It's been a sunny and unusually warm start to the year, and I'm taking advantage with some sketching walks in the old forest. It feels good to get out, let Henry explore a bit, and enjoy a place I love so much. This first is Diamine Golden Brown ink with watercolor. I've done a couple of different graphic essays with those materials, but I recently refilled a pen that had dried up, and I'm planning to use it more. The ink is dark enough to show a line but light enough to meld with the paint without making a muddy mess. Really perfect.

I did a super quick one New Year's Eve. It was late in the afternoon, and I mostly just painted the sunshine itself. The sun and owls and a feel good day for me felt like a good omen for the coming year. One of those moments I wanted to memorialize for later in my sketchbook.

Here are a couple of older ones, one complete with a few raindrops as I was finishing. That's the Diamine Ancient Copper ink again, and the last one is Inktense pencils with watercolor on top.

I'm on a new PT program and trying not to undercut it by doing too much while I'm building slowly there, but I miss the forest. My PT folks said to go slowly and sit down at intervals and rest, so hey! Sketching! I did two yesterday. The crazy Ancient Copper Diamine ink at the top. It always scans even a little hotter than it is in person. I never find quite the right thing to do with it, but I love it anyway. I put some pencils behind it out on the trail, but when I got it home it didn't feel right, so I added watercolor washes in the background, leaving a bright contrast with the central focus of the trees.

Then it was so sunny and warm that Henry and I headed out to the Greensward to sit on a picnic table and enjoy the day. I ended up doing a second sketch in Inktense pencils with watercolor on top. It's always the trees for me.

I finally finished the second snow tree from my January photos. They're crazy slow to carve, and I took a long break, but it felt good to get back to it in time for the holiday markets. This one is a companion piece for the first one I carved, both of them on 14x11" paper. Modest sized but intricate. (I would still be carving an 18x24" block this time next year if I'd tried something this detailed.) It was nice to pull back to a basic black and white design instead of trying to line up multiple blocks. I'm thinking about some more trees to keep them company, but in the meantime, I'm working on my delta angel, which is a bit bigger but less complex.

Here's the first of the snow trees.

I've been in a walking in the afternoon rhythm lately, and then this week the sunset jumped backwards so it turns out that golden hour is now about 3:40pm. I am at least getting some good slanted light sketches. I've been mixing up materials, with a dip pen and watercolor, Inktense pencils and watercolor, my new Lamy fountain pen with brown ink, water soluble graphite (which I paint on with a brush from a tin), and back to the dip pen with that lovely warm Diamine golden brown ink that kind of melts into the paint. That last one is from earlier, but I inadvertantly saved it in the wrong folder, so it didn't make it onto the blog before now. I'm not sure if all the materials are keeping me loose or keeping me from developing a groove, but I'm having fun, so here we are for now. I'm just reaching for whatever feels right for the scene.

Memphis Urban Sketchers went back to Elmwood on Saturday, and I got fired up and have visited a couple of more times this week. I'm pondering a new graphic essay on Memphis history, and there's a TON of it here. It feels nice to be excited about a new project again.

I did that top, broader landscape first, in my biggest sketchbook. It's fun to challenge myself on size sometimes, but I think I got sucked into overworking parts of it. Predictably the sketch I liked better was this one of the Falls monument in two different color inks with a dip pen and just a touch of watercolor on top. Fast and loose. I also just love that monument.

I went back the next day and did a little rainy day car sketching in my smallest sketchbook. I wanted to try to the Falls woman head on, and I did a super quick sketch of Mattie Stepfenson's monument too.

I took a quick trip this week to Nashville for an appointment at the long covid clinic there, and I found lodging at the Skarritt Bennett center. It was a college campus until it closed in 1988 and is now a conference center with lodging in the old dorms. The rooms were large and comfortable, if clearly former dorm rooms, and it was crazy reasonable, and the campus is absolutely gorgeous. And so quiet, right next to Vanderbilt. It's the furthest I've been able to drive since January, and I didn't do much at all except hang out on the campus. I took my own food (which I often do when I travel), so I spent all my extra time sketching.

I love this neo-gothic style of architecture. My lifelong church Idlewild Pres is in this same vein and shares a quarry with Rhodes. This place apparently shared an architect with Rhodes and had slightly blonder stone, but it felt like a mini-me of a familiar place. The arches and slate roofs and the glow of the stone all called me. In spite of my familiarity, it took me a few sketches to get my sea legs with this place. The first two were in Inktense pencils, which I've been enjoying lately. I think there just wasn't enough definition in that first one, with the wide view of so many different elements. The pencils felt better in the more limited sketch of a pair of arches.

The next day I used Diamine golden brown ink, which melts into the paint, and it fuzzed up some of the lighter elements of the drawing, but the color and overall feel did great. But I'd forgotten to refill this pen before I left, so I switched to a waterproof brown ink after.

I've been enjoying that ink a lot lately, but somehow the next one felt a little more stiff.I think it worked better on the last sketch, a fast one at twilight of a magnificent cherry tree. I really enjoyed my stay and hope to go back again soonish and visit the museums I didn't have the time to get to this trip.

I walked through the entrance hall and stepped out into the first cloister and fell immediately in love. I had only spent a handful of days in New York and had never before had the time to take the longer ride up to the north end of Manhatten. The Cloisters is a bit remote, which I am sure protects it from the worst of the crowds, but it is so worth the journey.

