144. Travel Blog: An Artist’s Guide to a Week in Jamaica

I don’t claim to be an expert traveler, but I have been to a few amazing places in my short 35 years on earth: Japan, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, and of course Scotland where I live now, and my origin country, USA.

However, last week I met up with my family in Jamaica, and I learned why the tropics are called paradise.

Everyone has a right to define their own version of paradise, and mine usually includes forested mountains, rugged coastline, green hills and misty, moody weather. 

But being in a more “classic” version of paradise was a pleasant surprise!

Late January is Jamaica’s winter, but despite being the coldest month, temperatures were high enough to melt my Scottish husband, hovering between 75-85 degrees Fahrenheit (23-30 Celcius). 

Now, the title of this post says “artist’s guide” so let’s get to the point.

I had packed and repacked my painting backpack for weeks ahead of time, debating what to bring on this trip. A vacation of mine is not complete without some painting! So naturally, I made plans to paint every single day, and then naturally, those plans were interrupted when the real vacation mode set in! 

I was a bit naive thinking I’d be able to do lots of painting on such a short trip, especially with how much travelling we did, where the main focus was meeting up with my family for the first time in years. 

But I was still able to sneak some in here and there! 

First let’s talk location. A week is never long enough to visit any country and really SEE the country, but we did our best. 

We flew into Montego Bay (the north-west of the Island) and got a taxi to Negril, on the west coast of the island. This cost $60 and took about 2 hours (traffic was bad at 6pm on a Friday night).

Since it was dark out, we didn’t get to see the landscape on the ride, nor did we see the scenery when we arrived in Negril. We went straight to bed, exhausted from 14 hours of travel.

But when we woke up and walked out to the cliff edge, my jaw dropped and my knees grew weak. 

The water. OH MY, the water!!!

I’ve never seen anything like it. You know those pictures you see in travel magazines of turquoise coastlines and white sand beaches? I always thought they were fake - like someone edited them to be more blue and more vibrant. 

IT’S REAL, MY FRIENDS!

I can still barely believe it, but it’s real.

As soon as I saw it, I blurted out “I own a tube of that color!”

It was the first time I was able to use my cobalt turquoise straight out of the tube and have it match what I saw in person! 

Negril is famous for these beautiful coastal cliffs, which gives a unique view of the water compared to a beach. When you look down into it, you can see a lot of rock, coral, fish, and streaks of sunlight. It’s simply magical!

So if you can make it there, I HIGHLY recommend visiting this area.

We stayed at Xtabi, which was perfect for us. Nothing too fancy, more of a “local” feeling here. The restaurant is literally built into the cliff side, and has caves underneath!

It’s a really unique place. You can jump straight into the water (or walk down the steps and get in gracefully from one of the many ladders). Cliff jumping is popular at many of the hotels/resorts in Negril. 

I sat in the restaurant and painted the view while enjoying some delicious french toast and eggs with strong coffee. Bliss!! I was very tempted to join the cliff divers and swimmers, but I let nerves get the best of me and skipped it. The waves were pretty big and they crash against the cliffs, so swimming is at your own risk.

That night, we sat on the cliffs and watched the beautiful sunset - which is the “best in Jamaica” as all the Negril restaurants claim.

If I had an extra night there, I would have prepared to paint the sunset, but it was just so beautiful, I was mesmerized and wanted to watch it!

I would definitely stay here again if we ever visit Jamaica in the future.

Next, we took a taxi from Negril to Runaway Bay, which cost $140 and took about 3 hours.

Along the way, our driver, Gary, was superb. He told us about life in Jamaica, explained lots of places we passed, and gave us advice about visiting the other parts of the island that we were going to miss on this trip. I highly recommend Gary from Kingsley’s Taxi & Tours - he is a hero!

Along the way there are several great places to paint - but we were on a tight schedule so we didn’t stop.

If you decide to stop and paint along the main road, just know that you will most likely be approached by locals trying to sell you things, offer a taxi ride, etc. Be smart, be careful.

Gary gave us the advice: don’t ever accept a taxi ride from someone without the RED sticker on their vehicle.

