Happy holidays ... and a look ahead to the new year!

As the first snowfall of the season starts melting away, I thought I'd share a little of what I've been up to over the past month... and what I'm looking forward to. First, here's a peek at what I've been up to while conspicuously neglecting my sketchbook:

That's my take on Ann Budd's Knit Father Christmas design, finished just in time to display in our house for the holidays. And right now I'm frantically knitting a sweater for my 6-year-old niece (hopefully it will be done by the 25th)!

But while I'm knitting and purling my way toward repetitive stress injury, I'm also packing my gear for two very exciting workshops I'm attending next month. The first will be a reportage workshop at Mystic Seaport from the folks at Dalvero Academy/Studio 1482. It promises to be intense, cold and a bit crazy. (Fingerless gloves? Check.) The second is a plein air workshop in the Bahamas, taught by Susan Abbott. The lightweight easel I've ordered from Judsons Art Outfitters is (according to UPS) slowly making its way across the country. I'll have to be careful not to pack too much for this trip, as part of the journey involves a small propeller plane. And in the middle of all this, I'm hoping to get a quick roadtrip in to the middle of Pennsylvania to see friends and learn to ski! Whew!

Hope everyone has a fabulous holiday and a very happy new year!

Sketchcrawl Results

I know this is a week late, but as the weather gets colder I find myself getting busier!

We started our crawl in Chelsea Market near the Chelsea Wine Vault, with a good-sized crowd for once:





For this next one, I used a dip pen that I'd bought in New Orleans, along with Higgins India ink. It was the first time I used a dip pen "out in the field," so to speak. Surprisingly it wasn't too hard to handle the bottle, ink, paper towels, etc.



Then a bunch of us moved on to the High Line:



After that I left the group to meet up with M. and have lunch. All in all, it was a good crawl!

25th Worldwide Sketchcrawl is Nov. 21!

Get out your sketchbooks, paints, and pens ... it's time once again for Sketchcrawl. This one marks five years of Sketchcrawling around the world!

New Orleans Sketchbook

Sometimes when the weather is beautiful and you're in a new city, it's really hard to stop and sketch ... you just want to keep walking all over and seeing all you can!

Here's a quick sketch looking down Chartres St from near Jackson Square in the French Quarter. The balconies and buildings cast a ton of shadows everywhere.



Here's a look down the opposite side, still from a bench near Jackson Square.



And here's a super quick sketch dashed off while waiting for the Magazine Street bus, colored with Faber Castell Pitt Artists pens later:

E, I, E, I, O...

'Tis the season for apple-picking ... or at least, it was. After reading the recent feature on apple orchards in Connecticut magazine, I wanted to go sample the harvest for myself. So we set out for Easton a few weekends ago, to a place called Silverman's Farm. When we got there, we found out that apple picking had ended for the season, though families were still mobbing the place for pumpkins and tractor rides. (Tractor rides are like hayrides without the hay, as we came to find out -- at least we got to ride up the hill through the apple orchard and see the view from above.)

It was a typical autumn "country" scene -- kids and parents quaffing cider in little single-serve sippy cups, toddlers trudging around with gourds bigger than their heads, strategically piled bales of hay, the whole works.  But somehow the whole thing reminded me of what Ada Louise Huxtable wrote about in The Unreal America -- nothing was quite, well, genuine. The pumpkins weren't attached to anything -- selecting them from where they sat on the ground was really no different than selecting them from a bin in front of the supermarket. Most of the edibles, jams and jellies in the small market weren't made on the premises; they were made "for" the farm, as the labels indicated, by some wholesaler who made them for lots of similar farm stores. And I believe they even had stuff from that standby specialty brand of all "country" stores, Maine's Stonewall Kitchen (usually found next to their Ohio-based gourmet-foods cousins from Robert Rothschild Farm). I certainly understand why they sell all this stuff, but part of me wishes that these places still actually produced everything (or most of their wares) and didn't have to rely on all the wholesale private-labeled stock. There's no point in shopping at a destination if all I find there is the same stuff I've seen elsewhere with a different label slapped on.

Still, it was a lovely fall day, and I ended up dashing off some super-quick sketches of the animals in the farm's petting zoo.

Drawing Boats at Mystic Seaport

Took a drawing class this weekend called "Anatomy of the Boat" at Mystic Seaport, taught by J. Susan Cole Stone of the Mystic Art Center. It was meant to be mostly plein air, but Saturday's relentless rain drove us all indoors. We started off with sketches of catboats in a small building:



During a very brief break in the weather, we sat by the water and drew the little wooden rowboats (dories, I believe):



But sure enough, the rain started up again; I chose to go with some of the class to the youth education building, from which we could see the sailing class getting ready for a race. Sketched the sailboats quickly with pencil and Pitt markers:



Sunday proved to be much sunnier. Started off with a pencil sketch of the Liberty:



Then it was back to the little dory boats -- this time I tried out a very rough watercolor paper and added watercolor (yes, I know, the boat in the foreground shouldn't be quite so pointy):



Finally, I used a small box of watercolor pencils for this sketch of the Breck Marshall; probably not the best medium, but I made do:

Portland, OR, Sketchbook

Spent much of last week in Portland, Oregon, attending the AASFE (American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors) annual conference. Spent the weekend taking in the sights in and around the city. Here's a quick one done while waiting for dessert at the restaurant clarklewis, colored later with watercolors.




This one looks up Oak Street in Hood River, where we stopped for lunch during our driving tour of the Columbia River Gorge and Mt. Hood. The weather could not have been more perfect the entire time we were in the state!