The final reason to love visiting art friends is that (especially when they're generous to a fault), you end up taking a bit of beauty home with you. I totally fell for Judi's bunny (I've got a thing for bunnies anyway), which was in the room I stayed in. She caught his expression perfectly, and I loved the green background. He's now living just beside my bed where I see him every night and every morning, and he makes me smile. I also came home with a gorgeous, wood fired teacup of John's. The photo is too dark to show off its full beauty, but there are flashes of blue inside and out from the ash, and it fits my hand so well. I do love this photo of tea on their deck. They live up a forestry road, and it was the perfect getaway. I'm so grateful for this job where I get to do things I love surrounded by the best people.

I’m being able to revisit various special places this spring. I used to go to Mountain View and Calico Rock in the Arkansas Ozarks pretty frequently, but it’s been a good while since I got over there. My potter friend Judi Munn (she and her husband are the resident potters at the Ozark Folk Center) is also in an art guild there, and she invited me to teach a sketching workshop. I loaded up an array of materials, a stack of inspirational books, another stack of my own journals, and I spent the day with a crew of lovely and dedicated artists. We had a great time, and they were so welcoming of me. I love getting to go talk about doing what I love and all the different fun things you can use to sketch. Then Judi and I ended up going to City Rock Bluff outside Calico Rock to sketch. I used to paint here regularly, but it had been several years. It felt so good to step out onto that broad bluff and again and look down on a beautiful world. And it was the perfect, quiet end of the day. Below is Judi sketching the view.

I got to revisit Tower Grove Park last weekend for the first time in several years. It's always a muse for me, one of my deeply happy places, and I was delighted to have a full afternoon to wander with my sketchbook. I've painted the Chinese pavilion before, and this time I'm at least contemplating a print of it. The park has two gorgeous trees I love at two opposite ends. I checked on my my favorite sycamore in the bird sanctuary. She is old and has deep pockets, but she's a beautifully hospitable tree. The first one I ever fell in love with in a must-touch, spend-time-with-her kind of way.

At the other end of the park is a copper beech I've sketched and painted many times. More traditionally photogenic, with whorls and spirals all over the trunk. I did a larger watercolor of this one, fighting gnats, but so worth it.

After doing two in gouache, there wasn't much time, so I did one fast, small watercolor just to have the day in my journal as well. I was missing line and wanted to play with my green ink a little too. The two gouaches are on freestanding Kraft brown paper. It's always fun to sketch Elizabeth in her nifty sketching hat.

My friend and sketching inspiration Elizabeth Alley was giving a lecture on sketching at a conference and wanted to practice first on some friends. Naturally several of us sketched her as well as listening, and I took some notes too, since it was really interesting information. Plus I never pass up a chance to draw a Muddy's cupcake, which she kindly provided for the group.

I saw outside the Walter Anderson Museum of Art last Thursday before my opening and drew the tunnel of live oaks that reach across Washington Avenue. I love the fern covered lives oaks of the Deep South. They have a character no other tree has. So incredibly expressive. I took a few photos of my process as I was doing this one so you could see how I work.

After that I forgot and just dove into the paint. It’s hard for me to think about anything else when I’m painting.

It was art drop off yesterday at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, and the opening isn’t until tomorrow, so today I roamed around, sketched, sat in the sunshine, and (of course) bought a teapot and a few things at Shearwater Pottery, the family business Anderson grew up in that’s still being run by family members. I’ve only ever just had a day here before, so it was a real luxury to walk around town with my sketchbooks and no schedule. Plus it was a flat out beautiful day — with rain likely tomorrow, so I’ll spend more time in the museum then, I imagine.

It has been several years since I saw pelicans, and I love them. It was fun to sit down by the water and just watch the birds for a bit.

The weather has been delicious for getting out and sketching lately. Memphis Urban Sketchers met at Elmwood, the historic cemetery in Memphis, which is one of my favorite places to go. I love the enormous magnolias paired with the angels and upright monuments. And then the Memphis Urban Sketchers exhibition started at Dixon, so for a third time, I have art in that beautiful museum. I went to check it out and see the large show of the usually in storage permanent collection there (they have much more than they can show regularly and still have traveling exhibit space). Of course I had to sketch While I was there. I’m always drawn to Ceres. I just can’t resist her graceful curves. And the tulips are fabulous right now.

I had a lovely evening this week having dinner with two artist friends. Christina cooked a yummy Mexican chicken soup for us, and Elizabeth brought homemade cake. That alone would have been awesome, but talking shop, visiting more generally about our lives, and hanging out sketching after eating made it a perfect night. As did sitting in Christina's marvelous mid-century house that always makes me want to come home and get my own in better order. I'm grateful to Memphis for having an art community that supports and roots for each other.

I did most of a still life today. I’ll look at it tomorrow with fresh eyes, and I’m sure there will be some adjustments, but it’s close to what I had hoped (assuming I still like the wallpaper tommorrow — that’s the big variable). It’s from a farmers market bouquet I bought on Saturday that I couldn’t stop looking at and wanting to paint. Last night, after finally finishing and submitting (to a first place, anyway) the graphic essay, I treated myself by doing a quick watercolor of the bouquet after dinner and before heading to my jam. I don’t too often splurge on buying flowers, and it’s fun to make them more immortal in my sketch journal when I do. That way I can enjoy them all over again whenever I open the book.

This sketch went well, and I was really charmed by the whole bouquet. It reminds me of the small, last still lifes Manet painted in bed as he was dying. His friends would bring him bouquets, and he would paint them lying there. That’s what I hope for myself — to make art right up till my last days. And these pieces are absolutely exquisite and have some gorgeously handled glass as well as the flowers. I’ll never have that facility, but it was fun to try my own version. After thinking about the sketch overnight, I decided to do a full on oil today.

I drew it out on the canvas just after breakfast, and then I went on my walk to be able to come back to it with fresh eyes and make any adjustments necessary before committing to paint. Then I painted straight through till after my regular dinner time. I’m exhausted, but it’s deeply good to have a whole day to dive into art and just paint until I get to the natural end.