We arrived to Jewel Paradise Cove Resort at Runaway Bay in the early afternoon, and were immediately whisked away into vacation bliss! This place is all-inclusive and adult only. It’s a big resort with several restaurants, bars (including swim-up bars in the pools), 24-hour coffee bar, gym, game room, night club, water slide (yep, even adults like to play!), and so much more. 

Needless to say, we ate and drank to our hearts content on this vacation! It was my first time experiencing such luxury.

But this blog isn’t about food, it’s about painting! I immediately began scouting out potential painting spots, and walked every foot of the property taking photos, seeking out good reference to bring home.

But after settling in, my family arrived (8 of us in total) and before I knew it, the first day was over, and I started to realise painting time might be a bit more elusive than I expected.

The next day was our first full day at the resort together, and we all decided to chill out at the beach in order to acclimate and soak up the sun.

I took the opportunity to paint the beach, setting up my Guerilla Pochade box next to our loungers (grabbing a spot under the umbrella) and broke out the gouache.

It turned out to be the only “finished” painting I did during the whole week, so I’m really glad I set up when I did!

I painted at a leisurely pace for the next 3 hours, while sipping tropical drinks and chatting with my family. 

A ton of strangers wanted to watch me paint and ask questions, so it was a bit more distracting than usual, but I was happy enough with the results (and will be giving this painting to my dad as a gift!) I handed out a few business cards, so who knows, maybe it will pay off in the end!

That was the only bit of art I did that day, but no regrets. It was an amazing day with the family. 

The next day I snuck in a couple palm tree sketches because I was mesmerized by them while I laid on the beach. I remembered to setup my GoPro on my beach chair, because I promised I’d take some painting video during the trip.

But at this point, I had sunk deep into vacation mode, and for the first time in years, was okay with doing nothing. (That is a huge feat for me!)

Gouache takes more time and space to setup and paint with (for me) so I realized that I would probably not do any more gouache on this trip.

My tiny watercolor palette is more portable and easy to use for quick sessions.

Painting the palm trees was a huge challenge, when you really look at them there are so many colors and lines!

The next day was like a mini hurricane, so no painting on the beach! Luckily, there were many covered areas, gazebos, and open-air restaurants. I was able to paint the landscape without getting (too) wet.

Personally, I found the wild weather to be beautiful. It gave everything a misty glow, and the greens and blues seemed deeper.

I took a TON of reference photos, running around in the rain shielding my lens. Worth it!

Since there wasn’t much to do in the storm, I decided to give the girls an art lesson, so we all met up in the game room (which was open to the outside) and I introduced them to the wonderful world of watercolor! I talked about how to observe the light and color of the subject, and demonstrated how I do it.

We painted palm trees and I was so proud of them for tackling this difficult subject with a difficult medium! None of them had painted with watercolor before. I was also able to paint a few postcards of my own.

The reason my dad chose this resort as our family reunion spot was because there was a music festival called Island Exodus. A bunch of bands were playing all week. On my last night there, I did a quick sketch of the band - I can’t help but laugh at the results!

The next day (after a tearful goodbye), we took a taxi back to Montego Bay, and stayed in a B&B so that on our final day in Jamaica, we could be at the beach for as many hours as possible.

I didn’t paint or sketch, just relaxed and observed the scenery. It was the perfect ending to the trip! Except the fact that we both got REALLY sunburned on the last day. Oh well!

8 days might seem like a lot at first, but time flies by and on vacation you really want to be able to fully shut down and relax. As much as I love painting outside, even I need a break from that!

I was happy to get a little painting in, but it reminded me of the importance of being present in the moment, and I allowed myself that luxury for the first time in a long time.

I feel so much more refreshed now and ready for new projects!

