Blooming Thundercloud Plum Trees

These days, there are so many blooming trees around me, I feel like there is no way to visit them all (and there is no way to visit them all) - but I try nonetheless :)

These thundercloud plum trees have beautifully shaped, slightly toothy on the edge, wine-purple leaves and small plums that are usually consumed by squirrels and birds before anyone else has a chance. But before all of that, out of cool-gray with red undertone branches come beautiful pink flowers. First they appear one at a time, and then an avalanche of blooms that gives a tree a cloud-like look. Leaves start appearing on the bottom of the tree first slowly closing in on the flowers. 

I did a portrait of one tree and then tried to capture what a street of them feels like to me from the shadow of a large coastal redwood. Process photos below.

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Carts & Kiosks!

I traveled around the world (virtually) to draw food carts and kiosks! I did my traveling via  online gathering of #streetviewworldtour organized by  Jenny Adam and Eleanor Doughty - they have a new website for this project streetviewworldtour.com

This months visiting artist was Sibylle Lienhard @sibyllelienhard and I learned a lot about watering holes in Germany (we visited Frankfurt and Offenbach), about elotes and esquites in Oaxaca, Mexico, and drew a gorgeous city square in Montevideo, Uruguay.  

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, Night Life, Hawaiian Foliage, Light and Shadow, and Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei, Convenience Stores Around the World, Castles, Urban Gardens, and People at Work. 

Yellow Chrysanthemums Part 2

I made a series of sketches of this beautiful plant of yellow chrysanthemums before it became my Mom's flower (she enjoys it very much!). First installment is here, some little drawings I shared here, and below are a couple more traditional and I am still thinking about how to finish experimental ones to share :)

Admiring my oak leaf hydrangea flower

Oak leaf hydrangea is a deciduous shrub that can grow to be as tall as a small tree, has gloriously multicolored leaves, and strong cone-shaped panicled of white flowers that dry on the bush and winter in their warm-colored glory among cinnamon-colored bare branches. Recently, I saw that a squirrel tried to bite one flower off. Now - to be fair - I did not see it do the deed - but it was doing something in the corner where the shrub grows, and later I saw that the only thing that was still attaching panicle to the branch is a thin stripe of bark - so I cut it and now am enjoying it as an object to sketch. I decided not to press charges against the squirrel because I am actually happy to have this object to draw :)

On My Table: Beginning of March 2026

February is a short month! And I am still ironing out details for my printmaking toolkit for all the participants of my workshops at the 14th International Urban Sketchers Symposium which will be happening in July of 2026 in Toulouse, France.

I am also:

1. Using my favorite brush pen together with the pen that I am not sure about (love /hate) 

2. Use a little vial of ink to draw with a dip pen on location

3. Using oil brushes with my watercolor+gouache palette

4. Admiring dry oak leaf hydrangea flower

5. Considering taking an enamel tray as a palette to paint on location (it is heavy though)

6. Fuming about scotch changing the packaging for their tape (it is made of less plastic but is extremely flimsy - I could refill the previous holder with tape for over 10 years, but this one broke within months! (my old tape dispenser lost its sharpness for cutting the tape, and had to go to the recycling bin). And the amount of tape inside it is significantly smaller.