My second full day in New York I headed for the Frick. Reading about their small Vermeer show had been the tipping point for buying my ticket and taking the plunge. Plus I've been reading all fall about their newly opened second story -- galleries in the family rooms that were offices, closed to the public, for decades. They've done a gorgeous job. I would love for them to have more benches, but otherwise it was wonderful. I did find a great bench at the top of the grand stairway where I could look down to the main hall and the organ and grandfather clock. I had so much fun drawing the birds eye view of the museum, using my Inktense pencils again. They are more candy colored than my normal palette, so I put a few grey washes down later to try to keep it from being quite so bright, but overall I was delighted with how it came out.

The three Vermeers gathered for the show all centered around letters. There was the Frick's own epistolary piece, one from the Rijksmuseum, and one I had never seen in person from Dublin. It was funny. There was a line down the block and sometimes around the corner to get in, but once you were inside the museum you could flow into the Vermeer room at will. It would sometimes get a little crowded, but most people looked at each piece about a minute and cleared out, and there were plenty of quiet times in between. I got to stand with each piece as long as I wanted to. Vermeers are a rare treat and worth savoring. Oddly the other two Vermeers were almost ignored in the main museum. And when I got back to the Met, they had five in a room that was also mostly empty. People are funny. But I'm glad I went to see the ones that live further away. It was such a good day, made better by a lovely chat with a bookmaker who now lives in Colorado. I had my lunch outside and was working on my sketch a little in the better light. I love that art is so often an introduction to people when I'm traveling alone. (Hi, Rosemary!)

Here's the sketch I did waiting for the museum to open that morning. The Met had opened at 10, so I had (foolishly) assumed the Frick was on the same schedule. Turns out it was 10:30, but I had a sketchbook to entertain me.

Walking back up to the bus at the end of the day I spotted this bright pink food truck and had to sketch it. I am so visually drawn to the fever dream colors and fun shapes of food trucks. Sometime I'll end up with a whole series of them I'm sure.

There is a huge Sargent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, and I had been hoping all year to get up there and see it. I was just about to give up because of health and logistics, but I felt better several days in a row and decided to just go for it last minute. It was SUCH a good decision. And I was lucky to be flexible and able to go last minute. I spent Monday to Friday in New York, home on Saturday, and I just drank in art. I went ahead and joined the Met both to support a great museum and so I could go in and out at will. And hopefully I'll go back again and use it some more in the next year.

The Sargent show was great, a wide selection of work from the earlier part of his career, the part where he was based in Paris. He was ridiculously prolific, and there were many I'd never even seen reproductions of. There were a bunch in private collections but also old friends I've seen in other places in other years.

I found benches and sat and sketched a good bit, also just sat and looked deeply. The gallery sketches are all Derwent Inktense pencils. The NY museums have a pencil only policy, and I love the Inktense ones because they have more depth and saturation than most pencils. They're made with ink instead of watercolor, and when you put a little water on them (I usually use a water brush for a blender), they really pop. I tend to get in the habit of drawing with fountain pens at home, so it's fun to mix up texture and use the pencils sometime.

I enjoyed drawing people with the art a few times, including that first full length portrait of the doctor in the super saturated red. After lunch I went back in and drew the Daughters of Edward Droit, one of my favorite Sargent portraits anywhere (aside from Lady Agnew in the Scottish National Gallery). I had seen it in Boston a decade ago and been completely blown away by the composition as well as the beauty of the brushstrokes. I drew it straight up, just looking deeply and enjoying the painting.

Toward the end of the day I wandered through the American wing and saw a father and son in blue stripes and checks hanging out in front of an orange Helen Frankenthaler. It was a wonderful sight. It took me a couple of minutes to get out my book and pencils, so it's a super fast sketch as they moved on out, but I was happy with feel of it.

I got on a wild hare last week and started a whole series of small prints and interchangeable backgrounds. It all started with the small black and white print of Glastonbury Abbey that I did as an illustration for my dad's poetry book I've been putting together for him. I enjoyed doing a small, achievable project. It also was lovely to revisit a place from my past while I am stuck at home this spring and summer. I miss traveling, and it feels good to mentally revisit places I've loved in the past. I've long felt that I could extend a trip by making art from it on my return, keeping it present and lively in my mind, and I'm now tapping back into that energy by revisiting places from further ago. Glastonbury made me think of both the Tor nearby and also Stonehenge. I've been drawing out and carving simple backgrounds. I'm still working on a couple more, and I'm going to try some different colors with them (see the solid moon, versus the one with the grey spots, versus the one with orange added behind it, though I'll probably tone that color down a bit for the final version). I've only got single tests of the more recent backgrounds, but I printed a new batch of backgrounds today to start the process over again.

The first abbey I carved was intended as only a black and white piece, so it had a good bit of lacework carved out of the structure. I've carved a mirror image of it, more solid with see through windows, to test out as well. These are all just snapshots, not finished sketches since none of the prints are finished either, but I have enough to share the project taking shape. It's fun to see it beginning to make its way from a few color sketches into carved prints. Eventually I may add another place or two as well. The Acropolis means a lot to me after my summer in Athens, or perhaps the temple at Sounio.

