Aside: As I'm writing this, it's raining, and typing the word "tea" makes me want a cup!

A few days ago, M. and I had lunch at The Drawing Room, a boutique and cafe in Cos Cob, Conn., right off Route 1 on Suburban Avenue. The boutique is cute, though I find that many of the high-end home stores in this area tend to have a similar "shoreline preppy" aesthetic. I was interested more in their tea and light fare menu -- and how could I resist *drawing* in a place called The Drawing Room?

For some reason I brought along only a Moleskine sketchbook that I needed to complete. I just cannot bring myself to put away sketchbooks unfinished no matter how much I can't stand the paper. To draw with, I'd brought two Pilot Varsity fountain pens, refilled with Noodler's Golden Brown and Lexington Gray inks respectively.

My first sketch, with the Golden Brown, was atrocious -- the ink simply beaded on the paper's surface and refused to cooperate. I (sort of) salvaged it later with some Pitt Artist pens because I liked the subject -- the cafe's tiered Afternoon Tea. I've used the Golden Brown before quite successfully, so I'm pretty sure it's just this paper, which reminds me of elementary school oak tag or manila folders.



My second sketch (shown at the top of this post), using the Lexington Gray, felt much better -- the ink responded with a nice, thick line. I did highlight it a bit with Pitt Artist pens, but not too much.

Anyone else refilling Pilot Varsity pens for drawing? What's your experience with them?

(Now I'm off to go make myself that cup of tea!)

A few years ago, as I was trawling the web looking for inspiration, I came upon the drawings of George Butler and Studio 1482. I was attracted to the reportage style, yes, but was especially excited by the spidery, uneven quality of their pen-and-ink lines.

While beautiful, though, dip pen is not the easiest plein air medium for today's busy world -- it's inherently messy and a little awkward.

So, how could I make it a bit more user-friendly? Oh, do I love a challenge!

My first breakthrough was to look for a screw-top, clip-on metal palette cup (the kind used in oil painting, for mediums and such) that could be used as an inkwell. I figured I could just clip it onto my drawing board. Doesn't hold a ton of ink, but a little India ink goes a long way.

What I didn't realize, though, is that most of the cheap ones LEAK! It took forever (and many trips to various art supply stores) to find some whose welds were actually strong enough to make watertight seals. Finally I found a few that worked. Now, what to do with the lid while drawing?

Enter my personal MacGyver (who, by the way, has a great new blog). I told him what I needed: some way to keep the palette-cup cap from getting lost; some place to put the extra pens when I wasn't using them.

Here's what we came up with.



At the top left are two drilled holes filled with rare earth magnets and secured with adhesive (epoxy, I believe), to hold palette cup lids while drawing.





On the right are holes of different sizes, to hold pens:



Here's the setup in action in the back porch, where I drew the overwintered geraniums shown earlier in this post:



And yes, I have taken this setup out in the "field" -- I just put the tightly capped, ink-filled palette cup and pens in a quart-size zip-top baggie. (I'm going to investigate see-through dry bags for this purpose though -- the kind that kayakers use to stash their gear -- since regular ziptop bags get worn out pretty quickly.)

If I want clear water (for lightening the ink/cleaning the pen nibs) I use an Aquatote or similar container.

Can't wait for the weather to turn warm again so I can take my gear to the beach or park!

How about you? What methods do you use to keep your pen-and-ink materials tidy?

Had a lovely time in New York yesterday. Started off with a visit to the PrattStore -- the Pratt Institute's art supply shop -- in Brooklyn. (There are some supplies that only certain stores carry, so it's always fun to go to a new one and poke around.) That entailed a ride on the crosstown G from Long Island City, so while I waited for the train to start up, I sketched a fellow passenger:



The PrattStore does have some brands that I don't see in local CT stores, but what I was really interested in is their art supply buy-back program. The person who runs it wasn't there yesterday, but I might go back and sell off some stretcher strips and paints that I'm not using anymore.

I was also hoping that they just might carry the Noodler's flex-nib pen that Nina Johansson has been blogging about, but no such luck.

After a quick browse, I headed off to a friend's knitting get-together. Unfortunately I'd forgotten my knitting, so I spent the afternoon chatting, enjoying treats and sketching her two cats.





Ended the day meeting M. for a fabulous Portuguese-style dinner at Hotel Griffou -- no sketches, but yum! Definitely will be back there another evening to draw at the bar!

