That's right, you won't see any sketches of the city's fabulously undulating buildings here! I spent four and a half days in Barcelona attending the 4th International Urban Sketching Symposium and somehow managed not to draw anything by Gaudi. Here's how it went down.

Wednesday
Arrived after an overnight flight and sank happily into the bed at Le Meridien for a nap. Wandered over to La Sagrada Familia. Was not impressed by its perpetual construction site-ness (I'd been warned, but somehow wasn't quite prepared for all the sheathing-scaffolding-craning.) Meh. Didn't inspire me to whip out a pen.

Dinner at Els Quatre Gats was more promising. This ancient cafe played host to one of Picasso's first one-man shows.



Thursday

Let the games begin! We convened at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, were given our massive bags of sponsor swag and sent off to our first workshop. Mine was Dynamic Ink, with Norberto Dorantes, where we had to draw with non-waterproof ink and wash. Not easy! Our subject was Carrer Comtal.







At midday, I attended a demo on Digital Urban Sketching, with Monica Cid and Josu Maroto. Of course, I trotted out my iPhone and finger-sketched while I listened to the instructors talk about various app and stylus options.



Was very excited for my afternoon workshop, Drawing from the Heart and Over Color Splashes with Tia Boon Sim and Paul Wang. It was raining, but happily we were inside the cafe at the Palau de la Musica Catalana. We were encouraged to play with wax, ink, sticks, salt, and splashes. So play we did.











To be continued...

Seems like we were just in Santo Domingo -- but amazingly a whole year has already gone by and it's time for the 4th International Urban Sketching Symposium ... in Barcelona!



Thank goodness for the long holiday weekend, giving me time to plan what I'm taking along. In addition to my usual watercolor kits, fountain pens and sketchbooks, I'm taking pens loaded with various *non-waterproof* inks, a selection of colored pencils, some Neocolor II crayons, a bamboo pen and extra ink. The pens and pencils fit into my Niji wrap, and the extra ink (and a small container of salt) is in a kayaking dry bag to prevent any accidents in transit. For water containers, I have a collapsible dog bowl and an H2O4K9 dog water bottle with the bowl in the cap, both of which attach to my bag with carabiners. (Oh, plus a laptop and scanner so I can blog during the symposium!)

Speaking of bags ... all the warnings about pickpockets got to me, so I went out and got a Pacsafe Metrosafe 200 GII anti-theft bag. It's a fairly lightweight daypack and can fit my 7"x10" sketchbooks and paper blocks. I figure it will be useful in other places as well.

To keep a few materials at hand, I took this gardening apron from Terrain and machine-sewed some pen pockets into it. That way I can keep a small sketchbook and a few pens/pencils within reach. I was inspired by a something similar that Inma Serrano had in Santo Domingo.




I also "pre-colored" some sketchbook pages with India ink and shellac-based ink, so I can draw on top.



So... what are *you* bringing to Barcelona?

How could I resist my friend's Facebook post (complete with pics of her children's adorably decorated bicycles) describing Southport, CT's old-fashioned Fourth of July parade? Followed by lawn games on the grounds of the Pequot Library? I was in!



I'd just started to sketch the start line when they were off! I frantically scratched out some lines, trying to capture the gesture of the kids gathered together in front of the buildings.

At the Pequot, everyone swarmed the hot dog stand; some kids got their faces painted.



The heat and humidity were palpable. Many people stayed in the shade of trees with popsicles and ice cream to stay cool.



The lawn games were lots of fun -- there were costumed races with kids dressed up as King George, Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, etc. Of course I couldn't resist sketching the sack race, where the kids hopped to and fro in pillowcases imprinted with flags and stars!

Just returned from a marathon roadtrip to attend M.'s cousin's wedding. We drove to Cleveland, then Columbus, then (with a detour into West Virginia) back to Connecticut via Hershey and Lititz, PA. Whew! Here are a few sketches done at Stauf's Coffee in the Grandview section of Columbus, Ohio. They had decorated the place with bike jerseys and other bicycle gear for the annual Tour de Grandview, which had taken place a couple of days earlier (we had a great vantage point from right outside the rehearsal dinner venue).

Here's another plein air acrylic painting done in Rowayton -- it wasn't an easy one, as the paint dried fast, there were bugs, I kicked my water container over, etc.... touched it up a bit later in the studio. I still think I'll eventually like this medium for plein air work -- I just have to learn it better (and possibly upgrade to slightly better quality paint).

Also participated in my first Quick Draw on June 8, during Jersey Central Art Studios' Paint the Town Cranford 2013 event. Note to self (and others): leave lots of extra time to arrive and scout out a location! We ambitiously thought we'd stop by my office in Secaucus to get all my belongings first (we're moving to a flexible hoteling-only workspace at EY this month) before heading to Cranford to get set up. Due to a blockage on the Saw Mill Parkway, we ended up seeing all of Yonkers stoplight by stoplight and barely made it to Cranford in time. I chose a view and squeaked something out in the two-hour timeframe allotted, but I'm not even going to show you what I painted -- it's destined to be gessoed into oblivion!

