Lately I've been thinking about how my work consists of sketching on location and experiencing places through sketching and through various actions - like walking or swimming - and then my oil paintings come from a combination of the sketches and the experiences. When I paint, I think about how well I can get to know a place through these actions – how it feels, the energy of the place, the sounds, sights, smells, solidity or airiness, wind, rain, cold and heat - and the sketches contribute to getting to know the shapes and lines that go with it. So, the point is to connect with a place briefly, so that what I paint comes out abstracted or flattened or with unlikely colors or patterns, but the feeling of the place is there.​

We took a boat tour in Auckland - a whale and dolphin safari. We saw neither whales nor dolphins, but I was perfectly happy sketching all of the little islands we passed by. I just used pencil because we were sitting on the front of the boat, and I didn't want to risk losing any sketching supplies to the bumpy ride. Keeping it simple seemed like a safe bet.

On our last full day in Auckland, we rode the bus around town to six different places that sell meat pies and I sketched every one of them, but I didn't taste all of the pies. The Mill Bakehouse and Ripe Deli were my favorites. We ended at a restaurant called Toby's, which seemed appropriate. I kept it simple here with just two Pilot Parallel pens.

After we came back, my sketching felt refreshed. Here are some from April and May, right after we returned from the Symposium. I feel like the Symposium really helped me to find my sketching sweet spot again, as did the trip we took to Newfoundland, which I'll tell you about next time!

I'm testing posting from my phone - again. This software is glitchy but I check back every so often just in case.

If it works, you'll see this sketch that I made in Mobile, Newfoundland (get it - mobile!), as a preview for upcoming posts about my trip to Newfoundland. I'll keep posting spring and summer highlights until next week, when I can start reflecting on this trip.

Fingers crossed this works!

(ETA - It only kind of worked. I'm sticking with the full online Square/Weebly blog editor.)

I went to the art museum in Auckland, and it was so nice to look at art and draw it and to think about art and to not think about it and just breeze by or say nope or to GASP with surprise and delight when I walked in a gallery and saw something unexpected.
I did this sketch on the terrace with a Pilot Parallel pen and a pencil for the background - I love how cartoonish these sculptures look in my sketch. They were pretty cartoonish in person, too. And after the Symposium, it was nice to have this time to put thought into a sketch and a little more oomph, incorporating some of what I had learned. 

I walked around at my own pace and ate two small lunches! 

I sketched at Albert Park again, trying a new thing where I sketched the same scene twice. I did the thumbnails in the smaller sketchbook, then did a big sketch (top), then went back into the smaller book (8.5" x 5.5") and did a really quick sketch of the same subject. An unscientific poll of some of my Instagram friends preferred the second one - I'm not surprised! When you draw or paint a thing twice, you get the awkwardness out in the first one.

I'm in a different part of the world right now, but wanted to go back and share more from New Zealand. I've shared some special moments from our trip, now here are some sort of ordinary scenes - well, ordinary for traveling to the other side of the world. This is from Albert Park on the first day we got to Auckland - I went ahead and got a sketch of the tower out of the way on day one!

This one is from Elliott Stables - a food hall next door to where we stayed. It was perfect for a day of recovering from jet lag.

And here we skip to after the Symposium. I was so happy with this page because after days of (really wonderful) workshops, it was nice to sketch in my own style. I captured the hotel laundry room as I washed clothes, and a takoyaki stand where I waited for lunch. One of the best things about this trip was that I got to go to two takoyaki stands!

The Auckland War Memorial Museum was a delight! So were the mussels I had later at The Occidental.

On our last day, I was packed and ready to go way too early, so I drew the hotel room, using what I had learned from Stephanie Bower's perspective workshop. It was sad to say goodbye to this sweet little room!

I still have lots of things to post from earlier this year, like the rest of my trip to New Zealand, but I also want to show that I am sketching regular things all the time. And it doesn't get more regular than this from earlier today - a Walgreens at a big intersection. I used a Pilot Parallel pen because I love the variety of line that they offer, and I sketched quickly because it's hot out!

Here are some more highlights from my summer sketchbook, a small Laloran, 4.25" x 4.75".

As I posted here recently, I have started to think about how observing while walking or through some other action is part of my art practice, so when I was at the Florida gulf coast recently I kept that in mind.
This sketch above was the view from the kitchen window of the Santa Rosa Sound and the town of Navarre Beach in the distance. I loved watching how the light changed throughout the day and day by day, and how the colors changed as a result.

When I got back home, I kept thinking about the shapes - the point of the Sound in the sketch to the right, the sandbars and seaweed patches, the grasses and scraggly bushes, the almost straight lines of the sky, water, land, and the roads, sidewalks, and fences whose edges are obscured by sand shapes. All of which I observed while staring out the window or from the balcony, walking, driving, and swimming in the Sound.

I took the time to capture some lines, marks, and patterns on a couple of walks - tire tracks on the beach, the rhythm of walkways and stairs, clumps of seaweed and grasses, and the lines created by seaweed that mimics the waves when they hit the beach.

