Just back from our annual hop across the pond for London Book Fair. It was a tough week in the world, but it was comforting to meet friends and colleagues. I was fortunate enough to be able to take Colin Merrin's weekend workshop "From the Sketchbook to the Finished Work" at the Bankside Gallery. The idea was to take small everyday thumbnails and drafts and turn them into something more finished without losing freshness and spontaneity. Easier said than done! His numerous well-thumbed sketchbooks were an inspiration, and he soon sent us off into the overcast outdoors to dash off sketches.

Started off with some quick ones of the Blackfriars Railway Bridge and some people sitting in front of the pub.





My eyes were then drawn to the busker in front of the Tate Modern. I wasn't the only one; he attracted quite a crowd with his slow, deliberate dance holding a glassy orb.



A few sprinkles from the sky sent me back into the gallery, where I took two of my sketches to develop further. I repainted them using only watercolor (no pencil or ink first) on Arches cold press paper.





The next day, I wandered further afield, ending up at London Bridge. I stopped at the Shard to sketch a view looking down to the street below:



And then a couple talking at Southwark Cathedral...



...and people sitting near the railway bridge.



I finished the day on the steps by the river, sketching children and their parents hunting for treasures as the Thames lapped at their feet.



A few days later, I took the Docklands Light Rail (I've been fascinated by it ever since I took it to London City Airport last year) down to Greenwich. I had hopes of straddling the prime meridian, but found that it was a bit of a walk from the train station. So I sat by the Cutty Sark and sketched the town instead; later I collaged in a few scraps from the Greenwich pages of a vintage London guidebook.



The next day, we boarded a train for York, on our way to Edinburgh. (To be continued...)

Spent an hour sketching at the Brooklyn Library's cafe last weekend with the NYC Urban Sketchers.





A curious young man (I think he was 10, but for some reason my sketch makes him look older) stopped to see what we were doing; he ended up taking out his notebook and sketching with us, as he chatted about Picasso and the Guggenheim -- and then he posed for a portrait.

It all started with a casual leaf (well, digital swipe) through the current issue of Country Living. Intrigued by a feature excerpted from Sibella Court's new book, I researched her and found that she'd earlier written The Stylist's Guide to NYC. A curated pick of shops in the city? Sounded like my kind of book -- and as the Union Square Barnes & Noble had it in stock, off to Manhattan we went yesterday.

After procuring the book, I stopped in for an hour and a half at Old Town Bar, where the NYC Urban Sketchers were holding court. We were blessed with a steady stream of models (I mean, bar patrons) to draw.



Afterward, I met M. at Strand Books, where I snagged the now out-of-print Robert Wade's Watercolor Workshop Handbook.

Two places that Sibella Court favored were next on our list: Olde Good Things and the Antiques Garage in Chelsea. Fun stuff in both places, but definitely priced well above what we'd get them for outside NYC.

We ended our day at Jones Wood Foundry, a cozy British-style pub on the Upper East Side, because I was craving sticky toffee pudding. And it was good.

Bodega's takeout menu, with its fab truck logo, just *begs* to be sketched on. I love the challenge of incorporating existing graphics into the sketch. Drew the goings-on in the kitchen a few weeks ago during breaks between dinner courses. Used colored pencil instead of watercolor with the ink drawing because of the thin paper. Just looking at the menu is making me dream of their brussels sprouts, the cazuela with quinoa, the kale salad -- yum!

In bleakest February, the hardy people of Canada's capital turn the Rideau Canal into the world's longest skating rink, get international artists to sculpt fantastical things out of ice blocks and throw a big party in their city called Winterlude. So how could we not go?

Ottawa turned out to be our getaway, our escape from the blizzard Nemo, which left great boulders of snow in places that were already Sandy-scarred. It snowed up there too, of course -- this was a storm that made headlines even in the north country -- but they are used to it there. There were people pedaling bicycles even as the snow kept falling that Friday, blithely commuting through the accumulating drifts to their homes, to stores, to dinner.

So I wasn't about to let the bone-chilling cold stop me from sketching. I was well-prepared for the weather -- I had an ankle-length down coat, a fleece balaclava to protect my head and neck, lined boots and wool gloves.

