Here's how these outings are possible - I got the vaccine! It was really exciting and I'm so incredibly grateful to have gotten both of my shots.
I got both of my shots at the Pipkin Buildings at the Memphis Fairgrounds. It has garage-like doors on either side, so they directed people to drive right through the building to get their vaccines. On the right of the top sketch you can see the line waiting to drive in.

On the top left is the inside of the building, with the medical professionals giving the shots in front of the outside door. I think they must have had us wait in the building, but I can't remember now. I went to vaccination sites six times - I took my mother-in-law twice, my husband twice, and myself twice. Each time was a completely different process.

By the time I got my second shot, the National Guard had set up a temporary location next to the Pipkin building to accommodate more people, so here you can see some of the medical professionals preparing to give shots to everyone in the bus in front of us. 
One of the National Guards asked if we wanted a sticker and he was surprised to get a loud and emphatic, "YES I WOULD LOVE A STICKER!"
I want to say again how grateful I am to have gotten a vaccine so easily. I am having so much fun hugging my friends again.

I went out for some non-grocery-related sketching - I've been doing that more here and there lately. This is an easy spot for good sketching because it's right in the middle of the city - the Old Forest at Overton Park.

I go more places than just the grocery store these days, but it's the only place where I always sketch. Here is my sketch from today, plus a very quick sketch of the Clark Tower (those stripes!) while I was filling up the car with gas and while my pen was running out of ink.
Today I sketched with a Sailor fude fountain pen, which I've just fallen back in love with. It took me a long time to get used to it, but once I did I loved it. I guess my love faded for a while but it's back now.

Some days I get lucky and get the first pickup spot, where I can practice one-point perspective. I also felt the need to pay tribute to the hardest working machine in our house.

Sometimes I get the view of the back of the fire station that's next door to Kroger. Sometimes I get a banana.

I was excited to have a new subject to draw while waiting - bikes! I love the confusion of lines when drawing bikes. The bike rack and lock added extra challenges. Today (top sketch) I had a different view of the bike rack and was able to show it in context. 

In the past two weeks I've given two presentations for STC events. I enjoy having the subject of practical sketching take up my brain while I write and update these presentations, and it reminds me of how I feel when I teach a class. They both take up a part of my brain that I think is normally filled up with sketching, because when I teach and when I work on presentations or art talks, I do way less sketching.
These are the only sketches I've done since last Monday, plus this one below of the garbage can under my desk. This was inspired by an Instagram friend who reminding me that I said that anything becomes special when you draw it.
Now that I'm done with my presentations, I should test my theory and see if I do more sketching!

Maybe you already knew this, but we were surprised to find how many cool parks there are in Southern Illinois. We took another socially-distanced road trip and made the quick drive up to Anna, IL, where we stayed at the Davie School Inn. We HIGHLY recommend this sweet little place - it's an old school where the original eight classrooms are now hotel rooms! The owners cook a lovely breakfast and bring it to your room every day. And you can shoot hoops in the gym if you want! Here's a sketch I made of the deck, which looks onto a city park and a bunch of bird feeders, where we learned that brown-headed cowbirds are really greedy.

Little Grand Canyon is a hiking area in the Shawnee National Forest. We stopped there and found a picnic table for a snack, so I made a quick warm-up drawing with colored pencils. Then I took a short hike and stopped to sketch a downed tree and some mayapples.

When I joined my husband back at the picnic table we had staked out, I was struck by this angle and made a quick sketch to capture the different lines in the stairs and rails, the shadows, and the angle of that car. We really like doing these kinds of trips where we can drive around and stop when we feel like it, and hang out as long as we want. Toby whittled as I hiked and sketched.

Next we drove to Pomona Natural Bridge and walked around a bit. It's a lovely place! It was getting late but I wanted to make sure to get a sketch of the bridge, so Toby timed me for a seven-minute sketch and this was the result.

After another great breakfast at Davie School Inn, we drove to Garden of the Gods, a wilderness area in Shawnee National Forest for another hike and sketch. What a beautiful place! The (sort of crowded) observation trail hike has lovely views and really cool rock formations. I could have stayed there drawing all day, but I didn't have enough sunscreen on for that, plus there was more to see!

