This year on our big family camping weekend we carved and decorated so many pumpkins I needed two full spreads in my journal to document them all sitting on the low rock wall bordering our sites.
Thank goodness we had delicious treats to keep up our energy. From top to bottom – lime, roasted shrimp, pepperoni, horseradish cheese, salami, pickle chip and another shrimp… and of course the requisite celery stick for stirring. Yum.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
– Henry David Thoreau
Over the years the spindly young oak in my backyard has become quite grand and has started producing an amazing number of acorns, much to my and the squirrels’, delight.
Nourish your eye and spirit with inspiring things. They will bloom with your tending.
– Sark
As we pass through the months of the pandemic I’ve been following Gayle Kabaker, one of my favorite artist/illustrators. She has been writing and illustrating an occasional column, Sketching My Way Through Crisis, in The Washington Post and last month they hosted a webinar on Zoom. Gayle and her guest, Jennifer Orkin Lewis aka: August Wren, answered questions and each shared sketchbook techniques while inspiring us to sketch along with them.
I blasted out these two spreads while taking copious notes so I can refer to them when my own inspiration is nowhere to be found. (BTW… all faces drawn here are from my imagination. No egos were harmed in the making of these pages.)
I believe the plan is to upload the webinar to YouTube but I don’t think it’s happened yet. I’ll be sure to update this post with the link when it happens.
Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day?
Both.
At the center of the
universe dwells the
Great Spirit. And that
center is really everywhere.
It is within each of us.
– Heĥáka Sápa
Black Elk
Oglala Lakota
#VirtualMinnesotaStateFairSketchOut2020
The only person I know who misses the State Fairs more than me is Roz Stendahl. In fact, she’s the one who inspired me to begin my yearly practice of sketching at my own New Hampshire Hopkinton State Fair.
She was missing her Minnesota State Fair so much she was inspired to create her own online Virtual Minnesota Sate Fair Sketch Out so we all could “visit” the fair and sketch together.
I quickly pulled up a few of the photos I took on one of my previous trips to the Hopkinton Fair and proceeded to sketch along and enjoy the camaraderie with other sketchers. I used some loose art papers I had lying on the desk and later collaged them into my sketchbook.
This is the original goat image but as it was too large to fit the entirety into my journal I chose to cup out the lower goat to collage onto the opening hashtag page.
Roz sketched from her photos and posted a wrap up on her blog, Roz Wound Up.
I missed the din and the smells of the barns but this allowed me to revisit the Fair through my photos.
I’m still craving my favorite fair food… a Greek Gyro sandwich. I guess I’ll have to make it myself.
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
– Marcel Proust
One of my favorite sketching activities is a trip to our State Fair. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic closed that opportunity and forced me to look for alternatives. That’s why I jumped at the suggestion from a few of my art buddies for a physically distanced visit to Billings Farm and Museum in Woodstock, Vermont.
This time of the year the cows are usually on the State Fair prize circuit. I was happy to have them home and posing for me.
The sunflowers were in bloom and the breeze was at my back as I sat on the orchard’s hill looking east. I found I didn’t miss the Fair quite as much as I thought.
A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of fauna and flora of a town.
– Henry David Thoreau
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
– Henry David Thoreau
