Postcards from the Edge

On my recent trip to Key West and France I bought these little watercolor postcards at a bookstore in Key west and put up a post on Instagram asking if anyone wanted one from my travels. About 20 people asked. This is a sampling of what I sent out.

Soul

Sketched in Key West

A Buddhist Story

Here is the final story and illustration. The story comes from Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart by Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield.

Island Sketch

This is from a few months ago. Idlewild near Alexandria Bay, New York. USA, but just barely.

Dipika

This is Dipika. I met her in May when I traveled to Nepal and joined a group of strangers to trek the Annapurna circuit. She's my first "face 2 face" portrait in this new phase of the Portrait Project and this sketch is from a few months ago when we were on the trek. I ended up painting her portrait 3 times over the course of the 2 week trek. This one is my favorite, though as I recall, she wasn't particularly fond of it.

This portrait took about 30-40 minutes and was done in the evening at a teahouse near Chame along the Annupurna circuit trek. I used a 4b pencil and small watercolor kit that fits inside of an Altoids tin along with a Pentel waterbrush.

I'm going to flat out give all the credit for this new phase of Portrait Project to Dipika. She inspired it by showing me that I not only could do it but that I had vastly more to gain in painting from life. After I painted Dipika, I had the idea to paint the portraits of our entire group - eighteen in all. And since they are all friends now and live in parts of the world I may never get to, I'll be sprinkling their portraits in as I go along. So, thanks Dipika. You started something.

India 2015 Sketchbook - Maine to Delhi

The sketch on the left page was done on the Cape Air flight from Rockland to Boston. The sketch on the right was done the next morning at JFK Airport. That's the plane I flew on to London where I then connected on to Delhi.

The sketch on the left page is Oscar Hernandez, an urban sketching friend whose portrait I painted (from a photo) the first evening I arrived in Delhi as part of The Portrait Project. The sketch on the right is a the largest Hanuman statue in the world. It is 108 feet tall. Here's a video taken from near where I was sitting:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LO7uOVSuxE - this is the sound of Delhi. It never stops.

The first morning in Delhi I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant and sat alone at a table near the window and sketched the view and the busy street outside. The window was actually two thick sheets of plate glass separated by about 3/4" and filled with bits of broken glass up to about 40" off the floor. That's what I was trying to indicate at the bottom of the sketch.

After breakfast on the first day I wanted to explore the area around my hotel. I walked a couple of miles from my hotel and found this Sikh temple and a semi-shady place to sit and sketch. I worked on this for a couple of hours until the sun became too unbearable. Several people came up to me as I sketched and either watched, chatted with me for awhile, or took their photo with me. That's how it was sketching in public in India.

Inside the temple I met this man who showed me the proper way to wash my feet and hands and what to wear on my head. I sat for awhile in the cool interior and then took some photos and walked back to my hotel where I met the group I was going to be travelling with over the next 2 weeks. — at Gurudwara Nanaksar Sahib.

Day 1 we toured Delhi. We traveled in tuk tuks, explored spice markets in Old Delhi, visited the Jama Masjid Mosque (the largest and best-known mosque in India) and found a Starbucks in Connaught Place to cool off in. Not much time to sketch but I took lots of photographs — at Jama Masjid, Delhi.

Patty

This is Patty. I met her in Montezuma, Costa Rica. I was at a Organico sketching a band that was playing there and she seemed to think my drawing was pretty interesting so we started chatting. I told her I lived in Maine and it turned out she and her husband were from Massachusetts and they were building a house down in Costa Rica. A week or so after we met I got a friend request on FB and here we are. That's really about all I know about Patty.

8x10 in my Grand Portrait Sketchbook digitally combined in Artrage with a sketch I did on the beach near Montezuma. #213

Ronda and Grazalema

The last part of our trip to Spain was a bike trip through the mountains of Andalucia near Ronda and Grazalema. Here are a few sketches from that part of the trip.

Seville

In Seville, I met up with fellow urban sketchers JoseMaria Lerdo de Tejada,Alfonso Garcia Garcia, and Deborah Ordonez Torres and spent an afternoon walking, sketching, drinking cervezas and eating tapas.

Alhambra

Two sketches from our recent trip to Spain. These are from Granada where we visited the Alhambra.

San Jose

Airport Sketching

Charlotte Church

A church on S. Brevard St. near 4th.in downtown Charlotte. I guess that would make this a Charlotte Church. :) In my 8x10 Handbook journal.

Gary Alan Isakov

A few months ago I discovered a great singer-songwriter - Gary Alan Isakov. This past weekend Valerie and I drove down to see him perform at One Longfellow Square in Portland. I had a few minutes before the show started to sketch the stage, then finished it up at lunch the other day. I think I used up all my black paint!

Street & Co.

Santiago

I walked across the street to Parque Forestal after checking out of our hotel to sketch our hotel before departing to Valparaiso but found the building next door to be far more interesting so I sketched that instead. This one is in my 8x12 Moleskine watercolor journal.

Tugboat in Tigre

My friend, Jorge, picked us up at our hotel in Buenos Aires and drove us out to Tigre where we stopped at a market on one of the many canals. Valerie wandered around the market and Jorge and I sketched this scene in the late afternoon light. The temperature was perfect and tango music lofted to us from a houseboat downriver. 

Glamping with Bio Bio

Valerie and I went rafting a few weeks ago. To get in the raft, we had to fly 5000 miles south to Buenos Aires, Argentina, then another 300 miles west to Bariloche, then a 6 hour bus ride south to the Bio Bio base camp on the Futaleufu river. This is a trip 3 years in the making. Ever since we rafted the Toachi river in Ecuador ,Valerie has wanted to do this trip. When she first told me about it she enthusiastically said it was a "glamping trip". Glamping? I wondered aloud. "Yeah", she said, "you know, a cross between glamour and camping - glamping."

Well, it was way worth the effort to get there. The Futaleufu is an amazing river, the scenery spectacular, and the food, facilities and staff were extraordinary. Our days were full - not much time for sketching on this part of the trip. The last day I managed to get some time in the afternoon to do this sketch of the "parilla" - a type of grill used for cooking Asado (barbeque).The camp store is on the left and the dining/kitchen area is on the right. This is 8"x20" pen and watercolor.

Valparaiso Street Corner

The last day in Valparaiso I walked from Neruda's house down into the city and found a shady plaza to sit and draw. The electrical lines in Valparaiso are crazy. I don't know how they keep track of everything. I imagine they can't. They just add more wires. So in this scene there is all of the chaos of the city. I ignored the cars, motorcycles and ancient trolley buses but they were constantly moving through the intersection. In the background there was a musician playing pan pipes of popular songs. The Chilean flag is in the upper right corner of this sketch. And there at the bottom, a beautiful gem of a telephone booth so beautifully proportioned. A piece of zen in the middle of it all.

Buenos Aires

A collage of sketches from my recent trip to Buenos Aires.