A rare day of lovely weather today! Drove up to Weir Farm in Wilton on a whim, but unfortunately the ground was still quite muddy and covered in messy snow -- not ideal for exploring. Turned back and went to Espresso Neat in Darien instead. I'm not a coffee person but love the atmosphere -- and their delicious iced herbal tea.

Eh ... I'm not loving my tiny 10 x 15 cm Dessin "Fort" sketchbook for watercolor work. I just want to fill the pages and get it over with. Although it's promoted for more ("Papier dessin, encre, gouache"), I'm guessing most people buy this particular size as a souvenir, to boast of having visited the Sennelier store in Paris. It's small with a thick backing board, so I thought it could take the place of my Moleskine watercolor sketchbook for a while. Mm, not so much.

Sketched the first while waiting to meet a friend for drinks in the city; the second is a quick study of musicians from the Stamford Symphony playing a kids' concert at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center.

Okay, so here's the other side of the upstairs studio -- the art/painting area. It's not as tidy as the sewing space, but paints are messy things, after all. The table is a large piece of butcher block countertop from the As-Is section in IKEA, with legs attached. Above it are two mail organizers from Acorn, modified slightly and hung right next to each other, holding ink bottles and other small items. Under the table is a set of Elfa drawers from the Container Store, for various art supplies.





Here's a close-up of the mail organizers:





On the desk is a pen/pencil caddy custom-made by M., with holes of varying depths (like stadium seating for pens!) in a wooden block:




This is what the whole space looks like, with my easel:




M. said the right half of the following shot looks a bit like a Levenger catalog cover -- I agree!

I'm so excited about my new and improved upstairs studio space! It's divided into two -- one area is for all of my art/painting materials, and the other is for sewing and yarn and such.

Here's a little tour. First, the sewing space:



























 The table is made from a solid-core Jeld-Wen interior door from Home Depot, carefully sanded and varnished by M. on the top. The legs are from IKEA. It's a huge surface, providing ample space for laying out and cutting patterns. Antique printers' trays on the back wall hold spools of thread, both vintage and new. I bought the dress form (currently sporting a few embroidery hoops on its neck) at an indoor flea market in New Milford, CT, and the wooden chair was salvaged from someone's cast-offs in the neighborhood.

Since pattern pieces can fly off in a breeze if the window's open, I use a vintage shoe-stretcher as a paperweight.

Yarn is corralled in an old pickle jar, picked up on a trip to the Brimfield Antique/Flea Market. Looks yummy, no? Hope to find another like it sometime.





















My sewing machine is nothing fancy -- just a Kenmore Mini-Ultra I've had for nearly 10 years. The polygonal wooden thing behind it is a Pottery Barn Kids desk carousel, for scissors, notions and random vintage patterns.

























My first project post-studio-reno was the little seat cushion for the chair, with brown velvet ties. I'm hoping to make a matching sewing machine cover (was inspired by this project from blogger Six One Seven) from the remaining fabric.



















































Just next to the little sewing alcove is a television (I do love some Cooking Channel), which sits on this vintage thread cabinet. At least that's what I think it is -- anyone know for sure? From a quick Internet search, I think it appears to be promoting Clark's "Our New Thread" Fast Black and probably dates from the late 1800s or early 1900s. Anyway, not sure of the exact provenance of this piece, but I can tell you we got it from a yard sale at the home of none other than the now-governor of Connecticut, Dan Malloy.



























In the next post, I'll show you the art/painting half of the space, directly opposite.

The drizzly, messy weather didn't stop loads of people (including me) from attending The New York Public Library's Handmade Crafternoon, co-hosted by Crafternoon author Maura Madden, on Saturday. It's held regularly -- wish I'd known about this before! Martha Stewart Living featured the event in its February issue, so several MSL staffers were on hand to share the Valentine love and raffle off crafty goodness. We were seated at tables in a large room and given various materials including origami paper, tissue paper, hole punches, and doilies. As inspiration, co-host and librarian Jessica Pigza had pulled some books from the NYPL's collection featuring vintage valentines. I enjoyed meeting the other crafters at my table -- and we all agreed that we'd be back for more Crafternoon fun in the future.

Inspired by the work of ceramic artist Helen Beard, I dusted off my Pebeo Porcelaine paints and found some leftover tile from an old bathroom project to see what I could do. To get acquainted with the consistency of the paint, I first used a henna pattern stencil (still had these in a drawer from my wedding!) to see how that might work. Encouraged, I then used a dark pencil to carefully transfer a small part of a larger digital painting of West Beach to another tile and drew the lines with a brown Porcelaine outliner. I used various combinations of yellow, blue, green and magenta paints for the color.

