I've been continuing to work on my creation triptych lately. It's taking me a lot more than six days for sure. I've got the sky piece done (that's first proof above, but it's quite close -- I just took more yellow out of the moon).

I've been printing a lot of blue skies lately.

Below is the final of the animal panel and a later draft of Adam and Eve for the third panel. I'm still edging blue back out of the figures. You never want to cut too much at once, since you can't put it back, and I'm hoping I didn't get too extreme last night. I printed blue today and will do the top layer to find out once that dries. This is definitely the slowest one, because the blue is the middle layer instead of the top one. With the other two panels, the only other layer is a light yellow/brown, so it's less of a crisis what happens in the figures with that. The blue is the top pattern layer. With Adam and Eve, the blue can bleed into the figures, so I'm having to really proof it, check it, carve some more, proof it again. Hopefully this last round will work, because I'm hanging the show at the seminary next week, and this is my centerpiece. I'll also hang the watercolor sketches of creation (five total, the number of Wednesday chapels back in September, not the days of creation...) that inspired this print series. It will be fun to have them shown together.

I'm not posting as much as I like to right now. Between the printmaking and some deadlines and seminary work and switching to a new (to me) computer which wasn't talking to the scanner well, I haven't been either sketching or scanning in what I do nearly as much as I like to. An ongoing crisis in my park, where so much of my painting happens, has also taken a ton of time lately. It's lovely to be able to schedule my own time instead of punch a clock. When something that important surfaces, I can take a lot of time to help. But it's all piled up to make me feel pretty frantic lately and to have less art creation time than I like.

I'm strongly looking forward to a return to Paris in a couple of weeks. It will be marvelous to have three weeks solo just to walk, paint (hopefully the weather will cooperate and I can bring home enough work for a show this fall), and look at art. I do love getting away. I always work intensively when I travel, but it's the best part of the work. The book keeping, matting, schlepping work around, and anything else is eliminated, and I just get to paint. So lovely.

I spent one stellar day in the MFA last week. It started with a harp demonstration in the musical instruments collection. Neat to see the ancient instruments played and the history explained. Of course I sketched. Both the demo and the audience.

Most of the rest of the day I just looked at art. The John Singer Sargent room blew me away. I'd seen small reproductions of the huge portrait of the four sisters, but walking into the room with it in person just blew me away. I stood there with tears in my eyes for a good while. If I'd had more time, I would have sketched more, but I wanted to see my main highlights (Sargent, two Constables, Inness and the Hudson River school, a couple of just lovely Pieter Claesz still lifes) thoroughly and deeply.

I did take a lunch break in the early afternoon and sketched a bit as a palette cleanser. I also wrote down several quotes that really grabbed me from the tags. The presentation in the museum was stellar. Such a pleasant, light, open place to see the art. I loved it. I could spend days there.

I did one more quick sketch at the end because, after illustration Revelation several years ago, I was intrigued by this Medieval madonna who was conflated with the pregnant madonna on the crescent moon in Revelation.

I've gotten to several dances while I've been in New England. It's such a hotbed for national bands and callers. I've seen Notorious and Lisa Greenleaf at local dances. Just amazing. These are the people we fly down south once a year for a special weekend. And the people have been incredibly welcoming. I've never walked into a dance hall not knowing a single dancer before. People have asked me to dance right at the start, kept asking me, talked to me at breaks, and truly made me welcome. I've even very grateful.

I got a banjo lesson from Larry Unger and a ride down to the waltz in Connecticut he was playing yesterday. He also let me draw his unbelievable banjo wall. For my lesson I got to play a 1903 White Layde, and then he let me noodle around on his 1870's fretless with gut strings. Both were a joy to play.

The waltz was three hours, so I did sat out a few and did a little sketching. Each half page is one tine's worth of sketching, so about 4 minutes each.

I went to the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum yesterday. It's a lovely place with a gorgeous garden atrium and a fine collection of Sargents, who is one of my favorite painters. I had never seen his watercolors in person before, so that was a treat.

I was sad that both lighting and hanging of pieces precluded you from really seeing some of the art. A beguiling line of tiny Whistlers were way across a room, behind furniture and a rope, and in dim light. You just couldn't see them at all. Some of the Sargents were also high and dimly lit. I understand staying true to the spirit of the founder, but I wish they could improve the lighting a bit.

Also the second floor was completely closed for renovations, and the paintings don't go on alternate view until the day after I leave. So I missed the Dutch collection (what's left of it) among others. But overall it was a lovely place to wander around and see art.

One neat thing was that they have an artist in residence program. There was a really lovely exhibit of the latest one. She had done tiny, text heavy drawings of the musuem, and they fit into various small boxes. Lots of them had a library stamp on them for the date. Brilliant. Nicely in the urban sketcher style. I did a very quick sketch to remind myself of the overall feel.

I got to walk through a pine woods to visit Walden today. I had read a good but of the book on the plane on the way up here to prepare, and it was lovelier than I expected. Much, much bigger. Down south we would call it a decent sized lake instead of a pond. And it has a full beach ringing it. I was delighted to get to walk and watch clear water and pick up a few stones for friends from the water's edge. In Memphis, our water is the Big Muddy. A clear beach was an unexpected treat.

I'm in Lincoln and Concord today, and the history is breathtaking. Everything is so much older than down south. The trees are equally stunning. There's a proliferation of beeches here, and I'm a total sucker for them. And then there's this gorgeous one outside the Lincoln library, which is in itself gorgeous.

The cemeteries look different too. Our ones are replete with Victorian monuments. Here they are lovely-shaped slate headstones with interesting and different relief carvings. I did this one as the front piece for my travel sketchbook.

Here's one of the beeches on the walk back

Also drove into Concord and saw Louisa May Alcott's home.

And a place where both Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne lived and wrote

Did one more very quick sketch of an inn where George Washington slept. Sadly they no longer have banjo music on Wednesday nights.

It was the Cabin Fever dance weekend in Maryville, TN, this past weekend, and I drove east early to visit one of my favorite towns. It had been a crazy enough week that I had been having dinner in my car between meetings, so the evening I arrived I went to my favorite tapas place for a lovely salad, a couple of small pork rolls, and a flan. I had thought I was too tired to sketch, but the flan was so pretty I couldn't resist.

I enjoyed walking around town and hitting the book stores and my favorite brocante, the Downtown Market. It's an indoor flea/antique market with several lovely clothing vendors. I found two cashmere sweaters, real silk pajama pants, and  red velvet coat that makes me feel like a movie star. I also sketched my favorite trees there while I was wandering around.

For purely self indulgent reasons, I'm going to include this photo from the weekend, taken by Lanny Huddleston. This is my favorite way to find joy when I'm not making art, and Charlie Zisette, with his marvelous dips, made me feel just lovely this weekend. Sometimes it's good for me to move away from the micro movements of carving prints and move my whole body instead. This is the very best way I know how to do that.

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.

I also got back to Shakertown in Kentucky, one of my favorite places to sketch.

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. 

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.