On My Table: Beginning of August 2025

August began for me at my kitchen table - trying to sort through all the sketches and notes I brought with me from the trip to Seattle. My sketchbook was at the very end, and I decided to somehow fit everything from the trip in the last few pages. Now that I look back at my reasoning, I understand that I wanted to have a whole trip in one place, which future me would appreciate. But it made for some extra work figuring out how to glue and tape a lot of things in some sort of coherent way - which is why it stretched for several days, and I got to August with this not completely resolved.

This is why the main tools you see at this table are my scissors and glue stick. My tape rolls are somewhere buried under the sketches. 

Seattle 2025: Sketcher Fest Edmonds - Part 2 - Workshop View.

I found a perfect location for my workshop right in front of the Edmonds Waterfront Center, and then found a couple of slightly different angles, and tried to sketch it several times before doing it with all the participants. I also sketched it for the back of my name tag, as a little memento for the organizers about this year's Sketcher Fest - I do not have a scan of it. Then I sketched the same view with my group while explaining all the steps, making mistakes, and showing how to correct them. And then I sketched the same view after the event. Can you guess the order? 

A

B

CD

EF

Seattle 2025: Sketcher Fest Edmonds - Part 1 - My Workshop.

It was my absolute pleasure to be one of the Guest Artists at the Sketcher Fest Edmonds this year! 

The weekend spent with so many great sketchers was amazing and I will make several posts about it as there were too many wonderful meetings, overlaps, and connections. But officially for me as an Guest Artist the weekend contained one workshop on Saturday (mine was "Printmaking on the Go: Wild Textures Tamed with Stencils"), one Artist Talk - I gave a 45 minute presentation on the topic of "Extreme Travel Sketching: What to Bring and How to Survive" where I talked about how I sketch while scuba diving a lot. And there was a day at the sketchbook fair where all the guest artists had a table where they were sharing original sketchbooks with visitors. And they were available for answering questions, commenting, etc. In short, it was AMAZING and I would love to attend one of these events myself!! (Being a guest artist meant that between teaching, manning my table, and giving a talk, I could not do all the questioning, nosing, looking, and asking that was available for the attendees).

Now that you know a little bit about the event, here are some photos from my workshop. I was honored to have an amazing artist, Virginia Hein, as my class volunteer! She took all of these pictures and was a wonderful support on many levels - not to mention that she created an amazing poster for the Festival this year!

I had a fantastic group of students who enthusiastically dove with me into the world of making textures on location. We had an inspiring view, perfect weather, and shared the experience of learning a ton as we captured a view at a pier and across the Puget Sound in our sketchbooks. Would do this again in a heartbeat!