John Torrey is a town planner and artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Asia and always carries with him a sketchbook and a supply of gel stick pens. While he comes from a family of bankers and merchants, his parents recognized early on that a good way to curb John's penchant for drawing on walls was to give him sketchbooks. It seems to have stuck. His drawings and paintings are in international collections and recently in Architectural Digest magazine. He plans more illustrated books on portraiture and Venice, where he travels frequently with his companion Gugger.