A Little Sketchy

In Damascus, Virginia, near access to the Virginia Creeper trail, is a bed and breakfast known as the Millsap-Baker Estate. The house is more of a museum than a place of lodging. Each room brims with old pipes and depression glass. The breakfast area resembles something from Harry Potter, and the host and hostess tell stories every morning over home-cooked breakfast with 4 kinds of jam. Outside of the Victorian ediface of the Millsap-Baker Estate is a large Ginko tree surrounded in a halo of yellow confetti leaves, perfectly shaped like wings. I printed my Ginko leaf in red because yellow does not contrast enough with paper, though it is a mixed red. In this color, it more resembles a Japanese fan of some kind. The shape took me so thoroughly that I carved it into a woodblock and attempted to make cards from it. I'm still learning to manage this level of detail.

I began experimenting with woodblock printing this year. I'm not very good at starting with simple subjects, as one should in a medium that requires carving of every detail into a block of wood with mostly unfamiliar tools. Not bad for a first attempt, though.

I don't know where these rooftops are located, but they look like they could appear in a bustling village in an episode of The Witcher . OK, the bricks (and is that a skylight?) are a bit off theme, but imagination does the needful. I've been following the TV show, but had not delved into the books of Andrzej Sapkowski until recently. I've been reading (well, listening) to  The Sword of Destiny , purportedly a solid introduction to the world. The impetus: a few friends of mine have invited me to join in a Witcher-themed campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, which I know even less about and had not played before.  Now, every other Sunday, I find myself gathered around a table with a handful of D20s and D8s (many-sided die). As a Bard-class character, I cast "spells" and roll for ability checks, wisdom checks, and probably other checks yet unknown. And if I'm going to role-play in the world of Geralt and Ciri, I'll need grounding in the setting. And the setting

This stairway in San Juan was one of my favorite views, maybe because it was cool and shady and I wanted to get out of the sun. But the path upward drew my eye into a charming vortex.  I shall try archisketching in physical media this time. My workspace is heavily supervised by Eli, which did little to increase my efficiency. Eli disapproves of wet media, and harbors a grave mistrust of my eyedropper. Update: I sketched with a Micron archival ink fineliner, then shaded with watercolors. Micron fineliners create lines that don't smudge when exposed to water, which makes them perfect for this kind of layering. The washes of color went on step by step. Ha. This is a significantly looser style than I typically use. Let me know which style you prefer in the comments if you have an opinion.

My husband and I visited Old San Jan (Puerto Rico) at the end of October this year in an act of denial of the end of summer. We criscrossed the blue brick roads on foot in a color-induced daze, for San Juan is an archi-sketcher's dream city. I get a sense that the building owners of San Juan have collectively agreed that no two buildings in the town can be painted quite the same color, but all of the colors should be plausible options for fruit-flavored cereal pieces. The overall effect is simultaneously ancient, yet tropical. In the sketch, these buildings could belong to a street in a small town in Spain or Italy, but the colored version places them in Puerto Rico, at least for me. Buildings reveal so much about a community. Given the history of hurricanes, the choice of bright colors for nearly everything in Puerto Rico, so vulnerable to wear and weather, strikes me as optimistic.  Old San Juan has preserved its historic layout well. Given the narrowness and brick-ness of the st

I've tracked over 14 years my visual obsession with radially-oriented life forms. So when I sought new painting subjects, the cactus astrophytum, which resembles a green, bedazzled, peeled-but-still-contiguous orange, of course caught my eye. It looks as though an overdressed canteloupe attempted to transform into a star, but quit halfway. When it grows a flower, it appears to be wearing a fancy hat. Down the side of each of its orange slices is a neat row of buttons, which if unbuttoned, would draw back the curtain into another universe. I drew on three different photos for this acrylic wash, which you should have guessed. The astrophytum is charismatic enough that it does not want to sit in close proximity to others of its kind outside of my paintings.