Church and a Hut

This magnificent tiled dome roofed chuch is on the NE corner of San Francisco Plaza in Old Quito and the hut is on the slopes of the volcano Cotopaxi.

Travelling Again

I went to Ecuador with my girlfriend Valerie a couple of weeks ago. One of the upsides to this lousy economy is that things are slower in the office so I have more time to travel. I love to travel - seeing new cultures, art, architecture and slowing down enough to sketch things and really observe life - that really turns me on. So the next series of sketches will be from my trip to Ecuador. Hope you enjoy!

Watercolor Class

I'm taking a watercolor class right now with a really good teacher. His name is Michael Vermette and the class is through the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. The color plaid thingy on top was inspired by something he did with his palette of colors. The colors are straight from my Windsor & Newton Watercolor set - 16 colors vertically and then the same 16 colors horizontally so I could see what new colors could be created just by painting with pure color over another pure color. Look at all the different yellows, reds and greens. The beauty of watercolors really comes through in the layering of color.

The little drawing of the house is a study for a larger piece I want to do. More on that hopefully soon. And Princesss is, well, just Princess.

A Place of Tears

This is the bell tower of the St. Feliu - a cathedral I visited in Girona last Summer. I visited three cathedrals while I was in Spain. The first one I visited was in the Barri Gotic of Barcelona - the Cathedral de Barcelona, which is undergoing a major renovation. I walked in and was instantly brought to tears. It was very unexpected and a bit embarassing. The second was the Sagrada Familia - again tears welled up as I began to take in the space. It is a surprising thing when tears just well up for apparently no reason. But it was my experience in all three of the cathedrals I walked into that this welling up of tears took place. It must have been the intention of the people that built these cathedrals. There are several natural places that do this to me - grand and epic places, or even simple sunsets and sunrises. But there are very few man-made places that do this. Outside of cathedrals, the only one that comes to mind is a turkish carpet shop I once visited in Austin, TX. I'm not sure what it is exactly that evokes this feeling but I believe it has something to do with being in a place where the intention of the people who made it was to strengthen others in their feeling, or specifically in the case of these three cathedrals, to make a gift, or an offering, to God.

Ice-out

This is pretty cool. I put a camera on a tripod out at the lake last week and set it up to take a picture every 30 minutes to record the melting ice. Then I deleted all the night scenes and created a time lapse movie in Picasa. Now it's here on my blog for all to view. That's just cool.

I did this sketch on December 15th. I remember it was cold and I was seeing the ice beginning to form on the lake. I was sitting on a bench in front of the tree that is to the far left in the video. It's been a long winter. I'm glad the ice is finally gone.

Polly and the Newspapers

This newspaper stand was fun to draw - definitely a puzzle. I could have spent another hour or two with this drawing.

Flying Chairs

I'm taking a drawing class and this was one of our assignments. "Draw a chair floating in the sky". The top one is my first sketch in my little sketchbook (the actual drawing is about 5"x8"). The bottom drawing is about 18"x24" and started as a charcoal pencil drawing but ended up in pastel. I just can't seem to do a drawing these days without color. I took a photo of the bottom drawing and the white edges and bottoms of the feet were actually dark graphite pencil over the pastel but because of the flashes reflection, they show up white. It's pretty cool this way. I think I like the photo better than the actual drawing. Isn't art fun?

Snow Bowl

Alex has been skiing a lot lately. We are so lucky to live in Camden where we are right on the ocean but also have a place to ski just 2 miles from our house. The lodge at the Snow Bowl is an A frame building with a wall of glass facing the ski slopes. These are the only windows in the building so it makes for a very dark interior and a very bright exterior which is what I was trying to capture in the top sketch. Today was he last day of skiing for the year.

Random sketches

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