My ophthalmologist moved to a new office, and the view from the waiting room made me grateful for my good vision. Our California hills are green and the air was clear. I felt like I could see for 20 miles across the canyons. The two utility poles stood tall in contrast to the flat expanses.
I notice how absorbed people can get when looking into tide pools and I wanted to capture that feeling with this sketch from Torrey Pines Reserve just north of San Diego.
I have been going through my sketchbook from my recent trip to Guatemala and finishing up some of the sketches I made on the trip. Here is one I made of a paddle boarder on a windy Lake Atitlán. I changed the sketch mostly by emphasizing the pattern in the water and the shape of the waves in the foreground.
This morning when I got up, my sister was reading on the patio where we are staying in Antigua. She looked so lovely sitting there with the shining tiles, the greenery in the background, and the two potted plants. It made me want to capture the moment in my sketchbook.
Studying Spanish in Antigua Guatemala seems to require doing a lot of homework. At some point this evening, as we sat around the table, I noticed the unenthusiastic demeanor of my sisters and brother-in-law while they conjugated verbs and translated paragraphs. Each of them was holding up their head as they struggled to focus. It brought back memories, and I had to abandon my worksheets and try to capture it all in a sketch.
I started this on Saturday as we were lurching our way across Largo de Atitlan in Guatemala. The wind was blowing and the waves seemed huge. I felt a sense of danger at the roughness but calmed down when I saw a kayaker in the distance.
I had my sketchbook in my lap and drew the broad lines of this sketch while we were in the motorboat. Then this morning I went back and added the gouache.
We are on a weekend trip with our Guatemalan language school to Lake Atitlan and Chichicastenango. Although we do not have much downtime, I did get in a fast sketch. It shows the small boat we crossed the lake in, and the view back across the lake looking towards Panajachel. The blues in the lake and mountains were incredible and I wanted to catch a bit of it in this sketch.
Deliberate Sketching 