Elizabeth Alley
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Dedicated to the act of sketching.

Driving and the Last Stop

12/26/2020

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Our idea for this trip was to drive around and look at things, so here are some things we saw while driving around.
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We stopped at Carhenge in Nebraska. Toby said we were going there and I kept thinking, "No that is in Texas," until we got there and I said out loud, "Oh, CarHENGE." (I was thinking of Cadillac Ranch in Texas.) Then I sketched it quickly with ink and a little bit of watercolor and colored pencil.
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Later that same day we were... I don't know where, when we had to stop because there were cows in the road. So. Many. Cows! We just stayed put while hundreds of cows walked past us. I sketched them and Toby took about a thousand pictures. It was such a delightful surprise during our long drive!
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We drove on WAY more gravel roads than I would have expected, so we had to stop and clean the car at some point. Well, Toby cleaned it while I sketched.
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We spent our last couple of days winding down at a lake house in Hardy, AR. It was a bit of a return to domesticity and a forced rest before driving the few hours back home to our real life.
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I knew I had one more big sketch in me, so I went out to sketch and spent a lot of time looking, then found a good spot to sit, then looked some more. And I took a different approach based on my discoveries earlier in the trip about timed sketches. I made timed thumbnail sketches! One smaller and one larger, both of the same spot. In the minute I gave myself to sketch the scene, I couldn't overthink it. In the second thumbnail, I used what I learned in the first one and both sort of told me what I found most important to the composition. Then I timed my initial sketch in colored pencil, to make sure it had that same energy.
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Then I painted it. It was a fun experiment and helped keep it feeling fresh for a long (time-wise) sketch.
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Then I made a couple more quick sketches and that was it! I was done sketching for the day and we were nearly done with the trip. We drove home the next day and I was so happy to be there.
We were very lucky to be able to take this trip. I used as much of it as I could to sketch and to learn from it.
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