We traveled home from Denmark, recovered from Covid, got into our camper, made it to Colorado for our annual family reunion, and then spent the first day painting with my sisters. It felt so good to be painting again.
This sketch shows our campsites, all lined up along the road to my brother’s home. I like it because it sets the stage for all the paintings that will come over the next two weeks of our reunion.
This sketch shows people talking together after a group dinner. I like the expressions on their faces. I drew with crayon and then later added gouache over most of the page.
I was out looking for a scene to paint and stopped at a bird sanctuary. It was a gorgeous scene with a pond, geese, a meadow, trees, and a herd of cows.
Since I am traveling without an easel, I usually put my palette and sketchbook on a convenient surface, like a picnic table or bench. I was glad there was a wooden fence that enclosed the cows in their meadow, and I set up my materials on it. As I painted, the cows slowly came closer and closer, and it looked like they were eyeing my tubes of gouache, which made me wonder, do Danish cows like gouache?
I have been using a lot of crayon-resist lately. I like the texture and mix of colors it gives when it is overpainted with a simple gouache wash. I also appreciate the crayons for being so easy to bring along when I am out sketching.
After dinner, while the others were chatting, I sketched on my iPad. It has been a long time since I used Procreate for drawing, and I remember now how much I like this app. Later, I superimposed the sketch over a portion of ‘Hotel Lobby II, the last sketch I posted, but I faded it so it would not overwhelm the new sketch.
This sketch is a continuation of yesterday’s post, looking a little more to my right. I thought the rich deep colors of the hotel lobby seemed to cast a mood on the people sitting at that table.
It started to rain, so I waited with a cup of coffee in a hotel lobby in Copenhagen. As I sat there, I began to sketch the flowers on the table in front of me. I wanted to fill in the background, but some of its shadows were so deep that I could not be sure what I was drawing.
Deliberate Sketching 