This summer has not gone to plan, to say the least. I sprained my ankle on vacation just as I was getting back to daily walks after another bout of fatigue. Above is the sketch I did waiting on a tire to replace the one that was separating on the way home, somewhere in the middle of Missouri. That was the amuse bouche for the main course to come. Getting home that night, August 1, already two hours late, Henry and I were jumped by literally hundreds of fleas. It's been a five week odyssey of figuring out how and where they were swarming up from the crawl space. I've flushed at least a thousand down the toilet, scraping them off my legs every time I set foot in the kitchen and the back room where we do most of our living.

We were out of the house another three weeks or so at neighborhood airbnbs, and camping out in the front of it another couple. Yesterday we sat together on our couch for the first time, and today Henry is on the couch just behind me as I work on the computer, which has been also mostly off limits. For the first time this morning, after five house and crawl-space treatments of various kinds and two long stair riser caulking sessions by me over the weekend, I did not have a single flea jump on me. Hallelujah. I cannot even express how good that feels.

The book M is for Memphis got derailed for a while, as did (clearly) this blog. Sadly Weebly's mobile app has also gone hinky and doesn't post the right photos when it publishes, so I just shelved this and waited until I could get back to my work space and then (YAY!!!) upload my proofs of the book an hour ago. Now I can catch up on my other work and post things here again. Thank you for your patience if you're a regular reader.

Below is Friday night's dinner sketch at Ecco. Henry and I walked up and met our regular sketching/art/lunch buddy Christina. It was a perfect patio evening and a lovely break at the home stretch of all the craziness.

Saturday was the Memphis Urban Sketchers meeting at Palladio Garden, which has a lovely large patio for sketching. It was good to get out, remember my dip pen and fun new ink bottles, and do something messy for me instead of careful for the book. I also used the group as a perfectly timed focus group. I printed out several possible book covers and passed them around and got great feedback from fellow artists. I'll do a book post next, but here's my bridge from August to present day. I think I'll go for a walk today with my sketchbook to celebrate and maybe just treat myself to lunch out at the same time.

I got to go out on a sailboat in the San Juan islands, sailing out for the day from Anacortes. It was lovely to be out in an ever changing landscape with lots of tiny islands shape shifting around us as we moved past them. Perfect for sketching, though at times the wind made it less than easy. I did several sketches but also just enjoyed the day out with family.

It took me getting to Washington to get to a scanner and clean up my St. Louis sketches. I love to draw there and did some smaller, faster sketches as well as full watercolors. This first one is walnut ink with a dip pen of an Osage Orange tree. They always grow in such fascinating shapes.

I also got a fantastic blueberry/lemon curd crepe from a food truck creperie that flashed me back to Paris. I loved both the food and the fun little bus, so I did a sketch to remember.

There was also a great book signing at the graphic bookstore Betty’s Books. Beautifully they got in an art hero of mine Lucy Knisley. I found her first graphic memoir An Age of License some years ago, and it (plus my first Ben Hatke book found at the same time) made me want to include more storytelling in my work, which had been purely landscape up until that point. She had a huge influence on my work, and I trace a direct line back from her book to doing several of my own, even if they’re quite different in feel. It was fantastic to hear her talk, meet her in person, and see her delightful hand painted cat dress.

One more lovely day in town was revisiting the St. Louis Art Museum, another favorite place. They had a Vuillard I don’t remember from before on view this time, which makes sense because it’s on cardboard and probably needs to rest for preservation purposes in between times out in the light. I love his patterned interiors and interlocking shapes and had fun doing a sketch while standing in front of it.

I have always loved those golden age British mysteries with a map at the front. Probably because my dad collects maps and often hand drew ones for us to follow along with from the back seat on family vacations. Since all the trees in the exhibition at Rowan Oak are actually on the grounds of Faulkner’s home, I thought it would be fun to give people the opportunity for a self guided scavenger hunt to compare the prints with the originals.

There are no prizes, but if there were, there would definitely be extra credit for Portrait III, which is by far the trickiest to spot.

I’m doing some sketching in Tower Grove Park in St. Louis. My favorite park away from home, and it’s such a pleasure to walk and sketch here.

I've been working hard on the show the last few weeks, but I have taken the time to meet some friends for sketching several times recently. It's good to get back to the immediacy of watercolor after prolonged time doing prints. These sketches are from Crosstown (above) and the shady back deck of Memphis Pizza Cafe.

WKNO fm kindly hosted me again today (thanks, Darel!) on their daily Checking on the Arts show to talk about the Faulkner's Trees exhibition at Rowan Oak and a little bit about my newest book, a small paperback called Portal. You can click below to listen. It's always fun to get out and talk to Darel about my mostly solitary work.

I will get it in a frame and have it ready to hang with the rest of the show on Monday. I've also carved and printed a small gallery card for folks coming through the museum to pick up and have my information available. This is one of the handful that print two tone when I add a second color once the first is established. I love the variegated effect. I usually get three or four of these before the inks blend to a solid color again, so most of the cards will be a little less wild, but I always love these the best.

I had SUCH a good time staying at this tiny cabin right by a small river. I sketched and read and sketched some more. It was perfect. Here's the second half of the sketches from my two night retreat.

I've given myself two small vacations/exhales in the past month instead of the longer trip I had hoped to be taking by now. I've mostly been nose to the grindstone on the Rowan Oak show that hangs this month, but I did take two smaller trips recently to relax and exhale. The first trip was to a cabin just outside Mountain View on the site of the Herpel P.O., right along a small bayou with large stones sitting right down by the water. I sat out there with my sketchbook, journal, and book. I had every meal sitting by the water and watching the birds. And I walked up the quiet road with my sketchbook to visit more wonderful trees. It was heaven. This is the first batch of those sketches. I was there two nights and part of a third day, and I sketched a lot after doing so much print work and missing my sketchbook.