Painting has given me many amazing things in my life.
It's put me amongst the most wonderful people, both online and in person… and it has taken me to some truly incredible places.
One such trip I went on recently, a perfect example of all of these things wrapped together in one wonderful bundle, was my trip to Zambia with Art Safari, where I co-led a painting safari deep in the heart of the Luangwa Valley.
This is my second time being fortunate enough to spend time at Thornicroft Lodge, in this most incredible of Africa’s infinite landscapes and beauty.
Ultimately these experiences are beyond words, but I’ll do my best to share… along with some photos and sketchbook snaps too:
Art Safari
Art Safari itself is the most wonderful company to work with. They send artists all over the world to dive into the joys of travel and art together – and yes, they really are the perfect companions (art and travel).
At the heart of Art Safari is a love of both, and everyone who comes on these trips shares that; whether completely new to any aspect of this or seasoned "travel-ly art" person...
I could tell you all the detailed ins and outs of “we get up at this time and do this”, and “we saw this and this and then did this”… but I don’t want to…
I want to share my experience, and what I saw happening in everyone else there, as well as what I’ve learnt from the always inspiring and quite incredible Mary-Anne — the founder of Art Safari, and the person I’m fortunate enough to co-lead with.
The People
Firstly, before we even get to the wildlife, I love the people on these trips.
Imagine a group of artists, all buzzing with excitement to head out into the Zambian bush to explore, to immerse ourselves in the landscape, to see incredible wildlife, and to create art while doing it.
Yes, it’s exciting beyond words. And it’s such a bonding experience.
The energy and atmosphere these trips create is genuinely magic… properly life-changing stuff.
Throw in Mary-Anne with her endless enthusiasm and lifetime’s experience guiding people in these environments… and boom, that’s an Art Safari in Zambia.
Oh and of course through all of it, the staff and guides at Thornicroft are just brilliant: warm, welcoming, endlessly kind. You feel completely looked after but still given space to breathe, notice, sketch!
On these trips we have everyone: first-time safari goers (minds completely blown by the wildlife and the whole experience), seasoned safari-goers (equally blown away, because apparently that feeling never goes), first-time sketchers and painters, and those with years of experience.
We are all in it together, and honestly, the innocence of a complete beginner seeing this for the very first time is something else entirely. More than that… we all become beginners out here.
All of those labels become irrelevant. I might be “tutoring”, but I’m learning just as much from everyone else. Everyone sees differently, uses different materials in different ways, hones in on different things. Some people even have far more experience than me in the African bush, and in drawing and painting from life out here.
And I think people of any level — but especially those who are new to painting, or painting in groups, or painting while travelling, and who might be worried about how they’ll fit in — quickly realise there’s nothing to worry about. These groups could not be more supportive and encouraging for all levels.
And it all feeds into the experience.
Setting the Scene / Into the Bush
Here’s the nitty gritty bit to set the scene.
We have seven days at Thornicroft Lodge, overlooking the Luangwa River with the National Park right across the water.
We have Two safari drives a day usually, although honestly the wildlife is already right there in camp...
...you might wake up to elephant tracks outside your door, shower while a hippo is munching grass six feet away, or end up shooing baboons off your toothbrush. That’s before breakfast.
But then we hop in the vehicles, take the short drive into the park, over the little bridge across the Luangwa River, itself a spectacle, and suddenly you step into a totally different world. The pure wilderness of the African bush, with everything that entails.
We drive deep into the bush with guides whose skills are honestly mind-blowing.
The landscapes shift and change around us.
We sit with wildlife you can hardly believe is real.
We sketch, we paint, we draw — totally immersed in it all.
Then we come back, eat, rest, do little arty workshops, sit around adding to our sketchbooks, and the camaraderie builds without you even noticing. The place is incredible, the animals are incredible…
...but the people — everyone excited, everyone different, everyone experiencing it in their own way — that makes it even richer.
We’re not racing around trying to tick sightings off a list. (There’s a tiny bit of that, sure, but nothing like a standard safari.)
Mostly we sit, we absorb, we connect. We don’t just see the bush — we feel it. We start to sense how the animals move, breathe, behave. And that alone is grounding and humbling.
It genuinely feels like such a privilege to be allowed into this world, even for a few hours.
And it’s in these moments you realise we’re not in charge here at all.
We might be well looked after and as safe as we can possibly be, but this place is still wild, completely on its own terms. We’re just momentary visitors in a world that carries on in all its raw, unforgiving, breathtaking nature whether we’re there or not.
One minute you’re quietly sketching, the next a lioness appears beside the vehicle without a sound. Or an elephant blocks the track, calm, ancient and absolutely certain of its place.
Life and death unfold right in front of you with no drama, just as they are. Raw, quiet, astonishing, and beautiful.
There’s an energy to it all that’s hard to explain.
I have been enthralled by African Wildlife since being a child, but I only saw it in the wild for first time as of a few years ago...and whilst my experiences are relatively small to many who have spent much time here, I can say truly that I now get it, at least to the point where I want to spend as much time as possible visiting more of these places!
Wildlife Highlights
I could write a long list of everything we saw, but I’ll give you my top three (and believe me, this is an absolute fraction of it all).
First: elephants chasing away lions... a thick rolling thunder of dust, noise, and primal power.
Thanks to a fantastic guide driver, we managed to get in front of the madness just in time to see a lioness and a male ducking behind a bank as the elephant came charging past.
It was genuinely comical watching these two lions, usually the ones that make every creature’s ears prick and send half the bush scattering, now cowering behind a tree, peeking out every so often to see if the elephants had gone. In the words of our guide: elephants hate lions.
