I had a lovely sunshine-y brunch with two good friends plus Henry on Sunday, and afterward we came back to my place for them to help me eat chocolate cake and for sketching. I've been working to get my house better lately, and it felt great to have friends in enjoying it with me and making art together. I have grocery store tulips on my coffee table at the moment, and I love their ongoing shape changes. We all sketched the tulips, and Christina and I both sketched Elizabeth as well. Such a perfect afternoon. 

I was having a run around day a couple of weeks ago, and it was sunny and halfway warm for the end of January. I felt like stopping at my favorite deck and having a chai. I had just started a new sketchbook, back to my old favorite Handbook after trying something less satisfying, and I also had a new yellow watercolor marker. I did the sketch above with the watercolor and then did a second one of umbrellas and the sycamore across the street that I love. My fountain pens hadn't really worked on the paper in the previous book, so I'm enjoying getting back to them. And sketching a treat slows me down to both appreciate and remember it.

A couple of days ago I got my favorite Lucy J's bakery croissant at the farmers market and came home for second tea. I hadn't been sketching in a few days, so it was nice to take a slow Saturday morning and enjoy both the sketching and the croissant.

I'm continuing to give myself a slower January after the show craziness of Winter Arts. I'm cleaning my house some to get it pleasant again and doing a bit of print shop reorganzation, but I'm also trying to keep my sketching game going. I did another cold weather sketch on my dog walk yesterday, again just using pencils and crayons without getting out all the paint things. I'm kind of hoping this cold weather training will get me used to being out so I can sketch in the snow tomorrow. I never really want snow -- I like to walk out in the world without worrying about slipping -- but it is quite lovely visually. We'll see if I have the intestinal fortitude to sketch outside tomorrow. Watch this space...

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. 

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've been a lot at home lately working slowly on the last couple of Rowan Oak prints and fighting a bit more long Covid fatigue. But this week I got out a couple of lovely times and hopefully am on the upswing again. Sunday Christina and I went sketching in the neighborhood, an old Masonic temple building that now houses a restaurant. The weather has been perfect, so that night I took myself out for a patio dinner of fish tacos and sweet potato fries with Henry and my book and sketchbook. My friend Chrissie says to always get the pink drink -- just have a celebration. So I did.

Then today after doing some errands with my Dad I still had energy to go see the new shows at Dixon. They're great. As I was heading to leave it started raining, and then it just poured. It was gorgeous, and there was a handy bench on the covered porch, so I settled in to draw and wait it out. I'm grateful to my friend Elizabeth, who started the Memphis Urban Sketchers, for training me to carry a sketchbook. I sometimes get caught without one, but I'm almost always glad when I have it along.

I looked back at my Eclipse sketches this week while I was working on a print from them, and this page looked a little bare. I also wanted to keep a souvenir of the cool Eclipse glasses we all got, so I ended up doing a small scrapbook page to go with the sketch. I love the idea of collage, but I’m terrible at it. My attempts always look like a 4th grade art project gone wrong. But sometimes I want to preserve a special bit or piece from a day out or a trip.

Since I was in that mode, I also added my “number being served” ticket to my County Clerk’s office sketch. The number I pulled at 8:03 when the office had opened at 8….

I’m a bit more prone to do this kind of thing when I travel and pick up ticket stubs or other cool souvenirs. did a couple at my WAMA show to celebrate both a gorgeous bunch of tulips from a friend and also some King cake.

This last one is my favorite, but that might be mostly because of the King cake, which was delicious.

I've been working my way back into my longtime printmaking project of trees at Rowan Oak this week, but I gave myself a holiday for Leap Day yesterday. Thursdays have long been special to me, and it was not only Leap Day but also the 4x4 anniversary of Muddy's Bake Shop, my favorite bakery for both the treats and the warmth and welcome when you walk in the door. They opened 16 years ago on Leap Day and made Memphis instantly a better place.

I also dropped by a couple of thrift stores with a carload of donations, and I ended up coming home with two new-to-me cashmere sweaters for a total of $13.50. A big win. And I feel lighter in my house at the same time.

After lunch I treated myself to a trip to Dixon. I saw their current show of married artists Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown a few weeks ago, and I can't stop thinking about it. Especially Wonner's portraits. I went and sketched in the semi dark with only dry media, so these are both too saturated and not at all worthy of the paintings that inspired them. But I loved spending the time looking that deeply at paintings I admire from an artist I hadn't known before this show. He was in California with Thiebaud and Diebenkorn, and I can see that throughline. His painted lines have multiple colors making them up, just as Thiebaud's do. One of my longtime favorite artists. I plan to go back and sketch more while the show is still there.

It's been lovely out this week, and I'm trying to get back into the habit of walking with my sketchbook. Henry and I stopped in the forest and did a couple of sketches this week on our walks, and I went out house sketching with Christina again yesterday. It's so good to sit and visit and sketch. This morning I gave myself a slow morning to use up the rest of the space on that page and sketch my tea things. I haven't done that in ages, and it felt great.

I included the tiny Bonne Maman jar from my current advent calendar jelly. In an inspired move, they offered a jam-a-day advent calendar, and I managed to luck into one before they all disappeared quickly. As a single woman I'm not eating even a tiny pot a day, so it will stretch into the darkness of January. Which is making me realize that instead of advent calendars with tiny daily treats (which, honestly, are not at all liturgically appropriate for a penitential season, even though they are delightful), what we REALLY need is midwinter calendars that run from, say, Epiphany to March 1. Those dark, post holiday days are when I find myself most in need of small boosts. So I'll be stretching out the Bonne Maman goodness in an effort not to stretch my waistline unduly and also to savor the small treats more mindfully.

I've lost a little steam on Inktober because I FINISHED MY BOOK and formatted and submitted all the files and am now waiting on a proof before I order a stack of them. But here are several I did along the way, and I'm trying to get back to it and finish strong now that the book is done.

I've been taking my sketchbook to the dog park, and sometimes I just visit with friends, but sometimes I manage a sketch. One woman brought her supper in and managed (barely) to eat on the picnic table with all the dogs checking in to see what was going on. In a similar portable food vein, I did a small nocturne of a food truck under the moon at a recent outdoor performance of The Tempest. So fun. Both of those are in black ink with my new bent nib fude pen. Below is a dip pen with Diamine spring green ink and lots of watercolor on top.