North, North, North

Well, I'm back.

In May, I participated in the Arctic Circle residency on SV Rembrandt van Rijn sailing out of Longyearbyen, with 28 amazing artist, four incredible guides, and ten absolutely lovely crew members. I'd like to tell you all about it.

I'm posting some photos, sketches, and in-progress work based on my experience on Instagram. In August, I'm giving a lecture about the residency at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznań, and working on a possible lecture in Memphis. On this blog, I'll be focusing on sketches and the sketching experience.

I'm working on scanning all 150 (-ish) sketches; so far I've scanned eleven, so it's going to take a while. In the meantime, I wanted to start here by sharing my sketching set-up and experience on day two of the excursion.

On our second full day, we visited Chomjakovbreen glacier. Shipmate Corinne brought a yoga mat, purchased at the Svalbardbutikken (the grocery store in Longyearben), and invited me to use half of it. I sketched the glacier - in this image it's in progress - with watercolor and Caran D'Ache neocolor pastels in an 8x10" Stillman and Birn Alpha, using my small folding stool as a little table. And on a day like this with the sun shining and minimal wind, I was able to use water without worrying about it freezing. Note the Stax Museum koozie that held my water container!

We were sitting on ice - fast ice because it's fastened/attached to the coastline. So water was under us, a glacier in front of us, the ship anchored behind in Svovelbukta, and mountains on either side. Even though I had a bit of sensory overload and was probably still hungover from seasickness meds, setting up my sketching gear and getting started felt very natural because I've been sketching out in the world for so long. It's just second nature to me now.

That day I ended up making 15 sketches.

A little about the day from my journal:
Sea ice. Feels like earth but not. Snow on most of it but in places clear and translucent. I sketched the glacier. The more I looked at it, the more colors I could see. An almost dark blue, purple, turquoise.