Wow, I haven't posted to the blog in a while -- so get ready for a slew of catch-up posts! A while ago (the end of May, in fact, as the note on my sketch helpfully reminds me) we had Bartlett Tree Experts come out and take down the two trees in our backyard that had keeled over in Hurricane Sandy. Couldn't resist doing a quick sketch of the guys through the kitchen window.

Plein air watercolor has always appealed to me -- it's the minimalism of the kit required, I suppose, and the spontaneity of the medium. However, I've always admired plein air work in other media -- oil, acrylic and pastel alike.

So when I saw that Pacific Northwest-based artist Annie Howell Adams was teaching a daylong workshop titled Fauving up the Landscape here at Rowayton Arts Center, I signed up and persuaded a friend to do the same. Figured it was a good opportunity to try a new medium and learn from an expert.

The week of the workshop, things got very busy at work. I hadn't had time to shop for supplies, so I hastily put together a bag the night before, noting with despair that I was missing some key materials -- to wit, decent canvases and a tube of alizarin crimson.

Since I wanted to meet my friend before the start of class, M. and I left the house early. On the way we saw a sign for an estate sale, so we decided on a quick detour.

"Looking for anything in particular?" asked the lady at the cashier's desk in the foyer of the estate-sale house.

"Nah, just stopping by on the way to a painting class at Rowayton Arts Center down the road," I said.

The woman brightened. "Oh, you should definitely check out the art supplies downstairs -- my aunt used to take classes there, too!"

She wasn't kidding. Her late aunt had certainly taken her hobby seriously. In 10 minutes I amassed a boxload of prime art supplies - including, by coincidence, the very items I needed for the class. New canvases? Hog-bristle brushes in various sizes? Check! Alizarin crimson acrylic paint? Check! What were the odds? Armed with my finds, I headed off to the workshop feeling very lucky indeed.

Annie, the instructor, was lovely -- so down-to-earth and such a fount of information. She shared her palette layout and did a demo outdoors showing how to mix colors. She often sketches on her canvas with black gesso before glazing with medium and adding layers of oil on top. Here's an illustration of this technique on her blog.

I love that she's unabashedly passionate about creating art in all kinds of media; so many artists these days confine themselves to a certain type of work and even limit their range of subject matter, all to keep galleries happy and establish a signature style. Yawn.

So - how did I make out? I found that my watercolor setup worked just as well for acrylic: I filled an AquaTote collapsible fabric water bucket and set it on my folding stool. On the portable easel was the butcher tray, which held paper towels, a few paint tubes and a rectangle of palette paper secured with mini spring clamps.

The sun and breeze that day meant that paint dried very fast. Next time I'll bring a spray mister to keep my paint wet. I mostly used a limited palette of a warm and a cool version of each primary, plus white, with no browns or black.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, especially as I'd never painted outdoors with acrylics before. And I'd like to think that the beloved aunt, whose materials I used for the painting, would have been happy to see her paints, canvases and brushes live on.

We had only one day in York, which wasn't quite enough. We hit most of the "sights" in the central area, but next time I would love to venture farther afield. (By the way, we'd highly recommend the Cedar Court Grand Hotel & Spa -- steps from the York train station, it's an old railway company HQ that's been converted into a hotel, complete with a fabulously atmospheric spa in the basement vaults.)

The street view in the sketch above is typical of what you see in the medieval-walled town -- especially enjoyed the famous Shambles, which many have compared to Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter series. There was even a small art supply store there, so I bought a Hahnemuhle sketchbook to add to my collection.

The next morning it was on to Edinburgh. It's truly as lovely as advertised -- the views in every direction just beg to be painted. We spent the first day wandering around, going to shops and getting oriented. At Waterstones on Princes Street, I picked up a copy of Mairi Hedderwick's book An Eye on the Hebrides: An Illustrated Journey. Her fresh, lively drawings really capture the rugged remoteness of the islands.

Inspired, I was determined to do slightly less walking and more sketching the following day. The (nearly deserted) rooftop terrace of the National Museum of Scotland was a great setting from which to draw Edinburgh Castle.



I certainly wasn't going to leave Scotland without sketching at least one bagpiper entertaning the tourists on the Mound:



After a delicious vegetarian lunch at David Bann, M. took off to bike around Holyrood Park while I searched out Greyfriars Art Shop (to buy a DaVinci travel watercolor sable brush). I'd heard of the store from an article in Artists & Illustrators magazine about "traditional" art supply stores in the UK. The two Greyfriars outlets I visited in Edinburgh are certainly old school -- packed with merchandise, plus very helpful and friendly staff.

I hope they stay in business, since there are so many lovely things to paint in the city! The pitch of the streets meant that I could stand outside our hotel on the Royal Mile and look straight down to the water:



And this was the view out of our fourth-floor window at the Radisson:



We barely scratched the surface before it was time to head back to London. On our next trip, we'll have to go to Glasgow. And the Highlands. And the Isle of Skye...

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?