Visiting a Magical Forest

Every year, Suhita Shirodkar and I make a pilgrimage to the Santa Cruz Mountains to see our friends in a wonderful community surrounding Gay Kraeger. And to draw an astonishing view of glowing persimmon trees. This time, the period between our last visit and this one was so packed with events for everyone that we ended up coming two weeks in a row to cover all the stories, share new materials, plans, and projects! One day was gloriously sunny, and we had a chance to draw persimmon trees, and another was magnificently foggy - so we ended up trying all sorts of art toys in a cozy, warm studio with a cup of tea while fog slowly melted around redwoods, which we drew. Click on the images to see larger version!

Forest Bathing - My Report on the Holiday Break

Forest Bathing aka Shinrin-yoku is a great way to describe how I spent most of my in-between-holidays time this year: in nature, with minimum connection to the world outside, attending to what I hold dear, in good company. 

I hiked a wide range of landscapes, drew some on location, took naps, tried lots of interesting teas, cooked with new and well-tested recipes both, napped, drew some, looked at the sky a lot. Here are some of the sketches from this break:

Magical Forest and Persimmons

It's that time of the year again - when my sketchbook, windowsills, and snack plate are all filled with persimmons! I will share my growing collection of drawings soon but right now I am still reeling from the wonderful trip up to the Santa Cruz Mountains to visit the magical garden and forest of Gay Kraeger! 

Suhita and I packed out bags full of the latest art toys to share and had such a wonderful time drawing with Gay who, as usual, is growing an art community around her - an incredibly generous teacher and friend and always a watercolor journaling inspiration!

This is a look at a persimmon tree while sitting under it. One is done with my stencils and masks and another is a free-flowing use of the gouache as watercolors.

For the second sketching session, we went up the hill where the cold wind got us sitting close to the ground behind a fence and I sketched two views from the same locations.

And here is a link to Suhita sketching the same tree and then sketching Gay and me sitting next to her.

More from the Mushrooming trip

Forests are such primal places - especially older ones with the multitude of layers opening up more and more as you let the place unfurl by being still. My love for sketching in the forest grows out of stillness that enraptures into a world I did not see before. Even with the smallest, fastest, simplest of sketches by the time I am done and ready to catch up to my party, the world around me is larger. There are more birds, everything suddenly is alive and not what it seemed before. 

I made a video flip-through these pages in my sketchbook:

Sketchbook #111: Hiking and Drawing Treasures

Sketchbook #106: Gouache #25 and other sketches in the forest

Sketchbook #103: Little bits

Pocket sketchbook pieces later taped in the main sketchbook.

Trip to Bonaire - Kayaking in Mangrove Forest

I got a captain's sit in a double kayak this time and had an apprentice to do the rowing for a while to draw. And then just stopped to do several views from the same shady spot in the middle of mangrove maze.
That PowerTank ballpoint pen from uni was amazing! (see photo of the process below). It worked on my completely wet, salty paper like a brush! I loved it so much that I even tried to take it with me scuba diving - but at 70 feet it refused to pump ink :( too bad - it would have been a great tool! But it survived the submersion and depth and my vigorous attempts to use it and still works fine on the surface.

February 2014: Forest

It was a very quiet, silver forest of "not yet spring" - even though everything is in bloom outside of it, it's still wintery. And then I saw this colorful log!

January 2014: Forest Walk

Every page, every spread in this book is a bit of a surprise, sometimes - struggle as papers and ink combinations are so different that I am forced to either changing my tools every spread or sticking to the simplest pencil... So the year is not starting easy for me :) But I see the way through :)