Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Underwater!

On the first Thursday of each month, a bunch of people meet online to do some virtual traveling and sketching. It is called Street View World Tour and is hosted by @herbcoil and @ronkiponk, and sponsored by @gageacademy. I am a huge fan - and try to attend every month. And this month I was a presenting artist - for the second time! The first time I took everyone to draw the city where my family is from, Kharkiv in Ukraine. And this time I took everyone underwater! A fantastic group of people with whom I shared my enthusiasm for sketching while scuba diving visited Japan, Australia, and the Caribbean. 

Images below are from the demo I did: three takes with three different material sets to illustrate how my sketching might go underwater, and we did a warm-up sketch before and two longer sessions after - all the time chatting about different materials, challenges, and adventures that one might encounter while scuba diving and drawing!

A video recording of the demo part of this session is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JlewRopo1s&list=PLIKAXwrrOVN7rSLyFiWdSMXbbskNJ6ddc&index=1

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, Carts and Kiosks. 

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. 

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - People at Work

I traveled (virtually) all over the world this week to draw people at work! I joined monthly online gathering of #streetviewworldtour - and had lots of fun drawing with a nice group of people. This month a guest artist was none other than  Eleanor Doughty - she and he co-host Jenny Adam (who was a guest artist last month but that being the first of January I missed) organized A Street View World Tour some time ago and now they have a website streetviewworldtour.com! 

It is a monthly fun, no-pressure gathering where we travel via google maps, draw from the street view as a group - online. I had a set of tools prepared for a specific technique to try in this session but at the last minute had to switch my drawing space and glad I had a chance to make some mess with different tools!

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, (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!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Urban Gardens

I missed a couple of months this summer, but was happy to be back for the October Street View World Tour! This month, we were drawing urban gardens, and a guest artist was Isabell Seidel. As we watched her weave a pattern of shapes on the page, a conversation about how she started using more flat brushes came up, and then a topic of mixing greens came up - an evergreen interest of mine! A subject of viridian green and how to survive having it in the palette was dear to my heart :) It was a pleasure to look at the urban gardens - what a great topic and such interesting places we visited!

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, Convenience Stores Around the World, Castles, Portugal, Boats around the world, and Hawaii (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!)

Practicing My Workshop Before the Trip

This week I took my portable printmaking kit, which I will be using in the upcoming classes, to 2 different locations. 

First one was virtual travel - but I was allowed only things that were in my "workshop bag". I was drawing with the  Street View World Tour - hosted by Jenny Adam and Eleanor Doughty via Gage Academy. I had limited amount of time, so I did only one sketch while Sarah Bixler painted O'ahu, Hawaii in gouache - I wanted both to travel there in person and paint this in gouache!! But with the restrictions on that day, this is what I came up with:

And then I had the pleasure of being introduced to a new (for me) little lake by my friends.  With a shady path, some buildings against the mountains, lots of different greens to reflect in the water, and various birds to sketch, it felt like a mini adventure! This time, my kit went on location and got another workout!

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Boats throughout the world!

On the first Thursday of each month, a lovely group of people from all over the world gets together to sketch from the google street views. This month we were drawing boats and a guest artist was Nina Johansson - whose careful weaving of the ink line was very therapeutic and her demonstration of varied line made with a custom fude nib in a popular TWSBI pen - was a pleasure to watch. We looked at boats in Stockholm, London, and Hong Kong and every single drawing below challenged me in a new way. I am not brave enough to sail in any of these based on my drawings - but I am braver about the general idea of drawing boats after this hour! 

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, Convenience Stores Around the World, Castles, Portugal (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!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Lisbon, Portugal!

I traveled (virtually) to Lisbon this week!  (It is definitely on my list of places to visit in real life - but for now this was great! :) I joined monthly online gathering of #streetviewworldtour - and had lots of fun drawing with a nice group of people (there were MANY this time!). 

This month a guest artist was Koosje Koene whose art I've been following for quite some time. Her presentation was wonderfully candid and her love for pentel pocket brush is something I share! 

 

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, Convenience Stores Around the World, Castles (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!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Castles!

I was looking forward to the next virtual traveling and sketching event with the A Street View World Tour and wanted to see a demo by @ohn_mar_win whose color and spontaneity of sketching I admire. 

But plans changed and it became a day when I had to be in a hospital with my Mom (she is fine and I am writing an update on how my parents are doing for the next week's anniversary of my parents arrival to the USA). So a big part of the the four hours of surgery preparation we spent online - I explained the whole concept to Mom (and nurses), got my pocket printmaking kit out, and positioned it on Mom's bed. We looked for good angles, Mom was watching me draw, use found objects as stamps and I even cut some stamps out of an eraser for the craziest building ever (see first sketch). She enjoyed the demo by @ohn_mar_win a lot and gave me some advice based on it too. A memorable Thursday! :)

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, Convenience Stores Around the World (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!)

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!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) to Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei.

I had a blast today drawing with the wonderful bunch of people at #streetviewworldtour lead by @herbcoil and @ronkiponk with a guest artist @jeffsuntala - i went completely black and white again with my printmaking - despite very colorful and inspiring street views and had such a great time drawing Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei! 

Then when the time came to share the images I realized that Instagram crops them in weird way. I took some time and then liked from crops, then hated them, then thought that I should have made these all black and white instead of preserving creamy color of my paper. All in all - these locations stayed with me for much longer than the 20 minutes that I looked at them while sketching :)

So - which one do you prefer - full versions or cropped? See below! (if you are on a desktop - you can click on any image to see it larger and move between images with your arrow keys)

Cropped versions:

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, and Light and Shadow. (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!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour)

This month the Street View World Tour was drawing Light and Shadow and we traveled all over the world. I was late and managed only a tiny sketch during the presentation of the guest artist @jennymouse2003. But I got to do two 20 minute views and after that and had a blast using my printing technique with custom-haircut pentel pocket brush.

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, and Hawaiian Foliage. (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!)