North Carolina travelogue

September 2014

I got to spend some time at Country Workshops recently. It's a farm owned by friends, a small woodworking school, and also one of the prettiest places I know. I was delighted to get to paint there again this year.

It's a little tricky to find, but once you get close, there are hand carved wooden signs leading you the rest of the way.

The driveway is a little fearsome. I've had a pick-up in years past, and I was happy that my little low Prius made it up there this year. There was only a little bit of scraping......

The main building is an old tobacco barn that's been converted to a woodworking shop. I worked in the shop and slept upstairs in one of the bedrooms above.

The next door neighbor Nancy Darrell (three quarters of a mile away.) is also a printmaker, and we sketched together several times while I was there.

I love my bedroom. It has gorgeous square windows that look down onto Louise's garden below. I was there for butterfly season, and there was always a cloud of butterflies below when I looked out.

I mostly slept well, but one night I had a nightmare, several incidents of the dogs barking like crazy, and one sound outside in the attic that ended up being a cat but that scared the beejeezus out of me for a couple of minutes. This is what I looked like the next morning.

I did a second self portrait on a different day, and I'm not sure that it looks much less scary. I'm really not that great at people, but I keep trying periodically. Mostly, though, I'm drawn to landscapes. As the pencil notes say, I really only do self portraits when I'm in times of transition and self-examination. This has been another period of change for me, so I'm back to trying my hand at a few.

I did a number of quick watercolors from my work table, looking out the window. It's a stunning view. I spent almost all of my indoor time down to the shop with the wide view of the mountains. The house is a bit more closed in., so I sat here instead, working or playing my banjo.

I kept painting at different times of day and in different weathers.

I've been playing with markers and working to find a style with them I'm happy with. These two are fountain pen with an ink brush pen for the tonal sections.. I'm a member of the Urban Sketchers, and many of the artists there use markers and pens regularly. These materials are easy to carry and use anywhere, so I've been continuing to experiment with them and try to figure them out.

I've also been playing with colored markers. I found a Faber Castell landscape set that doesn't have as harshly bright a set of colors as some of them seem to. I really enjoyed using them this trip.

I did some some non-landscape things with them as well. A different sort of self portrait here.

Here's a related sketch. I really did love fish feeding time. It was such fun to see them leap and dance as I threw out the food.

I went into Asheville a couple of days to visit the bookstores (my favorite thing there). Malaprop's is a marvelous store. Smallish, but always with unusual selections. I found a travelogue in graphic novel form by comic book artist Lucy Knisley. It's called Age of License. I would never have known about it without the "staff recommendations" display, and I was delighted to find it. I can't see myself doing third person comics with my own image as a character (I'm far too landscape focused), but a number of my sketches this trip were based on my desire to include a bit more narrative in my drawings after reading Lucy's book. Here are a few more where I'm consciously trying to include more context and story telling.

I was up there during the pennant race, listening to my Cardinals on the radio each night after dark, when KMOX would break through and be able to be picked up.

These are early examples of my experiments, and I need to work on better word placement, but I was happy with both sketches. I'm also glad to find I can incorporate text into both marker drawings and watercolors.

I ended the trip with a few more pure watercolors. I happened on the new grave of the son-in-law of my friends out on one of my walks. I hope it wasn't bad taste to sketch it, but it was such a moving place that I felt an urge to paint there.

I revisited a grove of trees I have loved and painted in the past. They have also figured in several prints I've made over the years. It was fun to paint them again.

Here is another favorite tree. It was bare, and I hope it just dropped its leaves early. I'd hate for it to be dead. I've done paintings and prints of this one over several years as well.

And this was my view every night. Since I was alone, I would carry my meals from the kitchen in the house down to the shop, where the window had a much wider view of the mountains. After dinner I would sit and play my banjo and watch the moon. It was a lovely time for me up there, full of creativity and rest and music. A much needed step outside of time this year. I'm grateful to Drew and Louise for the opportunity to spend a bit of time at Country Workshops.