And then the elephants themselves…
....seeing them up close, so large they move in slow motion, so powerful that something deep inside you just knows to pay attention. But then they’re also calm, aware, quietly intentional in the way they go about their business. It’s impossible not to feel something.
And the birds. You know I love birds.
Marabou storks circling overhead, so huge they feel ancient and prehistoric. Thousands of carmine bee-eaters hanging in the wind above the moon’s reflection on a river full of crocs and hippos…
...it feels like you’ve stepped into a wide awake dreamscape.
And of course, this is the Valley of the Leopards.
Yes, they’re always an obvious crowd-pleaser, but I genuinely have a deep love of leopards.
They have this almost mystical presence — the way they sit in a tree and seem to grow out of the branches, or appear from nowhere only to dissolve back into the bush even faster. To glimpse their world for even a moment…pure magic.
Oh — and I forgot the painted dogs.
As close to mythical creatures as anything I’ve ever seen, visually striking beyond words and full of character.
They bring a completely different energy to the bush than a leopard does, but like the leopard, they can appear and disappear in seconds, leaving you wondering if what you just saw actually happened.
Yet….we were lucky enough to sit with a large pack of adults and youngsters for so long we lost track of time completely.
Ooo… and then there was…
oh… and…
and…
...and so on...
...and this is the problem when any of us start talking about this place!;)
The Sketchbook Experience
Now finally, this is the joy of the sketchbook with this experience.
None of us — and I truly mean none of us — are producing masterpieces.
In fact, after the first hour we let go of that even needing to be the case (for the most part..it creeps in every so often, we’re only human!!)
This is experience first, and then channelling that experience through pencil, pen or brush, to capture it in whatever way we can.
From an art point of view this is a gigantic learning curve. It can be overwhelming and intense and with this it can feel extremely “hard”…
...but it’s only really hard if we attach to end results and to ideas about not being very good (and we all attach to those easily!!)
Sure, whatever our level, we’d all love to be able to capture an elephant or a lion quickly and accurately, or splash some colour down to represent the fleeting passing of a bird…and Mary-Anne’s and my job is to equip people with the tools to do exactly that, as best we can.
But ultimately, this kind of art experience forces you to immerse yourself in the process and in observation.
We barely have time to even worry about any sense of an “end result”.
Who doesn’t like ending up with a little gem of a sketchbook page? And trust me we all end up with multiple ones even if we don’t see it at the time...
Yet my imperfect five-legged fat-headed lions, or the page where we’re all asking, “was that meant to be a warthog or an impala?”, or the compulsory awful attempt at a sunset (every sketchbook has one!)….. bizarrely, when we look back, somehow in all their crazy imperfections, perfectly capture something about that experience. The memories come flooding back!
This is about looking back through our sketchbooks to revisit the moments, to relive the feelings.
And there is something about it being so directly your experience hat conjures up those memories in a way photos simply don’t. Less perfect, but dare I say… more real.
More uniquely yours. (Obviously I’m still snapping photos like crazy for another time as well ha!)
This is also a great artistic leveller — the greatest.
Wildlife on the go and from life, or trying to capture the sheer beauty of the scene in front of you. (I’m reminded of the Joseph Zbukvic quote: “Don’t compete with nature when painting, you will lose every single time.”) It’s a beautiful to-and-fro between art and experience.
The art, in many ways, is simply the excuse to have the experience — to sit quietly, to observe with the eyes of an artist, to be present and still and absorbed in our environment in a way that modern life doesn’t really allow (or that we don’t allow ourselves within it).
But equally, the experience becomes an excuse to create. And sketching, painting, drawing — particularly outside and from life — can be hard and frustrating when we get attached to outcomes… but it is so, so rewarding. A
And the safari itself, the experience, the wildlife as a reason to paint, what an incredible reason.
And so the whole experience blurs the line between experience and creation.
Does this sound like some esoteric, hard-to-grasp, only-for-the-initiated-artist type stuff? Well, I admit it sound like that — but actually, it truly isn’t.
If you were to come on one of these trips, whether you are a complete beginner or have painted for years, you would learn so much about art, what it is and what it can be for us, and how it can expand our experience of the world.
And in this case, expand our experience of safari, the wildlife, and everything that comes with this already life-changing, intense adventure.
Closing Reflections
This was my third trip to an African country. My first was Kenya, north of the Maasai Mara. Immediately on that trip I felt why people are pulled back again, and again to the African Continent.
To experience it once was life-changing.
To have been fortunate enough to experience both Kenya, and Zambia now twice — that’s something I’m incredibly grateful for.
And to realise I’ll get to experience it again in the future… wow.
So… who’s up for coming to Zambia next year?!
Click here for the info :)
ZAMBIA ART SAFARI 2026
Slow down.
Become utterly consumed by Zambia and its wildlife.
Let it take over your senses a little. Let it work its way into you.
Because this place… it stays with you.
Long after the flights, long after the dust washes off, long after your sketchbook closes. The wildness, the moments, the art, the people — it all folds together into something you can’t quite explain but absolutely feel.
Plus I am beyond excited to also be leading a trip to the Galápagos Islands.
Click here to read the short blog post about why I’m quite so excited — or jump straight to the Art Safari website here.
If you’d like to dive deeper into the world of African travel and all the inspiration it offers, please do check out Travel Africa Magazine.
It’s a fantastic independent publication — beautifully made, full of heart, and genuinely worth supporting. You won’t be disappointed.
And if you want a taste of last year’s adventure, you can even find a back issue with a full article based on my 2024 trip, answering the question:
Does creating art enhance your safari travel experience?
(You can probably guess what the answer is!!)
Leave a comment (all fields required)