Visit to an Artichoke Patch

In my neighborhood, there is a house where people LOVE growing artichokes. Some years they have huge plants, some smaller. I've been visiting this place for a few years now, left some artichoke sketches by the door during the pandemic as these purple beauties made my bike rides very special that year. This week I went back to check on them again. Looking for familiar and unfamiliar shapes and textures of leaves and stalks, and in the flowers. They always surprise me with the intensity of color and the joy of figuring out how they are built. 

I started with a super quick ink sketch to get it out of the way and then spent some time looking at different parts of the same plane with gouache (used as watercolor mostly) and ink.

The Last of Avocado Season

Here are the last sketches from the numerous avocados that were consumed this season. I am hoping that the tree that gave us these gifts will be generous again, for I have many more ideas for how to sketch these berries ;)

Sketching in a Kayak

I am getting ready to give a talk at the Edmonds Sketcher Fest - titled "Extreme Travel Sketching: What to Bring and How to Survive" - and I will be walking about all sorts of unusual places where I sketched - including while in a kayak!

And this week I had a wonderful opportunity to spend some time on the water - sketching from a sit-on-top kayak at the Elkhorn Slew by the Pacific Ocean. I saw so many birds! Cormorants eating close by, and pelicans of two different kinds pass very close. Harbor seals popping up right by the paddle. And a growing population of sea otters - which is such a joy to see!

Botanical Odds and Ends from the current sketchbook (#160)

Little things sometimes seep in between bigger things - and little drawings fill the margins of my days and sketchbooks. This batch is from the last month or so - a collection of little botanical notes of treasures that I picked up here and there. When in doubt of what to draw - look in your pockets - there is a chance that little something from the recent walk is there waiting for you! 

A Surprise New Garden

I have a new addition to my list of places where there is always something to sketch. I was introduced to it by a friend when giant purple candelabras of Pride of Madeira were in high bloom. I found some really interesting juxtapositions of plants in this garden and some amazing workspaces that I want to come back and draw. 

Later I had a chance to stop by to look at one part of the garden with two different sets of tools (dual marker with two purple colors and my modified parallel pen with black ink) and then a direct gouache. In both of these sketches, my interest was to show how many different foliages are there in one little space.