Memphis Urban Sketchers met at the neighborhood Art Walk on Saturday. There were crafts and art and dogs and food trucks, and a good time was had by all. I got to sketch this fantastic food truck first and then had kebabs and grilled veggies and rice from them after, hanging out  at the festivities. Henry made 25 new friends while I sketched. He's my super extrovert dog.

The food truck is my favorite sketch I've done in a while, and it was my second of the day. I did a starter sketch in walnut ink with a dip pen since I'm trying to pay attention to Inktober this year, and I've been remembering lately how much fun a dip pen is.

Henry is perfect for Inktober with my fountain pen with the fude nib that has a nice dark permanent black ink in it (also the base of the food truck sketch), and I've paired that with the warm grey Pentel brush pen for years. It's a satisfying combination, so I've been sketching Henry a lot at the start of the month. He is still periodically challenging on a leash (walking companion is his secondary job description), but he is absolutely holding up his end of the bargain on being my muse.

Dad, Pat, Henry, and I went to outdoor Shakespeare last night at a local brewery. I love theater where dogs are welcome (and there were lots of them!). I sketched the food truck before things got going. Both the pens I reached for had dried out, and at the last minute I'd thrown in my Neocolor watercolor crayons, which I was delighted to have. It's good for me to mix up media anyway, and I had fun with these. I used them for line with paint over the top.

The speakers were loud, so Henry and I moved back once things started. We ended up with a fun view of the "backstage" area. I worked tech in high school, so this felt natural to me, and Henry got to interact with various folks as they were off stage. We all had fun.

I am terrible at all daily challenges and have enough deadlines that I resist imposing more on myself. But I did really enjoy sketching most days during Inktober last year. I got a small sketchbook and did something each time I left the house. It reminded me how much I enjoy doing fast sketches out in the world. This week I've reached for my 5.5" square handbook, the smaller of my two regular ones, and a black pen plus a brush pen to carry around with me. They're neat and easy for errands. But I do want to get going with a dip pen too. I remembered this summer how much I enjoy using those, even though the clean up is slightly more than with a fountain pen you pop the cap back on.

I had a very bad start to the month just below -- I had a darker brush pen with me instead of my normal one, and I made a total mess of Henry's head. So I switched to line only until I found the lighter, warmer brush pen I like for tone. The first one wasn't playing well with my more absorbent sketch book, but honestly I was also just out of practice.

Today I did some back porch sketches, the first one above of my garage and Henry lying with his paws crossed. The tree is an oak my grandfather planted in the back yard when I was still in single digits. It's a marvelous tall tree these days.

I'm not a purist and also reach for watercolor to go with my ink, as I did last night at Cafe 1912 having dinner with Christina. Ink and watercolor is my longtime favorite combination, though I do try to mix things up and challenge myself with other media as well.

It has been, as you may have gathered from previous posts, a scattered summer. The throughlines for me are always tea and sketching. There has been a lot of tea and not as much sketching as I would like, but here are a couple of recent-ish ones. The first is my travel teapot (unbreakable mid-century that I found at the late, lamented Cleveland Street Flea Market) along with two very recent finds from the Junior League thrift store. I had sealed up all my kitchen cabinets for the first flea treatment, not realizing how long the craziness would last. I treated myself to these two cups and saucers to make me feel more settled in out of the house and waiting for sanity to reassert itself at home.

The second sketch was the brief break I got to celebrate after uploading my first proofs of M is for Memphis. Henry and I went to Cafe Eclectic on a perfect day to have lunch on the patio and relax. Sadly this morning I'm struggling to upload the edited set of proofs. It worked great the first time and is hanging up today. The non art parts of my job are always the hardest, but worth it to do what I love. Maybe I'll earn another celebratory tea soon.

I did one huge final push, and the book is now uploaded to the printer, and I'm waiting on a series of proofs (both eproofs and a hard copy) before I can order a batch. I'm doing a few tweaks in the meantime, but it is functionally done, which feels great. I was so far behind in early August that I didn't think I could manage it, but a combination of a good run of sketching along with a bunch of days working to lay it out right up till bedtime has me hoping I can get copies back in time for December sales. Printing slows way down in the fall, so no guarantees, but I strongly hope they'll manage it.

