I got to Amsterdam yesterday and am delighted to be here. I'm looking forward a mix of sketching and sitting in museums this week. Above is my first full watercolor, a scene I did a quicker journal sketch of last time I was here.

Yesterday I was pretty groggy and mostly walked and went through a couple of rooms of the Rijksmuseum. I did a few quick sketches there. These statues reminded me so much of the characters in Alice in Wonderland that I wonder if Tenniel saw them before doing his illustrations. I get the same feeling from the fanciful knights atop the Hotel de Ville in Paris.

I have also revisited my favorite coffee shop here and done a couple of sketches, one yesterday and a couple today.

Sammie, the resident cat, came to join me, and I was trying to sketch him, but he ended up purring in my lap instead. A good substitute.

I realized that I only have one out east scene done so far for next year's calendar, so I drove a little further from my normal midtown haunts on Saturday and painted the Clark Tower. It's such an icon of that middling east neighborhood I grew up in.

I also have increasingly loved sketching musicians the last couple of years. And Memphis local music is so critical to why I love living in Memphis that it occurs to me that I should include Memphis music in this year's calendar as well. So I put together this composite of some of my recent sketches.

I've also been packing this week. I'm flying out this week to Amsterdam today to go paint there. And sit in museums. I had a lot of deadlines to hit before I left, so it will be lovely to just settle in somewhere and only have to paint and explore for a bit.

Here are my paint sets being refilled for the trip. Next post will be from Amsterdam!

liturgical work has been in black and white to honor the budget constraints of the churches I work with. When I began, pen and ink was more comfortable for me anyway, but I've really been enjoying watercolor the last couple of years, so I'm excited to get to branch out a bit for MTS. Here is my Genesis painting for the first week of chapel. I'm looking forward to doing a series.

The Memphis Urban Sketchers met in the Peabody Hotel on Saturday. I had the realization driving down that calendar time is coming rapidly for me, at least given my upcoming travels, and I don't have enough new Memphis pieces to really flesh out a new calendar. So I found a table and chair in the mezzanine, overlooking the main lobby, and did a bit more detailed and finished watercolor than I've been tending to do in my normal art journal lately. It was fun, but I bit off a good bit with this one. It's a kind of overwhelming place. But it's good to challenge myself sometimes.

My lovely friends at the woodworking school Country Workshops invited me to come and stay with them for a few days. I'm in a busy patch of life, but they are dear people, and it was lovely to get away for a little bit and see my sister on the way as well as my friends who live there and around there.

I also ran into Asheville for a little recreational bookstore time.

I was in St. Louis early in July on my annual sister baseball trip (see the last blog post), but of course I found a little time to paint in my favorite park as well. I did all of these with my tiny watercolor kit and water brush pen. It's handy to not have to set out multiple cups of water to just do some quick sketches. I didn't have a lot of time that trip, but I always try to paint at least a little bit in Tower Grove.

I usually go with my sister to St. Louis once a summer to take in some Cardinals baseball. It's a fun time, and I look forward to being in Busch stadium, since mostly I just listen at home on the radio. This year I was pleased to be asked because her wedding anniversary fell on the weekend where the Cards played the Padres, which is her husband's rooting team. They made an anniversary trip of it and took in four games, but they very kindly and warmly bought extra tickets to the second two games and asked me to come join them partway through. I was delighted, and it was a lovely weekend with the two of them.

I mostly watched the games, but I did one sketch at the beginning of the game each day. The second day I restricted myself to a Stabilo fine liner and one grey Faber Castell marker, which was the sketching equipment I was handing out to teenagers on a retreat later that week where I would be teaching sketching. (I'll write about that soon. I am SO behind on this blog right now.) I wanted to do a couple of demo sketches and also just think about the best ways to use those materials. Mostly, though, I just had fun and enjoyed two Cardinal wins and hung out with the siblings.

I've been focusing and printmaking and sketching the last few years, but Dixon wanted some oils as well for my fall exhibition with them. It took me a while to get my head back in this space, but I've been flipping through some sketchbooks and found several images I'd enjoy painting, and I really have been having a ball. There's something very immediate and responsive about oils. They're lush.

I'm also enjoying revisiting a special place. This painting and the moonrise one (last blog entry) are both from watercolors I did at the woodworking school Country Workshops. My friends Drew and Louise Langsner live there and run the school, and their farm is one of the loveliest places I know. They periodically invite me to visit them and paint for a bit, and I always look forward to my time there. It's a fruitful place for my art.

I've got a new painting underway for my fall exhibition at Dixon Gallery and Gardens. This is an evening sky I painted in watercolor when I was in North Carolina last fall. I've already done a print from that sketch, but the image continues to call my name. My favorite thing to paint in oils is big, lush skies. That medium does skies better than anything else I work in. I've enjoyed getting back into oils for this exhibition.

Dixon Gallery and Gardens has their main museum building closed for renovations this summer and was looking for some classes to offer to keep the education program going during that process. They asked me if I would teach a printmaking workshop in my studio, since I have a printing press there, and they said they would bring the tables and chairs. I was delighted, and the workshop was this past weekend with eight students.

I hadn't taught it before, but the two afternoon format turned out to be perfect. I asked everyone to come in with a black and white image or two that they would like to make a print from, and I was impressed with everyone showing up with drawings or photos to work from. They progressed from tracing the drawings to cutting the linoleum blocks, transferring the drawings onto them, carving, prepping their paper and setting up registration, and printing. Everyone did one full print and went home with a small edition of prints, and some people started a second print to take home and keep working on.

Block printing is one of the few forms of printing that you can do at home without a printing press. I did three years' worth of professional prints rubbing on the back of paper with a wooden spoon, and I wanted everyone to be able to go out and keep printing if they wanted to. Everyone did some printing with the spoon to get the feel of that as well as trying my press, and the class materials included a set of carving tools and some other basic materials that they could keep and use at home.

It was such fun to have a whole group of excited and motivated students in my work space all weekend. I work alone at home for much of my work time, and it was such fun to have a neat group of people to spend the weekend (two four hour afternoon sessions, which was just about right) making art with me.

I was also deeply impressed with the quality of the prints everyone made. It was exciting to see all of these progress from the first drawings into finished prints. Here are the prints created by the class.

I would really enjoy teaching this workshop again and am pondering hanging out my shingle for it again in January. Let me know if you'd be interested in joining me for some printmaking.