I've slowed down on the sketching as we've hit both some rain and some busy days, but I did get in this across-the-fields view of a farm down in the Skagit River delta. I love that area. The walk-in scale of the farms and the rows of poplars with large mountains and even bigger skies rising up as background. There aren't a ton of good places to pull over and park, and I rarely get a chance to sketch down that way, but this was from the nursery that we'd visited the previous week. We made a second stop to revisit their gift shop and let me do this sketch of a view I'd been thinking about ever since I was there. The linework is in Kaweko Paradise Blue ink that was my find of the summer. I like the way it melts a bit with the paint I put on top.
We also went on into Anacortes and got the last Sunday New York Times paper from the bookstore there, which is the only place in the region I've found that carries them. I'm happily reading on it this week, spreading it out till I get home to my regular subscription. I do love a real newspaper with breakfast.
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We've been making the rounds in Washington, visiting favorite restaurants and bookstores while I'm here. We took the girls to lunch at Slough Foods, a charming spot on a slough with outdoor seating and fantastic grilled cheese sandwiches. A few days later we visited the LaConner Brewing Co., which has a great rotating selection of hard ciders, and I tried their pizza for the first time, which was excellent. I've eaten more cheese in the last week than I have in the last month, but that's what vacation is for, I guess. We also stopped at a fun nursery with extensive grounds, an antique schoolhouse building, and a decidedly UK feeling gift shop. I'm still thinking about the Aran sweaters there, but I confined myself to sketching. Yesterday was two rainy soccer games, cheering on the girls, and hanging out with family. It was lovely. I'm feeling rested and ready to dive back into shows when I get home.
Rasar State Park is one of my favorite spots in Washington. It has forest, beach, river, and meadow with mountain views. On an unusually sunny afternoon for late October in the PNW I headed there to walk and sketch and drink in a bit of sunshine. There's a perfectly positioned picnic table, lovely for perching and sketching, that I drew the overall mountain and cloud view from. I did a couple of trees on a smaller path.
The tree watercolor uses Diamine Ancient Copper ink to its best advantage. I forget occasionally and try to use it with buildings, and it bleeds all over beejeezus, but it's perfect for the organic nature of trees. The day had a ton of moisture in the air, and the paint took forever to dry, which meant it would often bleed into the color next door. That totally worked on the tree sketch, a little less so on the landscapes, but it was an interesting challenge. The odd one out is a walnut ink sketch with a dip pen of a nurse stump. The stumps of fallen trees will often "nurse" a new tree growing up and out of them, and the visual effect is dramatic. I also love the symbolism of new life, or new opportunities springing forth out of destruction, as has happened more than once in my life. I walked three miles and did four sketches, and it was a total win of an afternoon. I'm taking a second quick trip before the holiday sales start in earnest. Washington state is a little drizzly some days, but yesterday I caught a lovely sky walking across the boardwalk into Anacortes. It ended up being a perfect four mile walk that ended at Pelican Bay bookstore. I hit the Watermark bookstore too, for a New York Times, which I have to drive an hour for up here, so it was a pleasure to get the Sunday one for several days' worth of reading. I also hit an antique store on the way home and found a really beautiful set of bird china, cup and saucer, cream pitcher, and a sugar bowl with no lid, but it's perfect for setting the tea bags in after pulling them out of the pot, and I hated to strand it by itself. I've never seen china like this before, and it was just too lovely to leave. I did a celebratory sketch last night that got a little muddy (it's been good to get back to sketching after several turnaround days at home with lots of business to take care of), mostly because I chose a very bleed-y blue ink to start with, but it was still fun.
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.
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![]() online store Martha Kelly is an artist and illustrator who lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee. Get occasional studio email updates. Categories
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