Lessons learned:

1. Bring less than you think. I brought 10 Guerrilla Painter boards to paint on. I used one. I brought two sketchbooks. I only used about 5 pages total out of the two. I brought 12 brushes. I used 3. I brought 15 tubes of gouache (small). I only used about 6. I brought extra camera/phone mounts for taking video that I didn’t even use.
   This lesson kind of depends on how much time you have, but I make this mistake every time I go anywhere, so obviously it’s an easy one to forget! I usually fall into the over-prepare category of packers.
   Between all of our travelling around Jamaica, we only had three full days in one single location. Furthermore, those days were full of family activities and the music festival that was happening at our resort, so technically they weren’t even full days. All in all I only had a few hours out of 8 days where painting was actually an option. Yet I still packed as though I had weeks!
   So write down your itinerary, figure out how many full days you have in one spot, how many activities you have planned, subtracting time for meals, daylight changes, resting, and you’ll have a better idea of what to bring.

2. Scout locations immediately. Sometimes finding a spot you want to paint can take so long, and if you’re spoiled for choice you might never even choose! So take the guess work and uncertainty out of it. Walk the property right away and take note of the spots that jump out at you (and the time of day).
   This helped me a lot and saved time - even though I didn’t get to paint all the locations I scouted out.

3. The smaller the better. On a vacation with limited time, paint smaller. I really enjoyed painting the small 4x6 postcards because it meant that I could capture more subjects more often. 

4. If you’re stressed for time, sketch more, paint less. I realized on the way home that I barely sketched during the vacation, which seems odd because sketching is the most relaxing activity to me! There’s no stress with sketching, it’s just observation and value choices. But I was too excited by the colors and just had to push some paint around. I’m much faster with sketching, so I could have done a bunch of sketches of different locations/subjects throughout the trip instead of only a couple paintings.

5. It’s humid! Which means paintings take longer to dry. I had to leave my sketchbook open for 45 minutes waiting for it to completely dry. It was nice that my gouache didn’t dry out so fast on the palette though!

Overall advice for travelling in Jamaica:

1. Bring $USD. Every place we went accepted USD, even the tiny roadside shack in Negril where I bought a dress. Don’t bother using Jamaican dollars, it’s a worse conversion rate and you don’t want any leftover. Plus it’s way easier to tip with $1’s.

2. Tips are expected. Tip everyone. Tip your driver. Tip your servers. Tip your bag carrier (our resort had one). It’s commonplace to tip at least couple $1’s for almost everything, even at an all-inclusive resort. We used the standard 20% tip when dining out.

3. Take a legitimate taxi - don’t be fooled! Almost everywhere you go, men will approach you asking if you need a taxi. Make sure they have a RED sticker on their windscreen, as this is the mark of a real taxi. I’m not saying the other guys are going to murder you, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. This advice came straight from our driver. Most hotels/resorts will help you arrange transportation, so just ask before you arrive. We used Kingsley’s and they were absolutely brilliant.

4. Jamaica is a rather homophobic place - do not partake in same-sex public displays of affection. You should read about it on your own if you’re concerned, but we were told that it’s illegal and could result in punishment or hate crimes.

5. When arriving at Sangster International Airport (Montego Bay) our luggage took over an hour to come out. Luckily our pre-arranged taxi didn’t leave without us! But keep it in mind when you have a tight itinerary.

6. KFC is not “fast” food. Several locals told us that KFC is so popular, you can easily end up waiting an hour for food. Again, if you’re on a tight timeline, go somewhere more local, you’ll get your food much faster!

7. Weed advice: If you’re going to smoke, be discreet and polite. Weed is decriminalized, but technically not legal. You cannot carry more than 2 ounces at any time. Almost everywhere we went, we saw (and smelled) weed. We were offered ganja/joints for sale multiple times. Since I’m from Colorado I don’t mind at all, I’m used to it. I even partake once in a while. Follow the stoner’s code - never do it around children, don’t do it around people that obviously don’t like it. FYI - locals say the best stuff grows in Orange Hill.

8. When researching where to stay, make sure you read lots of independent reviews. That’s how I found Xtabi, which ended up being superb. But some other visitors told me they had been to some sketchy places which seemed legit online. So always double check!
   

I hope you guys enjoyed this little recap! I will be posting a video about the trip on YouTube later this week.

Needless to say, it was an amazing vacation in an incredibly beautiful place.

My dad retired on December 31, 2019 and decided to fly the family to Jamaica for a celebration / reunion. Most of us hadn’t been together for many years, and it was the first time most of them met my husband in person.
Thank you dad! LOVE YOU!!