Trip to See the Pacific Ocean

It is always amazing to see the ocean, even just for a little bit. I got a very good reason to go look at it and visit a park that I've not been to in a long while: Año Nuevo State Park! Plus I had a chance to stop at several coastal parks around and saw at least two large snakes, both of which disappeared too quickly for me to identify. It was a beautifully sunny day, but the wind was making it quite cold. 

A pelican with a damaged wing walked along the beach to the place where I was drawing near a little lagoon, but State Park workers told us that there is nothing we can do to help the dear bird - if it was outside California State Park boundaries, there are services that help damaged birds, but inside - the nature should take its course. 

I managed to bring a backpack full of art supplies but forgot water and paper clips, and the wind was taking apart both my sketchbook and tearing marker caps out of my hand! There were a few elephant seals, and we were late to see a promised couple of ospreys, but a family of turkey vultures posed for us on a tree above the sand dunes, and a spectacle of various sea birds diving for fish never gets old! 

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!)

Drawing Boats (via Street View World Tour)

This month the Street View World Tour was traveling all over the world to draw boats!
I've missed the wonderful company of this bunch of drawing people and will try to sketch with them more regularly this year. 

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, 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!)

Sketchbook #97: Prague

We spent some time on a little boat looking at Prague from the level of Vltava's swans. It's a really cool point of view but drawing was hard - too much movement :)