...But this one a good friend's. My friend Melissa Bridgman, potter extraordinaire, and I share a birthday week. Last year she came down to my WAMA opening and celebrated with me there. So perfect. This year she brought me a beautiful plate.  She has made urns for my two most recent dogs, which means so much. She lost a dog recently and has a new puppy, and after all her kindness when I lose dogs, I decided to do three small sketches of Ajax (now gone), Buddy, and the new puppy Sissy. It was such fun to go through her facebook dog photos and do these small, quick sketches.

Henry has been looking ridiculously cute today on his back on the sofa. These are both done with a big, fat, watersoluble graphite crayon. It's fast and fun and loose to use.

The hyacinth really reached up and bloomed out today, so I decided to sketch it again. It really is fun in the new crayons (with a little paint on top).

Then (of course) I also sketched Henry. No water or paint, just black and light gray crayons.

Here are a random batch of sketches from about a week ago. I've had a super slow week, doing print and commission work in my lap on the sofa, so no really recent sketches. But I had a ball meeting a friend at this gorgeous Tudor revival for an estate sale and drawing a house we wouldn't otherwise have had access to.

Next was a misty morning at Shelby Farms with a pair of great blue herons flying overhead. After several passes, one sat in the top of a tiny tree and posed for me. Henry was patient while I got my sketching things out. He's learning to be an art dog as we go along. He would always rather walk, but he's getting more used to the stops.

Finally another graphite sketch of Henry from one of our sofa sitting sessions.

Another batch of Henry skeches in water soluble graphite crayon with water brushed on top.

Soon after getting Henry I was excited to have a dog hanging out on the sofa with me again, and I wanted to take full advantage of his modeling opportunities. So I bought a 7x10" multi media spiral bound sketchbook, nothing fancy but pages thick enough to take a little water. I have a big, fat, graphite crayon that I love to play with, and it's water soluble, so you get a lovely depth when you brush water over it. With a water brush (almost a pen, but with a brush and a reservoir of water inside), it's a quick, not at all messy, easy to grab way to sketch, so I've got those three things (and, of course, some other sketching stuff too) within easy reach on my coffee table. I've filled up half a sketchbook at this point, and I woke up early today and scanned a bunch in. You can see from the shadows that the paper has buckled a little with the added water, so it's not totally flat on the scanner, but I didn't fiddle with these to get that all smoothed out. I just wanted to be able to share the progression. Here is the first batch of my favorites (plus one watercolor), starting from early September.