There are a series of covered passages with shops and restaurants and tea rooms in Paris. They were built in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and they remain private roads with private owners but are mostly open to pedestrians. This one, Vivienne Gallery, was built in 1826. I love the vaulted window roof, the mosaic floors, the architectural curlicues.

It's also a great place to head on a rainy day, which is what happened with me yesterday. I had a slow start, but when the rain slowed to drizzle, I took a long walk and ended up here to paint.

While I was sketching at the Marche d'Aligre the first morning, I met not one but two urban sketchers, and it so happened that the Paris group had a meet up the following day.

I had met up with them when I was here last spring, and it was fun to get to go out with them again. We spent the afternoon drawing in the Luxembourg Gardens, and I took my full watercolor kit for the occasion. I loved the light filtering down through the trees, and it was fun to sketch a little, chat a little, sketch and chat some more.

My jet lag caught up with me before the final meet up (not till 6), so I headed home because I had a long way to go. But it was fun to have such a social weekend right off the bat.

So I made it. My first full day was a Saturday, and my friend Rene Miller told me he was playing at the Marche dÁligre. He and his part time musical partner Stephen Harrison had been so kind to me last year and really made Paris a welcoming place for me when I was here for a good while on my own.

So I turned out to listen to him (top right), and I just hung out and sketched the market while listening to Rene. I went light and didn't take my full watercolor kit for the first day. I'm still experimenting with these markers in more of a sketching format than a painting one. I'm finding it's an uneven result for me so far, but I hope to improve this trip.

I continued to walk and sketch in the afternoon. This is the first day's set. The very last one has a watercolor wash sky along with the pens. Otherwise, it's all marker and brush pen and fountain pen.

I've still got a number of prints in progress right now. I've been trying to get a lot of them drawn out and maybe carved before I leave on my next trip, so I haven't been moving just one or two from start to completion before I begin the next, which is my more normal way of working.

This print is the road down from the moor and back into the village of Levisham. I walked it at least once a day while I was there, and the final day I realized I really needed to do a watercolor of it before I left.

I'm still trying to streamline the printing process, so you can see that with the clouds being fairly removed from the ground, I can ink the grey on the same block as the green without the two getting mixed. Then I deliberately mix the yellow into the green for a little more depth and interest. Below on the left is the block with the ink rolled on it, and on the right is the print on paper.

Once the color part of the print dries, I can print the "key" block on top. That's the block with the main image and pattern, usually done in a darker color. I tried this print on several different shades of paper, so below are those color tests. Warm grey, natural, and a fawn (light tan) on the right.

Here is the color proof. I've done a bit more carving to keep the yellow from creeping into the sky and to get some more of the Queen Anne's lace staying white, but I haven't gotten a chance to print a final version yet. And I won't for a while. I'm lucky enough to be house sitting in Paris again this year (I'm so grateful they're having me back), so I'm off tomorrow. I'll be posting photos of sketches and watercolors from there. I'm glad I got most of the England prints I wanted to done, and hopefully I can pick up the threads of the few I still want to do when I get home. It's been a good month to be home working like crazy, but I'm excited about the next trip now.

I've been in a bit of a frenzy since getting home from England. I have a number of prints dancing in my head, based on the watercolors I did on site while I was traveling, and I'm trying to get them out and carved before they dim and vanish. I occasionally have these strong bursts of creativity on a certain project, and I try to ride them as long and well as I can. They usually end up in work I'm pleased with.

Here's the proof of the first one. I haven't tried it in color yet -- I got distracted carving the next two instead. But I just bought a whole sheaf of paper today to start printing on.

Here are color tests for the second block, a row of trees I kept painting along the top of Levisham moor. I'm trying it on different colored papers (natural, grey, and blue), and I may print on a variety of colors, as per my friend Peter Ceren's suggestion.

Drawing out the third block, this one from my day in Derbyshire.

I got an email from Cape Resorts in Cape May yesterday. They've got summer juice specials and a tomato summer sandwich menu and needed some illustrations. I love doing still lifes, and more and more I love the illustration piece of my job, so this was a welcome assignment. I hit the produce section of the grocery yesterday and took the day today to just focus in and do a series of quick watercolors, rotating the produce in and out of the various compositions.

Here's what my work table looked like.

I wasn't really planning to do them all today, but I've been working pretty obsessively ever since getting home from England last week (despite the utter absence of proof of that here....). I've been working on prints from my watercolors, and it made sense to just take a day to do this project, get it out of the way (since it was rolling along nicely) and be able to get back to the prints tomorrow with minimal interruption. If the work wasn't flowing I would have taken more time over it.

