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.

After several weeks of really restricted work time, I’ve worked two solid mornings and parts of afternoons this week, and it feels really good. I’ve been slowly chipping away at this first print, a three block view of Henry in the Old Forest. I’m doing a series of modest sized tree prints, and Henry has worked his way into two out of the first three. If I keep having more energy and concentration I’ll get back to that second snow tree print as soon as I get a solid first proof of this one.

I’ve also been doing a small print of Lindisfarne Castle, where I went with my grandmother when I was 17. The Holy Island made an indelible impression on me, clearly, and I’ve returned to that image for the cover of the book of poetry I’m putting together for my dad. Nerd family that we are, he spent several decades writing his way through British and Irish history in various challenging rhyme schemes. Because that’s how he has fun. And they’re really delightful. Self publishing wasn’t much available in the 90’s, but these days it’s beautifully democratic to make a book, and I’ve got several under my belt, so my main summer project is to finish this one up. A friend of his did illustrations for it back in the 90’s, but I’m doing a print for the cover as well as typing in and formatting. It’s slow but satisfying work.

Finally I’ve been enjoying organizing my print shop lately, and I’ve got a few fonts that I haven’t even printed yet. This week, in a bid to remind myself that a selzer will give my taste buds just as much change and novelty as a snack if I’m not physically hungry, I printed a small sign on scrap ends of mat board. This font reminds me of the Paris metro lettering, even though it’s not an exact match. I’m a sucker for anything Art Nouveau. I have somewhere between one and five of each letter, so I can’t set a whole poem or anything, but it’s a nice chunky size and really fun for limited projects. Like Parsons it also has extra long, extra fancy ascenders and descenders (bs, ds, ls, ps, ys, etc.) as well as alternative versions of various capitals. I’m a sucker for those too. So this sign now sits on my kitchen window sill for the moment.