Drawing Bikes with Kids!

I had a blast drawing bikes with kids (and even some adults :) at a local event promoting safe biking routes and habits. It was a very hot day and quite a few attendees ended up with half-drawn bikes as a chance to make a cold smoothie while pedaling a stationary bike. It was a very cool addition to the event this year. But it was a blast nonetheless! I brought some fancy markers this year but sharpies were the most requested drawing tools. Conversations ranged from how many lights one should have on a bike to how to accommodate all the flowers that someone might want to carry on a bike ride.

Redwoods in a city of Tall Redwoods

A ring of redwoods on a relatively cool morning in the middle of an unseasonable heat wave. A solid hour of looking at golden light behind these trees, sketching with a friend. What a great way to close a work week! 

p.s. Can you spot a bird (it was a dark-eyed junco) and a squirrel in my sketch? 

p. p. s. El Palo Alto simply means “the tall tree” in Spanish. The name is believed to originate with the 1769 expedition of Gaspar de Portola (1716-1786), later governor of the Spanish territories in California. 

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Convenience Stores Around the World!

This week I enjoyed another great session of #streetviewworldtour - and had lots of fun drawing convenience stores around the world.

A guest artist @ajamesdraws was talking through some of his favorite sketchers and how he builds a scene when he draws, and an explanation of his interesting lines and curved views (“just be a good, slightly drunken uncle at the wedding - dancing confidently and wildly”) got me thinking about a quote that I often visit - from Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons:

“The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.”

So after that great speech about the drunken uncle I tried to think less about the results and experiment more - I used some new texture tools and carved some stamps on the go - not all my moves worked but I surely had fun dancing!

If you are not familiar - A Street View World Tour is a fun, no-pressure gathering hosted by Jenny Adam and Eleanor Doughty via Gage Academy. You can learn more about these monthly free events and about these locations at the links above. 

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. (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

On My Table: Beginning of October 2024.

The orangest month of the year is here!

And I am choosing colors for some new projects, drawing birds, making stickers and collecting colors (I amassed a surprising number of grays!). 

Perhaps a party of sharing all the oranges and grays is in order! :)