A Perfect Day in The Forest

I took my pocket gouache palette and small sketchbook on a hike. It was a perfect forest hike in the mountains with temperatures changing quickly. I saw lots of banana slugs, all sorts of mushrooms and many signs that this forest is shared by many creatures. 

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:

Redwood Forest

A friend (@gaskincreative), a new hiking spot, a super tasty lunch, and a great time talking about everything from artificial intelligence to parenting! 

I brought my portable gouache palette and sketchbook and had a joyful time sketching two views from the same spot:

A long-awaited meet-up

This week I got to spend some time sketching with friends - Suhita Shirodkar, Shari Blaukopf, Brenda Swenson, Gay Kraeger, and Elyse Fairweather. Some of them came from afar - it was a special treat and something we've been trying to pull off for quite some time! 

We went to the magical garden and forest in Santa Cruz Mountains to see Gay and Elyse and had a blast trying to fit a gigantic redwood in our sketchbooks. We listened to birds and water and looked for frogs in a fountain. We smelled flowers, played with materials, flipped through each other's sketchbooks, and drew oranges outdoors, and humans indoors. 

Chatting about life's big and small things, sharing some food, and ideas, and looking at the clouds. Below are my drawings and some photos from our adventures. And attached to them are some really good memories and a feeling of joy of friendships - and that is such a gift! Thank you to all who made this week special!

Drawing while walking, drawing in the rain

I had a wonderful time hiking through a forest on a Sunday morning recently. It was rainy and foggy, some colors were saturated and others were muted. A great company of friends meant a conversation accompanied by raindrops on my hood. I was a little too wet and cold to draw first but then got out my little pocket drawing pad and used a waterproof uniball to make some quick sketches-while-walking: a twisty madrone, fallen three meant I drew people climbing over it, a turn in the road. The sketches are hard to recognize by others but they are my little memory about a day well spent!

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