Summer travels

It’s been awhile but I have an excuse, I’ve been away.

Earlier this month I was at Bay Harbor with my summer art travel companion and dear friend Terry.

She and I have been getting away to make art a couple times a summer for several years. This was the first of two annual trips,     next month we go to Traverse City for a week.

Bay Harbor was a new spot for us and a great experience. We had a cottage and the view out my bedroom window was to die for….

Little Traverse Bay … but a bit cold for swimming. However, there was a pool and we took advantage of that every morning.

You can see there was also a bit of fog too.

I seem to be mixing things up a bit in my art right now….

I did some sketching….

And some stitching…

Even some knitting….

It was a good week and I came home refreshed and ready for the next trip….

This time with my dear spouse…

to Baltimore to explore the waterfront and spend time with good friends.

When Ed and I travel together I sketch while we wait at the airport,

or for lunch or dinner. Sometimes it’s the interior of the restaurant….

Sometimes it’s the view….

And now, back home for awhile before my July trip to Traverse City. I have to get more stitching done for an exhibit that happens before I leave.

More sketching done

There was a time when I was on the wetcanvas site every weekend for the weekend drawing event.  Somehow I got away from it and it shows in my work.  The concept is to work for two hours on whatever image one chooses from the choices given. 

I always challenged myself to get it done in two hours or less and then, when someone was doing something with a different medium I’d sometimes play with that too.  I’m recalling one weekend when several of us used oil pastels and a hotplate… before we knew about encaustics.

But I digress…. The past couple of weekends I’ve been back and I am once again challenging myself to finish quickly.  Didn’t quite make it with the Greek Church which seemed to take forever to draw.  The painting part went quickly once I decided to just call it done on the drawing part.

Since I wasn’t real happy with what took me almost the full two hours I decided to try another simpler image… a country church.  Better results as far as my challenge goes and an okay sketch.  This one took about 20 minutes total

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Getting ready to start spending more time outside sketching,  I have two plein air dates this week and next week I head up to Petoskey where I’ll do a bit of plein air sketching every day.  I’m a fair weather outdoor sketcher.  Much as I love winter, I don’t like sitting outdoors sketching.