Had the bright idea (thanks, Connecticut magazine!) of heading to Milford on Saturday morning with our kayaks before the heat got too intense, to explore the Charles Wheeler Wildlife Management Area -- basically, the salt marshes. It's a gorgeous place -- calm waterways and lots of birds and other creatures to gawk at along the way. We set off around 9:30 or so, scooting our kayaks through a few feet of mud before getting to the water.

I took some pictures with my camera and then decided to take out my little watercolor set and a waterbrush to capture M. paddling. Here's what I was able to do while bobbing along in the kayak and trying to keep from hitting the banks too frequently:



A few hours later, when we were through paddling (or so we thought) and wanted to head back, we realized that the few feet of mud had suddenly become several hundred feet of mud -- because of those pesky things known as the tides. Yep, we'd forgotten to check the tide charts.

I looked at maps of the area on my iPhone, but we couldn't find any other way to get back to the car. I finally pulled up a tide chart, and we found out that low tide had occurred at just after 10 a.m. So we'd have to kill at least a few hours before there would be enough water to get back to the car. And the sun was only getting higher in the sky, during a heat wave. Fab.

What to do? Well, we hitched our two kayaks together using a nametag lanyard from my Wharton reunion weekend (not sure why M. had this with him, but it sure came in handy) and M. paddled us along toward the (Route 1) Washington Bridge (figured it was better to wait near civilization and not in the marshes).

I took out my Lamy Safari pen and sketched in my kayak as he towed me (watercolor added later, in this case):





We stopped near the bridge to rest and stay in the shade, so I sat on the rocks and sketched a different perspective (again, watercolor added later):



Finally we paddled back past noon and had enough water to get back to the car -- though not without M.'s having to wade, nearly knee-deep, through several feet of thick, nasty-smelling mud!

Tandem-biked on our bike & tag-along down to the end of Shippan Avenue early this morning before the cars came out; I took a camera, sketchbook and Lamy Safari pen along in the bike pannier.

Yesterday we meandered up Route 7 toward Litchfield County, just because. It wasn't supposed to rain until late, or so said Weather.com. But as we passed around Lake Waramaug and took a long loop back toward Kent Falls State Park, the sky was threatening. I sketched the footbridge in pencil and took a photo for color notes; I used Arches Hot Press paper, which is a hit-or-miss experience. Then I sat by the waterfall and sketched in different media (NOT on the Arches paper but in a sketchbook). I tried dip pen and pencil but wasn't too happy with either, so I went back to my Lamy Safari for a last try. And then the sky opened up, so I had to pack up and go. (We did stop for handmade hazelnut ice cream at Belgique, of course, because, well, c'est necessaire!)

When I got home I added watercolor to both -- the footbridge painting has way, way too many layers of paint on it, and the tree shapes are bizarre. The other was a challenge because it's really hard to paint a waterfall.

How about you -- what tricks do you use with Hot Press paper and watercolor?

Finally got a break in the weather and was able to go see "Othello" at Shakespeare on the Sound in Rowayton, CT. Was a bit rushed, so I sketched in fountain pen after eating a quick dinner from Rowayton Market and added color later on. The stage was ... different: a triangle-shaped pile of rubber gravel or something similar, in front of a raw plywood back board. Off to one side was a two-tiered catwalk. These modern interpretations are fine, and the actors really did a superb job -- but I would love to see a traditional, fully period-costumed version someday.

It was my B-school alumni reunion weekend, so I found myself in Philadelphia instead of New York/CT where I usually SketchCrawl. A friend and I met to sketch in Center City for a bit before I had to go to the Penn campus for reunion activities. Here are my two sketches from the day, drawn near Irving and Quince Streets.

They were both drawn with a Lamy Safari pen/Noodler's ink in Lexington Gray; the first was colored with various washes of Noodler's and Herbin inks, and the second with Pitt Artists markers.

Took a spur-of-the-moment trip to New Mexico when our London trip plans fell through due to the Icelandic volcano. It was fabulous, though a bit colder than we had anticipated. It took a while to get adjusted to the weather and the high altitude, so I didn't end up taking my sketchbook out in Albuquerque. By the time we got to Santa Fe it had started to warm up a bit. I actually brought dip and bamboo pens and Higgins India ink along with me, so I used those to do a quick sketch of the plaza in Old Town, and used Caran d'Ache Neocolor water-soluble crayons for color:



From the same plaza area, I sketched a corner of the La Fonda hotel -- by this time I was getting a bit cold and the wind had started to pick up, so I wasn't getting the lines quite the way I wanted! I did like the new ink I'd bought, though, Noodler's Golden Brown, since it matched the color of the adobe-style architecture quite well.



Before I headed back to our inn, I stopped on a corner looking down Water Street and did another quick sketch of the buildings with the Sangre de Cristo mountains beyond.



We went on to Taos the next day, and stopped for lunch at Graham's Grille:



Dinner that night was at Joseph's Table, with its dreamy ambience and antiques-festooned interior. Reminded me a bit of ABC Carpet & Home.

Joined the Central Park Sketching Meetup Group on Saturday at the Conservatory Garden to draw for a few hours.

 

First day of spring, spent browsing through antiques stores in Hudson, NY. Kudos to the town for mostly keeping out the chain stores on Warren Street. And what a long, walkable, shoppable street it is. Finally walked down to the river on this visit; next time will have to check out some of the side streets, plus the other area towns.