The problem, of course, is maintaining dexterity when your hands are mummy-wrapped. Nina Johansson inspired me with her recent gloved sketches of Stockholm done with thick markers, so I brought along some Caran d'Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons and other supplies to try. When I was browsing through Wallack's, the local art supply store a few blocks from our hotel, I picked up a Sakura SumoGrip mechanical pencil as well -- figured the fat barrel would be perfect for grasping through gloves.

It's a good thing I bought it, because it turned out to be the perfect tool for sketching in the extreme cold. On Saturday morning I skated out to a bench in the middle of the Rideau Canal to draw. The pencil worked like a dream, but the Neocolor IIs didn't cooperate, and trying to dissolve the hesitant marks with a waterbrush just made them turn to flakes of waxy colored ice that skittered right off the page. You can see my attempt in the sketch below (before I sort of salvaged it much later with watercolors).



I did the pencil drawing of Parliament Hill while sitting on my folding stool next to Major's Hill Park, just before the Alexandra Bridge, and colored it later with watercolors. I marveled at the number of runners who flew past me in the snow on their way across the bridge to Gatineau (which is in Quebec).





On the drive back home, I took out the Strathmore Toned Gray sketchbook and drew the landscape -- it looked this way for hours on I-81.



How about you? What are your tips for sketching in extreme cold?

On Saturday I participated in the 38th Worldwide SketchCrawl. I wasn't able to meet up with the NYC group in the morning but ended up doing a daylong dual-state crawl.

I started off with a quick sketch over breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien in Stamford before going to a few local garage sales.



At one of them I scored a set of unused watercolor pencils, among other art supplies, so I brought them along with me to my next stop -- Brooklyn, New York, where I met my friend Alison. We had lunch and sketched each other. Then I sketched the expansive view from her window, with the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in the distance:



We went up a few flights of stairs to the roof, where we enjoyed breathtaking views of the sunset over Brooklyn and Manhattan. I quickly sketched two views before my fingers began to freeze:





When we went back down to warm up, I drew her daughter practicing piano (finally broke out those watercolor pencils):



Around 6:15 I headed back to Connecticut so I could catch The Sig Brothers playing at Coalhouse Pizza in Stamford -- got a prime seat right in front of the band so I could draw them as M. and I enjoyed the music:



The next Worldwide SketchCrawl will be on Saturday, April 13. Mark your calendar and join in the fun!

To cap off 2012, M. and I drove down to Washington, D.C., on Dec. 30. After the requisite stops in the 'burbs for yummy unfamiliar food and the Tyson's Corner Levenger store, we sat down for an Ethiopian dinner at Etete and browsed at Kramerbooks before calling it a night.

New Year's Eve was a whirlwhind of art supply, bike and pen stores within Metro-ing distance of the Dupont Circle Hotel (scored the Utrecht travel brush set I'd been looking for and three inexpensive new fountain pens from Farhney's). Then it was off to Redwood in Bethedsa, Maryland, for dinner -- their NYE fete was titled "Last Dance in Old Havana," but the Hawaiian shirts and leis strewn about seemed to imply Polynesian tiki bar. Glad we were only there for food and left before their dubiously themed party kicked off!

While we were eating, I noticed this fabulous silver-haired woman perched at the bar with her feet up on a stool -- she seemed to embody a certain old-school style, with her cashmere sweater, silk scarf and jeans, so I just had to draw her.



After a few bites of rather cheesecakey flan, we were ready for our next stop: the New Year's Eve swing lesson and dance at Glen Echo Park's Spanish Ballroom. Last time we'd been was in the summer -- and it was broiling. This time, it appeared to be unheated -- we couldn't wait for the dance to get started so we could contemplate shedding the warmth of our coats.



We went over the basics in the lesson but also learned some Charleston-esque moves, so that kept things interesting even for the more experienced dancers.

Tuesday morning we decided to stop in Annapolis on the way back home. The last time I'd been there was in the fourth or fifth grade, when our elementary school unit on state history culminated with the obligatory trek to the state house. All I remember of the trip is that as we waited for the school bus to pick us up, some of the girls in our group were chatting up the (much older!) Naval Academy students.