I hit streaks where I work and think about work at all hours, and then I take some time between streaks to recharge. That's the beauty of being self employed. Ideally the productive streaks line up with projects and shows. Having a fallow period with deadlines looming is pretty nerve wracking, but I've gotten better at focusing in and staying on track with projects over the last few years.

I ended up doing six small (6x8") still lifes today. Here are the rest. Tomorrow I'll get back to England, artistically anyway.

In spite of a partly rainy day (necessitating a nap, darn it), I did four paintings my last day in Levisham. I did this first one from the road above Levisham. You can see the village down in the valley between the trees. It was a goodish uphill pull for this Delta girl to get up to the top of the moor, but nothing like scaling the side from scratch.

I did two more actually out on the moor, and I felt like I'd managed to paint everything I really needed to at that point. That's a good feeling to have as you're getting ready to move on. In Derbyshire I left with a pang, knowing there was much more I wanted to paint in and around Hartington. But it's also never wrong to have a good reason to go back.

Then on my way home, there was a vivid band of purple underneath this row of trees I'd kept looking at, so I perched precariously on a stone wall to give me enough elevation to paint it. I kept seeing things standing up that I wanted to paint but couldn't see from sitting on the ground. Someone needs to invent a lightweight folding bar stool for plein air painters to get our sight lines up over the wheatfields.

It was a good way to end the painting intensive portion of the trip. I plan to play tourist more in York and London. It's really the countryside I wanted to paint.

My most excellent father is taking his bride, my sister, and me to England. Given that he's now married to our favorite high school English teacher, who got all three of us hooked on Jane Austen, we're going to do a bit of a tour of JA country -- places she lived, worked, wrote about, and died.  I did a similar trip many years ago with my best friend from high school who wrote her master's thesis on JA, and I'm looking forward to revisiting some of the places we went.

I'm also going to go north on my own and paint for a week in Yorkshire. I fell in love with the North York moors when I was an exchange student in college, and I've been trying to get back ever since I started to seriously paint outdoors when I traveled. I can't wait.

Above is the stack of watercolor blocks I bought for the trip, and with luck I'll have to buy one or two more....

Watch this space for updates from the trip. I'll be posting snapshots of my work as I go along.

Tower Grove Park, one of my most favorite parks (and places) had an anniversary picnic on Sunday, and the board of directors put on an art show to go with the food trucks and concerts. What a beautiful idea. I really wanted to go, since I love making art in that park, and it was fun to get to show it right there. Thanks to the park board for letting this Memphis girl crash the St. Louis party.

My friend and fellow artist Bonnie Hopkins was kind enough to ride up with me for the night, help tote stuff, and just keep me company. I was so glad to have her along. And I was also really grateful for seven of my dance friends who made the effort to come out on a Sunday night and support me.

In between visits, I did a small sketch of one of the original composers' busts that circled the 1870's band stand in the park. It's now inside the Piper Palm House, where the exhibition was.

Below are two sketches that were in the show of the Palm House. It was originally a Victorian greenhouse to supply plants for the park, complete with stained glass at the top of the arched windows. Amazing. They have a Sunday brunch inside it each week, and otherwise it can be rented for weddings to support the upkeep of the park. A perfect venue.

More of my Tower Grove watercolors are here, along with a bunch from the Missouri Botanical Gardens as well, both of which were founded in the 1870's by Henry Shaw, one of my heroes.

Karen Jackson and Dan Klarmann were two of the friends who stopped by, and Dan took this of Karen and me talking. I love how it captures the afternoon light and the way the stained glass paints the floor in the afternoons.

At the end of the show, Bonnie and I visited the food trucks and sat outside in a gorgeous evening to hear the last few songs of the jazz band. Perfect. I took a food truck self portrait.

Then we took advantage of the late light and perfect temperature to walk a circle of the park, especially since Bonnie had never been there. Here's a catalpa tree we stopped to visit with as we walked. It's one of my favorites.

The new moon was rising over the bandstand as we circled back to our car.

Finally we joined the rest of St. Louis in treating ourselves to Ted Drewes frozen custard. They talk about it every single night on the baseball radio broadcast, and I always go when I'm in St. Louis. Amazing stuff.

I went back to the Tennessee Brewery last week. The five week temporary beer garden is still going on through June 1, and I love this building. Plus, one of my favorite local bands was playing. Den of Strings is a Django Reinhardt inspired jazz band (one of TWO here in Memphis, and I love them both). Mr. Darcy and I went down to hear music and hang out for the early evening. I love that it's dog friendly. And it was fun to draw the band against that lovely backdrop.

You can see my first sketch of the Brewery as well as a bunch of photos of this exceptional building in my first blog post about the place.