Every four years, people suddenly rediscover an interest in the somewhat obscure sport of curling. They watch the hypnotic, focused rock-throwing-and sweeping (this year, after the market close on CNBC each day) and wonder how hard it could be and whether it should be in the Olympics at all. Well, whenever those questions start, Bridgeport's Nutmeg Curling Club stands ready to answer. It's apparently one of two curling clubs in Connecticut, with members who love curling and love to talk about it. Which is a good thing, because at their open house this past Sunday, the line of people waiting for a "curling experience" ($10 for 25 minutes of ice time) stretched out the door. We stood shivering in the doorway and listened to them talk about the rocks (granite, last 50+ years, 42 pounds each), the brooms (often microfiber, fairly inexpensive), and the shoes (OK to curl in sneaks but the pros have Teflon soles on theirs). When we finally got out on the ice, we found that yes, it's much harder than it looks to push a 42-pound chunk of granite across pebbled ice while twisting the handle the right way; and yes, it's equally difficult to sweep sideways and shuffle forward while not touching the moving rock and not tripping over other rocks.

Yes, there's a reason it's in the Olympics.

Four of us met up at New Haven Green for Sketchcrawl yesterday There wasn't much snow on the ground anymore, but it was still a bit chilly so we headed to the Yale Center for British Art to start things off.

I began with a pencil drawing of a Yale University archway, drawn from one of the windows in the Center. I colored it later with watercolors and Pitt Artists markers.



Next, I sketched some of the objects (as well as a fellow SketchCrawler drawing) in the Center's exhibit "Promiscuous Assemblage, Friendship, & The Order of Things." It's an eclectic collection of skeletons, butterflies, curios and art -- it's what might inspire a store like Anthropologie's decor.
Apparently there's a sister exhibit at the Sir John Soanes Museum in London, which I hope to see when I'm there in a few months. (These were drawn in a Muji kraft paper notebook with a Lamy Safari pen/Noodler's ink in Lexington Grey, highlighted with a white Sakura Gelly Roll gel pen and colored with Pitt Artists markers and Caran d'Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons.)



Two of us then stopped to get some tea and then headed to the Yale University Art Gallery across the street. I drew a late 19th/early 20th century Suku mask from Congo, which is in the Laura + James J. Ross Gallery of African Art, and then a view of the gallery space.



Since the gallery was closing at 5, we headed over to Geronimo, a favorite restaurant on Crown St., and sketched while we waited for the other members of our party to join us for dinner. We watched the bartenders and staff preparing for the evening rush of customers, and then I sketched some of the customers at the bar.

I was inspired by Jennifer Lawson's EDM challenge sketches of Olympic athletes, so I decided to try some myself while watching the games.

First up was ski cross. Since I had recorded the afternoon's broadcast to watch at night, I paused the action and sketched the athlete on the left as he was doing some stretches to warm up. The sketch on the right was done "live" without the pause on -- much harder since these people absolutely zoom down the slopes!



Here are more ski cross sketches done from "live action":



Next I tried my hand at biathlon -- again, all done from the action except the one on the far right, where I paused the recording to get a good look at his shooting stance.



I then switched media and took out the dip pen and ink, for some quick studies of the downhill portion of the super combined:



And finally, an impression of U.S. ice dancers Emily Samuelson and Evan Bates skating their original dance program:

Just got back from a six-day painting workshop trip to Elbow Cay, one of the "out islands" in the Bahamas. The workshop was taught by Susan Abbott, a wonderful artist and teacher whose sketchbooking workshop I had taken last year at the Art League in Alexandria, VA. We stayed at the Hope Town Harbour Lodge, and spent hours each day ogling the Atlantic, painting the lovely pastel-colored houses en plein air, and just watching the fronds of palm trees sway back and forth. I went snorkeling at the coral reef just off the hotel's beach, rode a golf cart to Tahiti Beach at the other end of the island, and climbed up the stairs of the island's iconic mechanically operated lighthouse. While the food options were a bit limited (there are only a handful of restaurants on the island, and anything stocked in the small "grocery" stores has to be ferried in), the views and weather more than made up for it.

We started off with a few quick sketches as we took a walk through Hope Town:









Then I set up my easel on the beach and did this larger painting:



As I walked through town, I'd spotted a bright red shutter on the firehouse and decided to paint that:



Here's a quick sketch of the water as seen from a bench on a bluff overlooking the beach:



And here's an alley in town, sketched at twilight:



When we went to Tahiti Beach, we came upon a group of kiteboarders with their colorful equipment. I had to work fast to capture them:



And here's a quick sketch of that beach:



A color study of a wall in town:



On our last day of painting, the weather wasn't very cooperative. I started this painting on the beach as the sun rose, but finished it under the hotel's awning as a torrential rain set in.



We did a color study exercise; I worked on this while waiting for the paint on my other work to dry:



The rain eventually subsided, and we sat at the Harbor's Edge restaurant and painted after lunch. It's not quite clear what time of day it is in this painting, as I made the sky rather too dramatic!

Here are more sketches done during the three-day workshop I took in Mystic, CT. First, more of the sea shanty singers...















And finally, a caricature of an old gentleman looking at books on the neat, curvy bookshelves at the Seaport bookstore: