Chicago

I went to Chicago during the weekend. Here are some quick sketches, it was a fun way to rest for a few minutes.

OLBRICH GARDENS

I was unable to make it to the sketch meet last Sunday.  But I did go to Olbrich yesterday.  Here is a small ink sketch of one of the garden beds.

SISTER BAY, DOOR COUNTY

I made a trip of 3 days to Sister Bay.  Although it rained 2 of the 3 days, we had a great time.  This is a very quick sketch (5 minutes)

from our deck looking into the bay.  I didn't bring any sketching materials with me, just used the ballpoint pen and the memo pad next to the phone in the room.

Olbrich Gardens May 21st

Tsmugi and Gretchen in the gardens

It was not as warm as we hoped but several sketchers braved the chilly temps and did some outdoor as well as indoor sketching.  The Bonsai show and a poetry reading provided other than the usual subjects at Olbrich.  Everyone is picture below except James so there were 9 of us today.  Afterwards I stopped at the Chocolaterian for coffee and finished my sketch.

Jean, Mercedes, Ruth, Reba & Mike

Tsmugi, Gretchen & Pat

My finished sketch

Sketching in Madison on Saturday

I had fully intended to join others at the Centennial Gardens on Saturday...even  made sure I mowed my grass early. Unfortunately I had the 1-3pm time in my head and of course decided to sketch none the less when I realized I had missed our meetup.
This sketch was done for the SBS class with Lynne Chapman, the idea being to sketch in a panorama style. I stopped adding paint before I thought I would. I rather like the ghost lines and white spaces.
Corner of Allen St and Regent St, piece of white paper I later glued to my Stillman and Birns. Colored pencil first, then some micron pen for the people, watercolor added at home.

Door County Watercolor Collage

Last week I was in Door County enjoying gorgeous blue skies and excellent bird watching.  I am currently doing a Sketchbook Skool class and the assignment that week was to do a sort of collage type sketch of a place you love so the choice was easy as DC is my favorite place.  I started out at Base Camp Coffee Bar in Sister Bay with my latte and scone and the owner and staff were very kind and interested and I explained that I would document my day in the sketchbook.  I told them I would stop by in a day or two so they could see the finished sketch and they took a photo of it and posted it to the coffee bar's Facebook Page.  It gave me an opportunity to tell someone about Urban Sketchers, too.  I thought this was great example of the kind of interesting connection that can happen between strangers when you are sketching something you both have in common.

Michaela (Barista) and Joel (Owner)

Ink & watercolor in Stillman & Birn 8 x 10 Softcover Beta sketchbook

Allen Centennial May 13th

It was a busy morning in Allen Centennial Park with graduates and
their families celebrating - but three sketchers showed up there as
well, and here are Gretchen and Mercedes capturing the pretty colors
and ambiance of the park (Salvor is behind here phone´s lens).

No chess players today - sketching instead !

Normally I play chess with the middle schoolers but they were all "otherwise distracted" today so I sketched and painted the colorful mess of games jumbled on the bottom shelf near where I set up for chess.  Colors are getting under better 'control' so some progress ;-)

Update from Italy

Update from Italy: I had the opportunity to sketch with a group in Florence this Sunday, the Firenze Drawing Club, at the National Archeological Museum. I spent time in one of the Egyptian rooms with several amazingly well preserved sarcophagi. It was fun to connect with a group of sketchers in another part of the world! Wendy

Volunteering at the McFarland Youth Center I decided to fill my time between chess games with some sketching.  The day was beautiful so the kids were mainly playing outside on Cinco de Mayo (gringo for "lets party").  I found sketching soft things like couches (the playing field for their indoor kickball game GaGa) are a lot more difficult for me than hard edged objects.  Another thing to work on.

Kite Surfing

Kite Surfing

We drove to Burrows Park on the north side of town to see if anyone was kite surfing on Lake Mendota.  We've done this previous years on windy days.

Today was both cold and windy.  We found one surfer trying to keep his kite upright on the grass while he ran to the end of the cords to hook up to.  Every time he left the kite it toppled over with the wind gusts.

Peter walked over and offered to hold the kite  so the wind surfer could clip on. 

This time it worked!  He clipped on.  With the kite upright he ran to the water's edge and took off.  He road the waves  and let the kite lift him into the air 

10-12 ft or more and then back onto the waves again.  We loved it. I did some quick sketching and added watercolor washes.  This was plein air painting at it's finest with our cold Wisconsin weather-wind-water-sky and land  all participating.

May Sketching Locations - Spring in Bloom!!

We will be sketching at local gardens this month which should be in full springtime bloom.  On Saturday May 13th we will sketch at Allen Centennial Gardens on the UW Campus from 10am to noon and on Sunday May 21st we will go back to Olbrich Gardens from 1 to 3pm.  Our rain location for May 13th will be the State Historical Society on Library Mall.