On My Table: Beginning of June 2026

My preparation for my teaching trip to Toulouse for the 14th International Urban Sketchers Symposium is in full swing! Kits for participants of my workshop are ready (I have now started assembling a prayer to the Travel Gods so that my bag will not be lost). My handout is basically ready (though one cannot stop tweaking things, can one?). I am getting my stickers printed and selecting colors for my palette to paint in my free time (I am making bets with myself as to how many sketches I would actually make in between three days of workshops and a demo!).  The rest of the stuff on my table is a story about me drawing people more in May and enjoying a little pouch that has an elastic band and was very helpful for the "quick daw" sketching on the go. I am afraid till the end of July I will be all: Toulouse, Toulouse Toulouse" - apologies in advance - I am so excited for this trip!

Sketchbook as a Reminding Tool

As you know, I enjoy layering things in my sketchbooks - because I like to keep my notes and drawings in chronological order and also because it is a nice way to revisit things. Speaking of revisiting - I realized that I rarely flip through my old sketchbooks, but when I do, it is a lot of fun! I was planning a video flip-through of my winter sketchbook and found these pages. They were little experiments that were happening at a large table filled with beer glasses, teacups, snacks, art supplies, and sketchbooks, bunch of friends talking and working next to each other.
I kept some parts of the larger pages showing to share my joy from all the color conversations that are happening on this page. It reminded me that I have this ochre ink I wanted to play with more, that I am still working on mixing a dark purple, and I promised my friend a gouache stick and I find sculls challenging, macabre but also fun to draw!

 

Spring Garden In a Pot (Table Gardening) - Part 2

This is the second part of the visual story of the table garden (here is the first). 

Despite the fact that I was fascinated by the number of flowers and their day-to-day progress, there was a surprising amount of frustration with this little garden for me! First - it changes so often that you need to allocate a significant part of your day to document it all (which is impossible :) And it is always a tricky thing for me to choose which flowers to paint when there are so many in one bouquet. I hoped to make one large painting with "everything," but did not get to it. My only hope is to find a similar garden-in-a-pot next year :)

Spring Garden In a Pot (Table Gardening).

I love following flowers on a day-to-day basis, and every spring, I get some sort of bulb to grow, and this year, I got a whole little garden of bulbs to follow! It was a marvelous adventure, impossible to draw (at some point apart from a two hyacinth flowers there were 6 tulips and over 20 daffodils - all miniature and all sitting in a 6" pot on my table). But I got to draw some of them! Today I was moving the bulbs into "summering" storage and realized that I never shared any of these sketches - so here is part one of my selection  :) 

Another Vase I Made!

This vase has lots of things that I would do differently today but I learned a lot! See some notes around it :) I names it honey skep. 

Two Very Different Sketches from One Great Place

I got to sketch at the Allied Arts Guild this week and went with a plan and a friend. While catching up I completely abandoned my plan (without realizing it) and ended up drawing people at work in a really cool workspace. In short, it was a great sketching outing that needs part 2 to go back to my plans!

People Drawing!

I love drawing people - moving people, working people, sleeping people, faces. One of my regular outlets is portrait parties in real life or online - like pencils4tea and drawingisfree. But I've been skipping a lot of them lately - so when there was a chance to jump on a zoom call and draw some faces, I did so without hesitation. And what fun I had! The music (used to time each portrait) was super funny (some sitters had a really hard time not laughing :) Of course, my favorite was chicken singing one of the songs from the movie Frozen! In short - I should do it more often ;)

Here are some of the previous people drawings I did not share before - I only recently realized that I've been posting more of these on Instagram, so this is a little catch-up. 

Flanders Poppies in a Landscape

It is impossible to translate all the feelings a field of poppies gives. I enjoyed painting separate flowers and groups of flowers, but something was missing in what I was trying to say. That is when I knew that I had to try and paint a bigger view - and what a joy it was!

I found some dogwood flowers!

I missed my "scheduled" dogwood tree blooming time (and ended up enjoying an early season Pride of Madeira - so no loss!) But then I realized that there is a rather tall group of dogwood trees near my library - and they are very late bloomers every year - so perhaps I was not that late after all?

Flanders Poppies 2026 - Part 2

Follow-up on the last week's post about my trip to paint Flanders Poppies: more gouache plein air ! 

Little Things Here and There

These are little sketches that fit between larger sketches in my sketchbook. Mostly "this is a super busy day! let me draw whatever is in front of me on my table, otherwise I might not find time to draw today" :)

Another Vase I Made

This was my second time when I was able to make a closed form on the wheel (you make a cylinder and then you make sure that it has no opening at the top). I let it dry some and made a hole for the entrance to the vase. This clay is gritty, rough, and strong, yet when completed, this little piece looked very gentle. I put some grasses from around my home in it before giving it as a gift to a friend :)