Elmore had a week-long class recently at Country Workshops, a woodworking school in North Carolina. It's a place we go at least once a year (when we're very lucky, we house sit in the fall), and it's a fruitful place for my artwork. I've done many paintings and prints on the farm over the years.

This year I was more focused on the prints I already had in progress, so I didn't paint on site as much as I usually do, but Nancy Darrell and I went out sketching together a couple of mornings. Nancy is a potter turned printmaker, and she's the wonderful friend I got my proof press from earlier this year.

We met halfway down the driveway one morning and stalled out here at this row of trees I've been drawing and painting for years. I never quite capture what I hope to, but I keep trying.

Another morning I went to get my sketching things to paint the pear tree that had been catching my eye all week. It's just outside the open air pavilion where the students at the school (and me, when I'm lucky enough to be there) take their meals.

I also did a sketch of Nancy while we were out together, and I did the two watercolors of the French Broad river that I already posted here. I'm working on the print now, and I'm happy to bring a little more North Carolina landscape into my work here at home.