The Memphis Urban Sketchers met at Elmood Historic cemetery on Saturday morning. I'd missed the last couple of meetings, and it was good to make this one in one of my favorite sketching spots.

It's one of the oldest cemeteries in Memphis and encompasses much of our history, through the Civil War and the yellow fever. I love the Victorian monuments and angels. So much more lovely than the fake golf course look of today's cemeteries.

It was good to be out working with a group of artists again, and I did two watercolors from the same vantage point, while I chatted with our founder and fearless leader Elizabeth Alley.

I felt I'd gotten a little bit tight and precious on the trees in the first one (and, on looking back at them, lost the shape of their canopies as well), so I loosened up in the second sketch and drew just with my brush instead of starting with the pencil.