I almost always start a small, experimental project in summertime. After doing all the very large Rowan Oak pieces last year, doing something small (and prints that don't have to line up exactly perfectly) feels light and easy. Just right for summer.

Two weeks in a row I've managed to make it to the midweek lecture at Dixon. This week it was their membership person Dorothy Svgdik talking about why she loves museum. So fun, and I did three quickish sketches while I was listening. I'm still really enjoying having the small sketchbook in my purse with a handful of pens for easy access. I'm so much more likely to sketch instead of looking at my phone if I make it super easy and accessible for myself. And I'm invariably happier afterwards if I do make that choice.

Afterwards I took a walk with friends around the garden and then went back inside to sketch in the gallery. I love the spaces in museums and have been seeing a lot of online sketches lately inside museums. Not exclusively copies of the art, but drawings of the space. I would love to do more of those myself, though I so miss being able to sketch in pen and watercolor. American museums tend to be really restrictive about materials in a way most European museums aren't. So it didn't come out as hoped, but here was my bigger sketchbook gallery landscape in pencil and watercolor crayon. I had fun sitting and looking at the space and light even if it didn't turn out the way I'd hoped. Honestly no sketch ever matches the vision in my brain that I have when I start, but some get closer than others. This one wasn't close, but that's how it goes. On the other hand, I was really happy with my sketch of pewter and people above, a couple of audience members off to my left.

Friday night, at the beginning of the heat, Christina and I headed to Memphis Pizza Cafe, which has a shady back deck with trees and ceiling fans. It was really perfect. We've met there a couple of times, and it's great for Henry accompanying us. I also like that I can get a fresh crunchy salad and one good sized slice of pizza without ordering a whole pie. And they have meatball pizza. We had a good visit and a nice sketching session.

As a bonus, here's my sketch from last time we went, sitting a little closer to the tree and seeing the whole arch.

Colleen Couch gave a lecture at Dixon today on her joint show with mentor Dolph Smith, and it was great. I listened and enjoyed slides of Dolph's methodical sketchbooks/studio journals where he worked out his ideas (or sometimes not, as the last page here shows). I did sketches in my tiny purse sketchbook with a fountain pen, a brush pen with black ink, and a couple of watercolor markers for the last two. I sat with friends and had a great talk about art careers, making your own goals, and the ongoing need for discernment. I have several friends trying to figure out the next chapter or streamline the current chapter to make it work more smoothly.

It was a timely talk, and it's always good to hear that sometimes even art heroes like Dolph end up with "shit!" on occasion.

I've gotten a little bogged down in my current three block print, so it was fun to do this small fast one over the last couple of days. I'm still working on laying out that book of my Dad's poems, and there was one lone poem near the middle, bracketed by two really good pairs before and after, and instead of disrupting one of the pairs, I decided to just do a small illustration. We're keeping the book of history poems in chronological order, so I couldn't just shuffle things around too much. This is Glastonbury Abbey, which I've visited twice over the years, and it will accompany a poem about the dissolution of the monasteries. I'm really happy with how it turned out, which feels especially nice as I struggle with the other print.

I printed and scanned in a batch of my antique letterpress ornaments this week. I'm working on a book of my dad's British and Irish history poems. He started writing them in the 80's, and it's much easier to publish something like that now than it was then. I want to be able to put the book in his hands. I'm considering using a few of these to fill in some empty spaces.

I've always kept printing for real, tactile projects and done my illustration work in watercolor and sketching. It has more recently occurred to me that I could use scanned in type or ornaments in certain projects as well. That Celtic alphabet I have that has almost all the letters, but only one of each, is barely usable as is for anything printed, but it's much more flexible digitally. Mostly I like making my own art, but the style and antique qualities of these might suit the current project. We'll see. It's fun to play, anyway, and now I'll have them ready if anything comes up to use them. I printed them in a reddish purple (my black letterpress ink has dried up at the bottom of its antique can), so I converted them to black and white after also saving the reddish version. Options.

I'm still playing with the limited group of Inktense pencils in my dedicated forest sketching kit. This sketch was started with a middle green pencil (which you can see in the date), a light sepia one (mostly in the path) and a "bark" one, the tree trunks, that is vividly warm with water added on top, almost a reddish purple, but which feels more natural than a solid black. I think I'd like to add one dark blue green pencil for forest depth quickly (which I did with paint here), but it's fun to have to make choices with a limited palette.

Memphis Urban Sketchers met at the downtown welcome center on Saturday, and the heavens opened in the half hour before we met. Eight hardy souls sloshed their way downtown. The worst of the cloudburst was over  by the time I got there, and there are covered outdoor tables and super overactive indoor air conditioning, so I chose the dampish outdoors. My inflatable, waterproof butt cushion came in super handy. I perched on a table outside and sketched the first two pieces, including the rain coming down. I usually scan sketches for my website, but that light blue-grey sky just doesn't show up on the scanner, so here's the photo I took on site.

It finally started blowing more, so I moved inside and joined a group around the Elvis statue. All three of these were started in Inktense water soluble pencils and then watercolor on top. I've been doing quick forest sketches with those pencils lately and enjoying the texture and immediacy.

Just for fun I took a little video of sketching in the rain.