Anyhow, turns out it's quite a cute and sketchable capital city. And oddly enough, it was *bustling* on New Year's Day. Shops and restaurants were open, and people were out and about. M. took a bike ride while I parked my folding stool and drew the view up Main Street (and yes, that's the state house dome in the back).



Will have to go back in warmer weather to explore it (and the Eastern Shore) some more.

Hope everyone has a happy and art-filled new year!

Nothing says holiday like a blast of salty spray from the Sound! As usual, we packed up our presents and drove off to Mystic, Connecticut, on the Eve of Christmas Eve, to spend the holiday at M.'s family's waterfront cottage.

This year, we went to the 57th annual Mystic Seaport Community Carol Sing, benefiting the Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center. Everyone gathered at the Seaport's Anchor Circle to sing popular Christmas carols (with the aid of helpful booklets to remind us of the more obscure verses).

 



On Christmas Eve, we went bowling at Spare Time in Groton, with my sister-in-law and her family. We started that tradition a few years ago. She and I often take our knitting projects, but this time I took the sketchbook along, determined to capture something of the action.



I find it's really hard to draw people bowling. The experienced bowlers contort themselves into an odd stance when they release the ball -- right arm just so in front; right leg curving behind the left, toe grazing the ground -- and in a second it's over. Yes, they do it over and over again, which should be helpful, but I still haven't quite mastered the pose.





In the evening, we went to the Christmas Eve service at St. Mark's Episcopal Church. It's a smallish, intimate church, and the service included lots of singing, which I enjoyed. The musicians were in the back behind the pews, so I had to crane my neck around to draw them.



We were all given paper stars (gifts for the child in the manger) so I promptly used mine as a stencil to add some interest to the page. I was also fascinated by the people lighting the glass hurricane lamps next to the pews -- but I couldn't sketch them properly as they moved so quickly.



Speaking of things that move fast -- M.'s parents recently got a King Charles spaniel. She's a bundle of puppy energy, so I was only able to get a few quick sketches of her in during the holiday. Perhaps she'll nap more when she's older. :) Hope everyone had a good holiday!

In the wake of Friday's tragedy -- less than an hour away from here -- there are a lot of unanswered questions. There will never be an adequate answer as to why the families of 20 children will be facing a new year without them. But there is one question to which there are a lot of answers -- urgent answers: "What can we do?"

We should of course be redoubling efforts to make it harder for people to get a gun, make them harder to load and use, and get those assault weapons and semiautomatics out of the public's hands altogether. These things are very, very important.

But we can do other things, too.

Let's fund and encourage and celebrate other ways of expressing our emotions, of coping with life. Everyone knows about our lack of competitiveness in math and science, and there's a nationwide conversation about fitness, but we don't do nearly enough to promote the other stuff: Art. Theater. Music. Dance. Cooking. Writing.

Let's give our children safe environments for self-expression and dispel the notion that art is the rarefied realm of a special, talented bunch. Let's press pause on the electronics for a minute and arm our kids with pencils and violins and tap shoes and pottery wheels and whisks and knitting needles.

These are not nice-to-have programs that can be cut when budgets get tight. They are necessary. They are crucial.

This season, I know what I'll be doing. I'll be watching to see if our local and national legislators translate the gun control outrage into actions. But I'll also be giving to arts programs in classrooms. I'll be volunteering at our local school so that someone else's holiday will be a little bit better. And I'll be drawing my heart out, in public.—You come too.

Let's look forward to a time when mass shooting is replaced by mass drawing. Mass dancing. Mass music-making. We can never have enough of that.

Yes, I lived in New York for several years, but this was a first for me! Couldn't have chosen a better day. We had a fairly prime vantage point, near 72nd Street and Central Park West. Couldn't really see what was happening at the street level, but the balloons looked fabulous.

Spent a chilly week in Cleveland since I had to be there for a work meeting (and, conveniently, there was a holiday bazaar being held at the office, so I got to sell some of my paintings and cards). Still managed to do a little sketching on the weekend.

The James A. Garfield Monument at Lake View Cemetery is an interesting place. Makes me want to read Candice Millard's Destiny of the Republic to find out more about the president's assassination.



As the wind whipped the trees, I sat in the car to do this quick sketch of the West Side Market:



Next time, I think, we'll drive there when it's a bit warmer!