The national Metal Museum has expanded in Memphis into the old Memphis College of Art building, which is right in the middle of my favorite park, four blocks away. If we had to lose MCA, this is the best possible outcome. They've done beautiful renovations. The building looks spectacular, and the new museum across several floors has space to show their collection in a way their old museum building didn't. I love that they will be so much more available to people. Their original space, still occupied by apprentices, is a gorgeous bluff right over the river, but it's out of the way and confusing to find even before TDOT took away their expressway exit. And having communal art making back in Rust Hall (ironically the name even before the Metal Museum moved in) is a great joy. They also have the best damn gift shop in the city.

Very kindly they welcomed our Memphis Urban Sketchers group an hour before they open to the public so we could keep our traditional 10-12 window. The opening, which we sketched from the outside last month, was so crowded and so hot that I didn't even make it into the building. It was so great to wander around where I've taken classes off and on throughout my life, see the care they've taken with it, and get to sketch again.

I often start with something complex and get way too tight on it. I was super drawn to the intricate lobby, but I spotted a spare hallway with a couple of head statues at the end and decided it would be a good exercise to start simple and work my way up to the lobby. It ended up working great. I used a dip pen with a new purple-ish grey ink from my recent St. Louis trip. It's Wearinguel Therese Raquin. I'm looking for a replacement for my favorite limited edition Diamine Chopin, which is a little cooler and a little darker than this one. It's not quite as nice, but I liked the way it interacted with the paint.

Then I made my way upstairs and took on the funky architecture. My lines got off almost immediately, but in my biggest sketchbook with the looseness of the dip pen, I just went with it and ended up really happy with the sketch. It's dip pen with my other new Wearingueul ink Inferno. This is my new favorite. It's not quite black and has a little variation on the page. It also does ok with paint. Full on black just makes a total puddle, but I've been happy how this one accepts watercolor.

It was a great day with friends, and then I did a little Christmas shopping in the gift shop on the way out and also found a gorgeous copper moon necklace for myself. A really happy day.

Some combination of using a dip pen with an open ink pot and sketching out in the field with wind and/or uncertain conditions means that my sketchbook usually has more blots and smudges than I had originally hoped. That's the case for both of these.

I went back to sketch my tree the next day, with the destruction work still ongoing, and I chose a spot at a different angle with the Higbee memorial in the foreground instead of the back. This is still the Inferno ink, that felt right for the moment, and a snub nosed dip pen. I definitely dropped one enormous blob of ink toward the bottom right, but otherwise I managed to control things pretty well. It felt important to sit with her through that process.

Then the heat dome finally broke (50 straight days over 90 degrees for Memphis, second only to the crazy summer of 1980), and the air pollution mercifully cleared out, and for the first time in weeks I felt I could sit out on a patio without risking all the health conditions that pollution brings on. I celebrated with a last minute stop at one of my favorite local restaurants on the way home from picking Henry up at daycare. He's a lovely plus one. And fortunately I had my sketching gear in the car, not just my tiny purse sketchbook, since I hadn't thought to bring a book for company. It felt better to sketch anyway. I didn't dive into watercolor, and since I was thinking just line I went ahead with the Diamine Ancient Copper ink that I'm always drawn to but that turns into a hot mess very quickly with paint on top. I really do love it, but I have to pick my places. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening all the way around.