Of course I also made my typical vacation sketches - things that were in front of me and the things that accumulated on the kitchen counter. And even sketched a few family members working on a puzzle! 
It was a lovely time, and I'm so thankful that my family totally gets that I need time to sketch and to walk around and look at things. And enjoyed that I wasn't the only one sketching!

The sketches I shared from the Symposium and from our outing in Devonport may have looked a little polished, but not all of my sketches look like that. I have to warm up first! When I'm traveling, and especially at a Symposium, I make sure to do warm-up sketches in the morning, just to connect my brain and my had and help the habit of reaching for my sketchbook.
Toby calls these warm-ups skretches!

Skretches are usually of whatever is in front of me. In the morning, that's usually (always) a coffee cup. On the morning I did this sketch, I also drew everything that was in front of me - our little makeshift kitchenette in our hotel room.

Sometimes, my morning warm-ups are a joyful mess, like these from the three Symposium days. I love using my Mitsubishi double-sided pencil with vermillion and Prussian blue to do quick sketches and to help me loosen up. I made these during morning announcements and as we waited for everyone to gather to walk to workshop locations.
This exercise reminded me that sometimes I like to do loose, quick sketches. It's good practice, and it's good to be messy sometimes.

I already told you about some pre-Symposium fun in Auckland, now let me tell you about the 2023 Urban Sketchers Symposium. 

I started the first day of workshops with Eleanor Doughty's workshop It's Hip to be Square! Boldly Sketching with Calligraphy Pens. It was the perfect first-day workshop, as it thrust us all into a very "urban sketching" environment - we were at a busy intersection, chasing the shade, drawing around pedestrians and trying to ignore shouting passersby and crying babies. Perfect!
I also found it a perfect start because I learned a lot about calligraphy pens and how you can get great line variation, and how adding spots of black ink into your sketches make them bold and energetic. And, I remembered that I like to sketch like this - ink lines and spots of color.

I did this sketch first in my smaller sketchbook, sort of as a warm-up, but also to give the watercolor on the larger book time to dry. I sketch pretty quickly, so I felt good about doing two sketches.

This sketch was really fun, and I loved being more bold with the black areas, thanks to Eleanor's encouragement. A big thing that I got from this workshop was incorporating typography, which I then did throughout my time in New Zealand, and have continued with since!

You can really see the influence from this workshop on sketches I did throughout the rest of the day.

My day-two workshop was the total opposite of the first one. Soaring Spaces with Stephanie Bower took place in a quiet church, and focused on precision over feeling. I love Stephanie's book on perspective, and this workshop was a great reminder of the basics of one-point perspective. Her approach to watercolor is so different to how I usually use it - I like to use it to make lines and spot color, while Stephanie uses it to express space and volume. It was a great lesson!

A few details from the workshop.

For the final workshop, I took Maru Godas' Flowing Cityscapes. I have wanted to take a workshop with Maru since the Symposium in Chicago in 2017, but haven't been able to get into one until now. The workshop's focus is "to use gouache and mixed media to create loose and colorful urban sketches," which I figured would be right in my wheelhouse. I found myself expecting to be the star - ha!
Some self-reflection during the trip made me think about the last time I saw all of these lovely people, in 2019, when I was so confident about everything. Now, in 2023, I am comfortable and confident in the knowledge and understanding that I don't know much, and that I don't have to strive for any imaginary gold stars. So, it was funny to me to find that these old ways of being were resurfacing, and I was okay with not being the star of the workshop!

But I did have so much fun in this workshop, just slapping paint around, which really is my jam. Here are some quick sketches as I looked for the best composition.

The final piece ended up a little tighter than I intended, but it was a really fun exercise. I like gouache but I want to love it, so this was another step in that direction.

I spent the rest of the last day battling the very wet air, being moved around because we were taking over a covered area in front of a business, and squeezing in as many visits with old and new friends as possible. 
This Symposium was exactly what I needed. It reignited that proud and grateful feeling that I have to be part of this organization. I met and reunited with amazing, interesting, generous people. And I learned so much about sketching and remembered so much about what I love about it. 

I want to tell you all about the Urban Sketchers Symposium and my trip to Auckland, but first let me tell you about this hill.

​It was a perfect day - we took the ferry to Devonport, found a nice restaurant for lunch, went to the park so I could sketch and Toby could watch boats. At this point I was working on getting out the awkward sketches that happen before a Symposium, when I typically forget how to draw.

After that, we had a drink at a pub, and then I walked up Takarunga / Mount Victoria, which is the highest volcano on that part of the shore at 217 feet. But don't worry, there was a nice paved road to walk up on.

There was nothing special about it and everything special about it - I love walking, I love discovering things while walking, and I love sitting and sketching a nice view - I sketched Rangitoto, a nearby volcanic island across the Hauraki Gulf.

It felt like so much more than just a walk.

The way I was getting to know the hill by walking up it and noticing every different kind of plant and bird sound, and the sound of the wind in the grass and the far-off views, is similar to how I think about observational drawing: I was getting to know things about the space by walking it that I couldn't have learned another way. The walking, the sitting and looking and listening felt like work of art in itself.

​I kept reflecting on it over the two weeks of our trip to center myself and noticing how the feeling of it related to what I'm trying to capture in the studio: the (brief) moment in the space, and the place that it becomes for me through that experience.