Here are a few pages. I did all the art in watercolor and pencil or ink. Some of them are sketches done on site and others I did on my lap on the sofa after gathering photos from around town. I laid out each page with those images in photoshop and then hand wrote the text around the images with an apple pencil on my ipad.

This summer has not gone to plan, to say the least. I sprained my ankle on vacation just as I was getting back to daily walks after another bout of fatigue. Above is the sketch I did waiting on a tire to replace the one that was separating on the way home, somewhere in the middle of Missouri. That was the amuse bouche for the main course to come. Getting home that night, August 1, already two hours late, Henry and I were jumped by literally hundreds of fleas. It's been a five week odyssey of figuring out how and where they were swarming up from the crawl space. I've flushed at least a thousand down the toilet, scraping them off my legs every time I set foot in the kitchen and the back room where we do most of our living.

We were out of the house another three weeks or so at neighborhood airbnbs, and camping out in the front of it another couple. Yesterday we sat together on our couch for the first time, and today Henry is on the couch just behind me as I work on the computer, which has been also mostly off limits. For the first time this morning, after five house and crawl-space treatments of various kinds and two long stair riser caulking sessions by me over the weekend, I did not have a single flea jump on me. Hallelujah. I cannot even express how good that feels.

The book M is for Memphis got derailed for a while, as did (clearly) this blog. Sadly Weebly's mobile app has also gone hinky and doesn't post the right photos when it publishes, so I just shelved this and waited until I could get back to my work space and then (YAY!!!) upload my proofs of the book an hour ago. Now I can catch up on my other work and post things here again. Thank you for your patience if you're a regular reader.

Below is Friday night's dinner sketch at Ecco. Henry and I walked up and met our regular sketching/art/lunch buddy Christina. It was a perfect patio evening and a lovely break at the home stretch of all the craziness.

Saturday was the Memphis Urban Sketchers meeting at Palladio Garden, which has a lovely large patio for sketching. It was good to get out, remember my dip pen and fun new ink bottles, and do something messy for me instead of careful for the book. I also used the group as a perfectly timed focus group. I printed out several possible book covers and passed them around and got great feedback from fellow artists. I'll do a book post next, but here's my bridge from August to present day. I think I'll go for a walk today with my sketchbook to celebrate and maybe just treat myself to lunch out at the same time.

I got to go out on a sailboat in the San Juan islands, sailing out for the day from Anacortes. It was lovely to be out in an ever changing landscape with lots of tiny islands shape shifting around us as we moved past them. Perfect for sketching, though at times the wind made it less than easy. I did several sketches but also just enjoyed the day out with family.

It took me getting to Washington to get to a scanner and clean up my St. Louis sketches. I love to draw there and did some smaller, faster sketches as well as full watercolors. This first one is walnut ink with a dip pen of an Osage Orange tree. They always grow in such fascinating shapes.

I also got a fantastic blueberry/lemon curd crepe from a food truck creperie that flashed me back to Paris. I loved both the food and the fun little bus, so I did a sketch to remember.

There was also a great book signing at the graphic bookstore Betty’s Books. Beautifully they got in an art hero of mine Lucy Knisley. I found her first graphic memoir An Age of License some years ago, and it (plus my first Ben Hatke book found at the same time) made me want to include more storytelling in my work, which had been purely landscape up until that point. She had a huge influence on my work, and I trace a direct line back from her book to doing several of my own, even if they’re quite different in feel. It was fantastic to hear her talk, meet her in person, and see her delightful hand painted cat dress.

One more lovely day in town was revisiting the St. Louis Art Museum, another favorite place. They had a Vuillard I don’t remember from before on view this time, which makes sense because it’s on cardboard and probably needs to rest for preservation purposes in between times out in the light. I love his patterned interiors and interlocking shapes and had fun doing a sketch while standing in front of it.

I have always loved those golden age British mysteries with a map at the front. Probably because my dad collects maps and often hand drew ones for us to follow along with from the back seat on family vacations. Since all the trees in the exhibition at Rowan Oak are actually on the grounds of Faulkner’s home, I thought it would be fun to give people the opportunity for a self guided scavenger hunt to compare the prints with the originals.

There are no prizes, but if there were, there would definitely be extra credit for Portrait III, which is by far the trickiest to spot.

I’m doing some sketching in Tower Grove Park in St. Louis. My favorite park away from home, and it’s such a pleasure to walk and sketch here.