camera do you use? the shots look very clear for distance and close up images.

This was so good- except the swish pans. Even on a small screen they make me sickly. But I loved this video. What an experience. I did smile at the view of a monk carrying a plastic bag. Oxymoron. Otherwise the mood was near perfect. Thank you. 🙏

Have you ever tried a fude nib or an architect’s nib before?

Can I ask you where I can find information about your plein air group? I live in Aberdeenshire and I'd love to join if it's in my area.

When you asked about what is that one place that calls to you to visit and for me its always been Israel. One day.

First 👋🏼