Of all of the parks we visited, we were surprised to find that Cave-in-Rock State Park was our favorite. It just didn't sound that interesting - so there's a cave? in a rock? But it is so pretty! It sits on a high bluff on the Ohio River, and there are picnic tables and pavilions with amazing views of the river. We stopped at one and had a VERY WINDY picnic lunch with an awesome view, then we moved lower on the bluff and under a pavilion for sketching (me) and cigar smoking and bird watching (him). We also got to watch the ferry that carries cars from the Illinois side to the Kentucky side of the river - I even included it in my sketch!
I walked down to see the cave and it turns out it's pretty cool, too!

Then we took the ferry! I've never taken a car ferry before, so I was pretty excited. It was a pretty quick ride, so this was all the sketching I had time for.

Then we were in Louisville without much to do, so we went to ToGo Sushi - a drive-through sushi place (It's so good! Go there if you're in Louisville!) and went to Cave Hill Cemetery for a little sushi picnic. We also visited the graves of Muhammed Ali and Colonel Sanders while we were there.

I sketched this at the cemetery. I like the way it looks, but my intention was to do more with ink after I got most of the watercolor down. I ran out of time because we got kicked out of the cemetery! But only because they were closing.

Next we went to Waterfront Park. I was having trouble focusing on what I wanted to sketch, so I drew some borders to work in (this is something I always recommend to my students!). And once I had these smaller areas and specific shapes, I got really inspired!

 This is Big Four Pedestrian Bridge. I had so much fun sketching it! First I faced south, drawing the portion that was added for pedestrian access, then I turned completely around to the north and drew the bridge spanning the Ohio River. I started with a very very watered down sumi ink to establish the composition a bit, then just sketched it with a Pigma Graphic 1 pen. Sometimes it's fun to just make a black and white ink sketch.
After that we picked up dinner from Mashallah African Restaurant, which I also HIGHLY recommend. The service was excellent and the food was sooooo good!  

Then we drove home! But we went through Paducah instead of driving south through Nashville, and we found a Taco John's! We discovered Taco John's on our fall trip out west - they have these tater-tot-like things called Potato Olés and they are quite good (but also quite salty). So we had a Taco John's picnic at a sweet little park and I sketched.
Then we drove home via Arkansas, by crossing two bridges at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers that had really interesting views - I would love to go back and sketch around there.
This trip reminded me that I need to go out in the world, and especially in nature, to sketch. It does something good to my brain and to my soul.

It doesn't snow much here in Memphis, TN, and when it does the whole place shuts down. It doesn't matter how much snow or ice we get, everything stops! But this year, over the course of 10 days we got ice, then snow, then more snow! We got up to 10 inches of snow and the temperature was below freezing for days and days.
I mostly stayed inside but I did venture out to sketch once - I had to sketch while wearing gloves, my sketchbook got snowed on and I dropped it in the snow, and I should have chosen a water-soluble material instead of the pen that was then ruined. But my sketchbook was very sturdy and I have plenty more pens! This is not my best sketch ever, but it is the best sketch I've done in below freezing weather while getting snowed on.

This is my writing process. I presented a talk about it at Spectrum 2021 - STC Rochester yesterday called Practical Sketching for Technical Communicators. The idea is that the action of sketching and annotating as part of your process helps you capture and understand information, think through problems, get unstuck, and spark new ideas. I was using this process to figure out what I wanted to write about in the blog post, and I thought I'd just share the process sketch instead of writing it. This is a blog about sketching, after all.

And here's a sketch I made while waiting for my presentation to start, to help calm my nerves!

When you take someone to the doctor now you get a little vacation in your car all by yourself while you wait for them. Of course I used my time to sketch! There was an area of random strip-mall-adjacent trees and shrubs with an electrical tower that perfectly captures some of the commercial landscape in the Memphis suburbs.

I did a super quick sketch of the car wash while I was getting gas, and later captured a dramatic coffee cup on my desk.

Today I went to pick up my groceries and had to wait for a spot in the pick-up area, which gave me a straight-on view of the fire station - what luck! I got the structure down and after I parked I added the details - trees, chainlink fence, more trees. Sketching can be such a joyful way to pass the time while waiting, and sometimes all you need is a one pen!

I did this watercolor sketch on a balmy December day. I just noticed I had not posted it yet, and it made me realize I haven't done any watercolor sketches in the month of February. It's weird how your focus can change from material to material, from subject to subject. It's been too cold here to sketch outside, but now it's warm again, but it's about to be rainy. Hopefully more outdoor sketching will resume in March.