Elmwood

Memphis Urban Sketchers met at Elmwood recently, and I've been out there studying their statues for a new project anyway. I love that place, and it's been fun to revisit it lately.

I've been leaning into the water soluble graphite lately. I've got a big, fat crayon of it, and I added watercolor on top of it in a limited way in the vertical piece. Some of the other studies, looking to capture more detail in the statues, I started with a grey fountain pen and added the graphite in a wash with a brush. I love the subdued sparkly-ness of it on the page. It's also a little messier and can leave a residue on the facing page, but that can also make a sketchbook feel a little more spontaneous and alive (which I remind myself of when it annoys me).

The story of Emily Sutton was fascinating (and sad) to me. She owned a bordello, and her madam name was Fanny Walker. When the yellow fever epidemic hit Memphis like a brick in the 1870's, she turned her bordello into a hospital and nursed sick patients until she died, while many prosperous people fled the city instead. She was buried at Elmwood with a lovely marker, but the judgemental patriarchal society added not one, not two, but THREE large boundary stones with her madam name in large letters so no one would forget that she was "only" a prostitute. Jerks. You can see Gideon resting his chin on one of those while I sketched her.

My last sketch with the sketchers (Gideon was with me a different day for Emily) was a rapid walnut ink sketch with a dip pen back at the meet-up site waiting for everyone to gather. I'm really enjoying my dip pen lately. And the walnut ink.