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I made it! Only because I had two different stints in waiting rooms last week. The #oneweek100people challenge could not have been better timed for me. Quite often I'm working at home by myself and see a couple of people, tops. But this particular week I was up and out, and I added in a park trip and a little sketching in the passenger seat one evening to make sure I got my quota, since I was so close. It was fun to have a challenge to mix up my sketching a bit.
I kept them all pretty small and quick, but I did one longer one to celebrate #100. I figured it would be right to end with "my" special person...
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There's an Urban Sketchers challenge to draw 100 people in one week this week. In a stroke of good luck, it is also my week to sit for extended periods in waiting rooms twice this week. I'm delighted to have a challenge to make the time pass and feel productive. I've been wanting to practice people more for my illustration work anyway, so I went for it this morning. I managed to make it to 54 in one day. I asked Elizabeth Alley if that was cheating, and she said, no, it's winning! So yay.
I did all of these with my latest favorite pen for sketching (except for my lovely Pelican I'm using for the Mr. Darcy book, which lives on my desk now) -- a Lamy safari pen with smokey gray ink inside. The darker, wider bits are a brush pen with some diluted Sumi ink inside.
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Every once in a while I'm lucky enough to go out for a sketching dinner with some like-minded girlfriends. We catch up on our lives, eat good food, talk about art, and draw while we're doing all of it. Last night we went to Next Door in Crosstown. I had the meatballs, and they were utterly delicious. I've traveled a lot over the last year, and it's good to have relaxed, sit down, face time with friends I value.
I'm also still working on drawing people more, so I did a bit of that too.
I'm also still working on drawing people more, so I did a bit of that too.
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I've been doing some random sketches scattered into the main work of book manuscript and painting. Here are a batch of them, including two different trips to Muddy's bake shop. Cupcakes were called for.
I've also been working more intentionally on people practice lately. I have to get myself out of the house and away from my easel to do this, though.
I've also been working more intentionally on people practice lately. I have to get myself out of the house and away from my easel to do this, though.
Plus I always enjoy sketching my tea things.
One last one. Memphis Urban Sketchers met at Cleveland Street Flea Market (a recent victim of gentrification) on its last weekend. I've bought many clothes there, including cowboy boots and my current favorite sweater, plus my dvd player and vacuum cleaner. It was a great community of folks every weekend and an irreplaceable personal resource. I am so very sad to lose it.
One last one. Memphis Urban Sketchers met at Cleveland Street Flea Market (a recent victim of gentrification) on its last weekend. I've bought many clothes there, including cowboy boots and my current favorite sweater, plus my dvd player and vacuum cleaner. It was a great community of folks every weekend and an irreplaceable personal resource. I am so very sad to lose it.
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It's been a busy show week here. My show got on the walls at Eclectic Eye and will be there until January 3rd, and we had a lovely opening thrown for us by the EE folks. I haven't had anyone throw me an opening where I didn't have to lug my own wine and snacks over in ages, with the one notable exception of Dixon a couple of years ago (which was such another category of exhibition that it almost doesn't count, but in an amazing sort of way). So it was a great evening. But with the framing and hanging and publicizing and tag making and all the other stuff you do around a show, I made very little art this past week. So it was marvelous to get out Saturday morning with the Memphis Urban Sketchers and just draw and see people.
I tend to get carried away and do a WHOLE WATERCOLOR PAGE most of the time in my sketchbook. I was feeling (maybe leftover from inktober) the urge to be a little more minimal and a little more line oriented this time, so I tried hard to restrain myself.
I tend to get carried away and do a WHOLE WATERCOLOR PAGE most of the time in my sketchbook. I was feeling (maybe leftover from inktober) the urge to be a little more minimal and a little more line oriented this time, so I tried hard to restrain myself.
It was a misty, drizzly morning, and it felt a lot like sketching in Paris or Washington State. I spent a lot of it under my umbrella, balancing that as I sketched, and you can see how the rain drops caught me anyway in the last sketch. I was so impressed that we had a good group of folks coming out on such a morning.
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Memphis Urban Sketchers met at the new/old Sears Crosstown building this morning. An amazing array of agencies came together to renovate this long vacant building into a vertical village. I can walk there from my house, and it is stunning. A ton of restaurants, a YMCA, the Church Health Center (a big deal here in Memphis), a high school to come, various businesses and non profits, all sharing one vast roof in a building with enormous windows. I've got a few friends now living in the apartments and had been before, but it was fun to meet the crew and hang out in the atrium and sketch.
I did a couple of sketches with fair concentration, and then as the meeting time was approaching, I did a couple of quick ones just to fill the time. In honor of "Inktober," I had bought a Pigma graphic 1 pen to try (see the top two sketches) which our founder Elizabeth Alley always calls her #fatpen. I think I mostly like my fountain pens better, but it's nice to have a fatter pen that doesn't melt with watercolor for times when I'd like that. It definitely has a more graphic feeling than using my usual water soluble ink. It's fun to try new things.
I did a couple of sketches with fair concentration, and then as the meeting time was approaching, I did a couple of quick ones just to fill the time. In honor of "Inktober," I had bought a Pigma graphic 1 pen to try (see the top two sketches) which our founder Elizabeth Alley always calls her #fatpen. I think I mostly like my fountain pens better, but it's nice to have a fatter pen that doesn't melt with watercolor for times when I'd like that. It definitely has a more graphic feeling than using my usual water soluble ink. It's fun to try new things.
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The Memphis Urban Sketchers met at Rhodes college in their gorgeous library on Saturday. I'm a sucker for celestial imagery, and I love their ceiling with stars and the crescent moon. It's a lovely spot to sit, with big windows and big comfortable chairs.
Elizabeth Alley and I ended up sketching each other simultaneously, which was neat when we compared notes later and realized.
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I will have two calendars this year, and they're being set up by the printer right now. I'll have some at my fall shows (Paris watercolors at Playhouse on the Square in November/December, at the Pink Palace Crafts fair, and at my open studio show with Melissa Bridgman Dec. 10-11), but I don't order too many extras. If you know for sure you'd like one, your best option is to pre-order online through my Square store so yours gets included in the order to my printer. They're 8.5x11" and $18, just like last year. You can order for shipping or to pick up, but please only use the pick up option if you're planning to come get one at one of my shows or in midtown Memphis. Orders are open right now and will affect how many I order to be printed.
Here is the full set of images (all new and all done on site ) from this year's My Memphis Calendar:
And here are all the Paris images, again all done this year sitting on the sidewalk, or, when I was very lucky, at a cafe table with a little tea.
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I got in at dinner time last night, slept heavily, and had an art show to go to today. I have no room to complain, since my heroic potter friend Melissa Bridgman did all the work. Our work shows well together, and she wanted to split a booth even though I wouldn't be home yet. So she hauled down all my work, set it up, and manned the booth for the weekend. What a great friend.
I did this sketch this afternoon as I was finally watching the booth so she could go be heroic for someone else. My friend Christian Stanfield of the Side Street Steppers had speakers set up down there for his wind up gramophone dj show, and he ended up with a bee swarm inside one of them. Melissa also happens to be a beekeeper, so she went home to get her gear to try to help. I left them to it after we had the booth packed up and came home still in a jet lag haze. Hopefully I'll be more fully on top of things tomorrow.
The Memphis Urban Sketchers sketched at the fair on Saturday, and I was sorry to miss them. It felt good to do one quick one today.
I did this sketch this afternoon as I was finally watching the booth so she could go be heroic for someone else. My friend Christian Stanfield of the Side Street Steppers had speakers set up down there for his wind up gramophone dj show, and he ended up with a bee swarm inside one of them. Melissa also happens to be a beekeeper, so she went home to get her gear to try to help. I left them to it after we had the booth packed up and came home still in a jet lag haze. Hopefully I'll be more fully on top of things tomorrow.
The Memphis Urban Sketchers sketched at the fair on Saturday, and I was sorry to miss them. It felt good to do one quick one today.
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I've been watching my fellow sketchers post end of the year recaps of their sketch books, and I decided that would be fun for me as well. I'm still new to keeping more intensive and regular sketch journals. I only started seriously in the fall of 2013, and I find that it has immensely enriched the entire spectrum of my work. I'm making prints and paintings from scenes I never would have expected to make more serious art from, but once I had a sketch I liked, the image nagged at me and demanded further attention.
I also love both the casual and narrative aspects of keeping a sketch journal. It's fun to tell more of a story than is possible in a free standing painting or print.
At right is my sketch of the sketchbooks I used in 2015. Three of them are partial, and five (the small ones) exclusively from 2015.
Here are the highlights from each of my sketchbooks for the year.
My earliest is the last Stillman and Birns that I used. I like their paper a lot, but the 6x8 size is only in spiral bound, and scanning in sketches across that gap is challenging. Their bound sketchbooks open up to a pretty square format, and I really prefer a rectangle to work in. So this was my last hurrah for their books. The first half is the second half of my 2014 Paris trip, but I kept working in it on my return, and a good third of it was 2015. A couple of my favorites were a marker sketch of Mud Island and sketches of Mr. Darcy.
My first handbook journal, January to April, hooked me on their books. They're a great size to fit in my purse, take water media nicely, and even have a small pocket in the back for museum tickets and other momentoes. This was my hands down favorite page from that one.
My April to June sketchbook saw the NYC trip with my sister in April. It was very much a theater trip for her birthday celebration.
I also got back to Shakertown in Kentucky, one of my favorite places to sketch.
My June to October sketchbook has my favorite cat in the world on my knee and one of my more successful marker sketches.
During that period I also went to Amsterdam and spent a week sketching both the city and inside the museums.
And then on to Paris for one utterly beautiful week.
My larger handbook watercolor journal is mostly trees. It has some pages from 2014, some from 2015, and I'm using it much more slowly since I don't have it in my purse all the time. Here's the page that was open in my Dixon exhibition. I did a print from this for the show.
I ended up doing a number of prints from the sketches in these books and may well do more. It's good to have the raw material.
Finally, I'm two thirds of the way through the small handbook I started in October. Sketching ground mostly to a halt during my really busy pre-Christmas season, but I got over the Dixon at the end of the holiday to sketch my show, which was the single biggest moment of my career.
I also (always) continue to sketch my beloved Mr. Darcy.