To set the colors, I baked both tiles in the oven for 35 minutes at 300 degrees as indicated on the paint jars. I'm pleased with the results and may do a series of similarly themed tiles; perhaps I'll even be motivated to try my hand at pottery one of these days!

A friend and I crawled at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History this morning. We started off in the great hall with the dinosaurs and reptiles.

First I drew this Galapagos tortoise:



There were lots of skeletons to draw, but I was distracted by the people as usual:



As I was drawing, a young man rolled a cart in and took out some fossils. Manning the "fossil cart" was a high-school student volunteer who showed kids various fossils and bones as they passed by:



I knew I had to draw at least ONE of the many skeletons gracing the hall, so I did:



We then moved on to a higher floor, with floor-to-ceiling glass cases full of stuffed birds. The display explained which ones were full-time residents of Connecticut, and which ones visited only briefly or during the summer. I'll have to come back and study them more closely another time so I can identify some of the shore birds I see on kayaking trips along the coastline.













After our two-hour crawl of the museum, we had lunch at the fab Miya's Sushi in downtown New Haven -- amazing and sustainable deliciousness!

Hope to see some more people joining us on our next Sketchcrawl!

Are you crawling? Find a group, grab your sketchbooks, refill your pens, sharpen your pencils! The 30th Worldwide Sketchcrawl is this Saturday, Jan. 22. If you're in the New Haven area, join us at 10 a.m. at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Found myself standing yesterday on the Metro-North train as I headed to Brooklyn for a friend's Sunday afternoon knitting get-together. This rider was absorbed in a book -- the perfect motionless model -- when I started this sketch. Sadly, he tired of it and moved just as we were entering the Bronx, so I had to rush to remember what he looked like in his original pose.

(Finger-drawn using the Brushes app on the iPhone, then cropped and retouched a bit in Photoshop.)

It's a coooold day here in Stamford -- 16 F, feels like 7, says Weather.com -- so I've been indoors playing with Photoshop, looking for interesting (and possibly painting-worthy) compositions in my photographs. Here's one of some skaters at nearby Terry Conners Rink from earlier this year, cropped, altered and hand painted with my Wacom pen tablet in Photoshop.

On Jan. 5, our Shippan Point neighbor and former mayor, Dan Malloy, became the 88th governor of the state of Connecticut. The inauguration was held at the William A. O'Neill Armory in Hartford.

As the crowd filed into the building, the band played standards to get everyone in the mood. What standards? You know, the usual -- some Sousa, some Michael Jackson tunes, the theme from "Superman"...



The doors to the Armory opened at noon, but the inauguration wasn't to start until 2 p.m., so people spent the time saying hello to friends and/or getting their pictures taken with the new officers-elect (or sketching, in my case).



Connecticut poet laureate Dick Allen read his poem "Intuition" in honor of the occasion.



So where are the sketches of Gov. Malloy? Sorry, wasn't able to draw him since he stood at the far lectern on the stage; even my camera had trouble getting a sharp picture at that distance, but here he is!

For a long time, I had wanted to experience a ski lodge in the mountains somewhere. Now I didn't really care so much about the skiing part; I was more interested in the "lodginess" of the place -- you know, big (preferably stone) fireplace, high ceilings with log beams, typical ski-country decor. Well, my wish came true this past weekend, as we spent New Year's in the Adirondacks.

Local resident and author Russell Banks (Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter) recently told Amtrak's Arrive magazine that you won't see wilderness like this again till you get to the Rockies. I can believe it. ADK is a woodsy, wintry vastness, and I can't wait to go back and see it in other seasons.

We snowshoed, rode in a horse-drawn open sleigh, skated on the Olympic Oval, and watched the dogsleds go by on frozen Mirror Lake. We stayed in Saranac Lake, at the lovely Porcupine Inn, and had "Eve of New Year's Eve" dinner in the spectacular setting of Kanu at Whiteface Lodge. New Year's Eve dinner was at the newly restored pub at Interlaken Inn, and we enjoyed drinks, live music and pool at Maggie's Pub at Lake Placid Lodge. Cozy, warm, lodgy lodginess -- basically, what you'd get if you turned a big mug of mulled cider into a vacation spot.






Drew this next one with a pencil as we bumped along in the sleigh -- not an easy task (watercolor added later). I always thought sleigh rides were fast, swooshy and smooth -- you know, "dashing through the snow," and all that. Not so.