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.

This week I've been reacquainting myself with diary comics. I used to make them regularly - if I didn't ink them every day, I would at least jot something down and sketch something out every day. I followed Lynda Barry's suggestion of writing down things that you did, saw, heard, and then made things out of those.
You can see in the comic above and below how I experimented with different formats.

I used dedicated notebooks just for comics for most of 2018, and then went back to combining them into a daily notebook where I also kept track of daily notes about practical things and projects. But I kept doing them for a long time.
I have been looking through notebooks at how comics were a daily part of my life while assuming I would see a hard stop somewhere. My assumption was that I stopped at the beginning of the pandemic, but I kept going on and on, just not necessarily daily.
​I'm going back to a daily practice. It helps me to notice things around me - it invites my attention.

If you are interested in this practice, read Lynda Barry! Start with Syllabus, and then read everything else she's written. I'm going to go reread her now.

I keep wanting to do a blog post about what is new in the studio, but until I can gather my thoughts, here's what I sketched last week.

Last week I was thinking about the sketching workshop I'm teaching at the Dixon this week, and sketched out what I call drawing to understand (what's the shape of these cups, how do they intersect each other in my field of vision) vs. drawing to record (adding context of what I'm observing, what is it on or next to or near, what am I doing while observing). I did these with a Bic pen - I always forget how fun they are to draw with, then I love rediscovering them!

Still thinking about the workshop - sketching with two materials and using the green marker to add a bigger impact to my sketch. 
These two people are the only ones I did for the One Week 100 People challenge - HA! 

Tuesday afternoon was gorgeous, so I took my sketchbook and a few colored pencils outside with my while I talked on the phone. This isn't how I meant for this sketch to go - I had originally thought I would cover more of the page, but with these materials I preferred to focus on shapes and patterns. I like the sparseness of it and the rhythm of the chairs.

This was a weird one. I was waiting for some take-out on Thursday night and wanted to sketch these buildings (of course), but it was dark! I figured I would try my waterbrush pen with diluted sumi ink and just see what happened. The flag is lighted and there was this swirl of smoke moving in and out of it - it was fun to try to capture that with a white gel pen.
Even with that big drip, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. 

Simple coffee cup sketch! Later, I saw this building with shadows and reflections of trees, and the trees were filled with crows, so I had to see what I could do to capture that in the few minutes I had. 

Looking at art is a priority for me, and I'm fortunate to be able to sometimes travel to where I want to see some art. Last weekend, my husband and I went to New York so that I could see several shows.

First up was Edward Hopper's New York at The Whitney. The sketches above are typical of the notes and sketches I make when I'm looking at art - just jotting down some thoughts. The two photos are some of the more surprising works that I saw in the show. I love Hopper's paintings - seeing them all together reinforced the slight stiffness that is characteristic of his work, so these looser, more dramatic drawings and watercolors were a real treat.

Next up was Alex Katz, Gathering, at the Guggenheim. I went into this with a preconceived idea of it being an awkward show that I would not find very interesting. Boy was I wrong! 

The scale of Katz's work was perfect for the way art is displayed in this (weird but wonderful) building. The best part, as I sketched above, was being able to see the work all together on different floors at the same time across the spiral.

After, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and looked at more American art. 

Last was Just Above Midtown at MOMA - a show about a Black-owned gallery that opened in the early 70s, focusing on women and Black artists. It was refreshing after two days of old white dudes. But I went in not knowing any of these artists, so I just started writing down every artist's name, then as I went through and saw more, I would think, "Oh Senga Nengudi also did that piece in the front..." It was so useful in getting to know these artists! It was a gorgeous show.

I've been sketching at home a lot lately because that is where I usually find myself. Often my sketchbook is next to me and I just pick up whatever pen or pencil is nearby to sketch with. 

I love to sketch while waiting somewhere out in the world, too! Just making lines and seeing where they will intersect can keep me interested for a long time.

This page spans a few days last week. It was a weird week! Lots of late nights and early mornings. Lots of trucks on my street as neighbors get work done on their houses, which is fine with me because it just gives me more to draw!
Most of these were done with a Sakura Pigma Graphic 1, and my everyday sketchbook is a Stillman and Birn Alpha, 8.5x5.5.

Like 2022 and 2020, I went to Portland, Maine, in January. It turns out I love hiking and sketching in the cold!
It was fun to be traveling again - I love the traveling part of traveling. On the plane, I read, or I crochet while listening to a podcast. I people-watch in the airport and sketch and try to eat something decent with a cup of coffee. 

I don't just go to Maine to hike and sketch, I go there to visit my friend Andrea! We've been friends for about 35 years and try to see each other at least twice a year. I like to sit in her kitchen and sketch while she cooks.

We went on two hikes on Saturday. One was both icy and muddy, and we turned back before reaching our destination. The other, Mackworth Island, was muddy but more manageable. But both were very cold and windy, so I made a sketch from a photo that I took.

While Andrea made breakfast on Sunday morning (French toast!), I sketched her dining room.
As we started a hike later that day, Andrea got a call so I did a quick sketch of trees and rocks and leaves - just a lot of fun mark-making in a short amount of time.

We reached the summit of Bradbury Mountain and I was excited to find a picnic table where I could sit and sketch while Andrea and I continued to talk (it's like one long four-day conversation when we visit!). I was so excited to be in a place and to have the time where I could make this kind of sketch - full page, from life, of nature. 
This took about 20 to 25 minutes and I used ink and colored pencil - the blue/gray of the sky is a Rohrer & Klingner ink called Thea in a Kuretake water brush that I love having it on hand. I sketched it out with that ink and added some diluted sumi ink that I have in another Kuretake water brush, and layered on the colored pencil. It was very cold and that's all I could do! 

I guess it's "fall" so i am going to wrap up these Summer Sketchbook posts. I went into summer wondering what summer really is when it's always hot where you live and no one in the house goes to school. But I forgot! I forgot that there's a moment in September when the light changes, the sun is lower in the sky and it starts getting dark earlier. I forgot that the heat breaks and there's a hint in the air that we're not actually hurtling into the sun. So here's the rest of my summer!

These bright, sunny, summery sketches are all from my birthday - I got lots of plants and flowers! 

This is from the taco truck at Summer Ave and Perkins - it's super good! I was just making a list of their meats while waiting, and decided to make a sketch out of it.

More protests. This one was at Poplar and Highland - first time I've ever joined a protest there. I felt like we got more supportive honks than middle fingers.

Pool time!

I ended my Summer Sketchbook with a trip to New Jersey and New York. I had to go to New Jersey for work, so of course I snuck off to Manhattan for some good art time.

I didn't do much sketching there, but I enjoyed it immensely. I usually run through The Met and just see a few things, but this time I wandered around for hours. It was just what I needed.