On My Table: Beginning of June 2025.

This month I decided to try a little different look at what is on my table - I pulled my backpack out and dumped on my kitchen table things that were with me during the last week or so - and in particular during the last two days of drawing - last day of May and first day of June. 

And here is what I got:

Additional notes:

1. The perfect water container to take with you outside is Nalgene Jar from the Nalgene Travel Kit I got a long time ago. 

2. Erasers are such a help in my printmaking toolkit these days that I am bringing them to the classes that I will be teaching this summer - Urban Sketchers Seminar in Chicago and Sketcher Fest in Edmonds.

3. I wrote about the Expandable Handbag Insert Purse Organizer with Handles before - there are photos and details about that bag in that post from September 2023. And it is still a very convenient way to organize a mess and move it from the table to the bag and from the plein-air setting back to the bag.

4. The First Aid Kit bag is a gentle way to carry a surprising amount of things and opens up well so that you can easily find anything inside. 

5. Gouache sticks are tempera sticks for kids - I am sure their lightfastness is a joke but they are soft and unruly and as fun as drawing with lipstick and I hoped to paint some peonies with them this weekend - hence this collection. 

The gouache and watercolor palette needs cleaning, water should be changed and I probably will remove some pencils before heading out to paint this week. Or not!

Peony is a May Flower - Part 1

Peonies are another flower that I measure time by - there are peony birthdays and peony neighborhood hunts in my life. Store-bought peonies are also wonderful - and prolong the season together with the photos of peonies that my friends send me from all over the world. 

This year I finally got to a peony farm up in the hills - but that will be a tale for another post. For now, I will start a story of my peony season by sharing the first bunch of drawings I did when I got a new bouquet at a local Trader Joe's - one sketch that will set the stage for the bouquet on a dining table and several looks at the single flowers.

Iris Garden at the End of the Season

I made another trip up into the hills to see the irises at Nola's Iris Garden. The place was as magical at the end of the season as it was at the beginning. Different colors of irises were blooming, there were very few people, and a perfect bench for painting a whole field of flowers with the hills was found. It was quite a spontaneous outing and al always not long enough, but a perfect day. I spoke to a human organizing iris rhizomes for selling and got a couple of fry flowers to bring home and sketch later. Click on the image to see more notes from the day.

Two Avocados that I did Not Eat

For a few days this spring I followed how avocados were slowly devoured by a mysterious creature. First, there was a gnawed-upon avocado on the ground. Then every morning I would find new teeth marks and a little less avocado left. I thought of fascination with these half-eaten single-seeded berries can be compared to an orthodont looking at teeth marks on a piece of chocolate, but then realized that it reminded me of Gerald Durrell's books and how much attention was given to what diet worked and what did not - for each of his animals. I sincerely was hoping the mysterious creature was enjoying the meal and toyed with the idea of continuing the feedings and installing a motion-activated camera to get to know them better ;) But then they stopped being interested in this food source! The question of avocado color remains though.

 

Alligator Pear

I've learned more things about avocados! They have the very appropriate name of Alligator Pair. They are not a vegetable but a fruit, or if you want to be more specific, a single-seed berry. And they are very much cultivated by humans - the researchers state that people of Central America started tending avocados more than 11 000 years ago.