In my more restricted last few years I have been missing Europe badly. I love traveling places where the history is old. I love being surrounded by Medieval buildings and carvings. The Cloisters was such a balm for me. It's a crazy mish-mash, but it is so beautifully done that it utterly works. Barnard, a sculptor, lived and worked on the continent in the early 20th C and became a compulsive collector of Medieval carved stone. He bought a whole chapter house in France that had been reduced to usage as a barn. He bought three cloisters, none of them complete but with enough original pieces to put together evocative and beautiful spaces. Every door and doorway in the place is historical and different, but the stone structure that houses all of these disparate pieces is so simple and sensitive that it all feels almost inevitable. Rockefeller saw Barnard's collection and donated this museum that brought all those pieces into one living building. I miss the time when billionaires built museums and schools and libraries, but we continue to be richer as a society because of the ones who did.

Another thing that feels European is the way the indoor and outdoor spaces flow together. I am still masking in public, and it was such joy to have so much of the museum open air. There are some lovely galleries too, plus one stunning Robert Campin altarpiece that I had studied in college and was surprised to meet face to face. The windows, like the doorways, set panels of Medieval glass into simple, diamond shaped glass panes with glimpses of the Hudson through the gaps. The stained glass is alive and vital in a way that it never is that funeral home way of artificial lighting from behind. It doesn't all match, but it harmonizes. I truly fell in love with the whole place. My dad had been telling me for years that I needed to go, but I was never in the city for more than a day or two. I'm so glad I made it, and I will definitely be back.

The collection of artwork is gorgeous too. I fell in love with this small English saint and sketched him in my smaller purse sketchbook. I also had a lovely long conversation with a summer intern at the Met (what a dream job!) in the unicorn tapestries room. She's an artist as well, and it was so fun to hear about her big adventure of a summer and share our work a bit. I love traveling solo because it leaves space for me to meet and spend time with people instead of being more walled in a bubble of companions.

The first sketch was the cloister with the cafe. I loved being able to get a nice salad and real tea and sit at a table and draw the beautiful garden in the center. After lunch I came back up and drew the biggest cloister that was the first thing I saw. I love the twisted trees in this one. It's only a third the size of its original, but they made it the size that matched the capitals they had, and they filled in some of the columns and surrounding walls with stone from the same quarry. I was on a bench back underneath the overhang, and the colors got a little bright on me. I also think I was just so uplifted that I leaned into the pinks and purples. I toned it down a bit later in better light, but it's still a slightly over the top emotional response to the beauty of the place, and that's ok.

I spent all day there and just missed the bus as I walked out. There was a lot of traffic, so a group of us waited a bit for the next one, and I did a much quicker sketch of the outside, using ink and a red watercolor marker since I was fully outside the museum. To end the day I pulled out my smaller sketchbook again and sketched a couple of the fellow would-be passengers. It was a congenial group and a marvelous day.

Friday night, at the beginning of the heat, Christina and I headed to Memphis Pizza Cafe, which has a shady back deck with trees and ceiling fans. It was really perfect. We've met there a couple of times, and it's great for Henry accompanying us. I also like that I can get a fresh crunchy salad and one good sized slice of pizza without ordering a whole pie. And they have meatball pizza. We had a good visit and a nice sketching session.

As a bonus, here's my sketch from last time we went, sitting a little closer to the tree and seeing the whole arch.

I'm still playing with the limited group of Inktense pencils in my dedicated forest sketching kit. This sketch was started with a middle green pencil (which you can see in the date), a light sepia one (mostly in the path) and a "bark" one, the tree trunks, that is vividly warm with water added on top, almost a reddish purple, but which feels more natural than a solid black. I think I'd like to add one dark blue green pencil for forest depth quickly (which I did with paint here), but it's fun to have to make choices with a limited palette.

I am really struggling with fatigue this spring. I've had long covid for two and a half years, but it's especially bad just now. I miss traveling and seeing friends, but I've decided that if I can't go far, I can at least go deep. I've made myself a special Old Forest backpack to keep the car and always have (since I'm driving to the forest instead of walking there just now). It's got a smaller sketchbook, a more limited set of sketching equipment, a waterproof inflatable cushion to sit on (key with the wet week we're having), and a set of binoculars a friend gave me a few years ago. The top sketch is actually my full sized sketchbook (5.5x8"). I had my full kit so the Lamy pen had Diamine Earl Grey ink in it. It's not waterproof, and I like how that gentler color melts into the paint. Black ink would just make a puddle, but I like to draw with grey, brown, or green that will play with the paint.

Below are two from my new kit. It's a sketchbook I had started but but not gotten very far in. It's a 5.5" square that opens out to a more full landscape format. This was my go-to size for years, but I've gone a little bigger recently. It's fun to mix up shapes though. My friend Elizabeth knows I like Inktense water soluble pencils and gave me a bundle she was no longer using. I put several basic colors in this new sketch kit and then used a bit of watercolor on top.

This morning Henry and I were in the forest when a fellow walker called me off a few paces onto a side trail. He'd spotted a barred owl. I saw one last week before I had my sketching kit, so I was delighted to get a second chance at sketching one. She sat and watched us for ages, not too far off the ground. I used the black and the bark Intense pencils with just a little water on top to activate them, no extra paint. She finally took off, but I got to really study her with binoculars and pencil both. Owls have a prehistoric and a magical feeling, like you've stepped slightly into a different world. I'm grateful every time I get to see one.