Lately, I’ve been doing more of these sketches where the picture and words come together to tell the whole story. I used to do more of it and then somewhere along the way the words dropped off. But working with Laurie Wigham on Sketching Climate Stories brought back to me the power of these word-and-image pieces as stand-alone reportage.
Throw in some food with words and pictures and it’s perfect. Also, if you have never had mangonada, Yelp it today and go have some.
This confusing little piece is me randomly sketching bits and pieces of my view out of the window at Heartbeat Cafe in Cambrian Park Plaza. The samovars were in the window, the rest of what you see is outside. Also, the crepes at Heartbeat Cafe are delicious.
San Jose Flea Market is a pretty crazy place, full of eclectic wares. And food.
You can see that the mangonada obsession continues.The agua fresca is good too.
From another day, but in the same there, this is Boudin’s Bakery in San Francisco. Tourists stream by and bakers work behind this glass window. You can watch them make their famous sourdough breads in fanciful animal shapes.
Sketch Away: Travels with my sketchbook 
Wow amazing stuff 👌🏼
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You have some delightful handwriting – entirely matches these joyful sketches!!
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Thank you: this is my neatest handwriting 🙂
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What fun, lively and delicious sketches! Several might have been scenes in Mexico!
I used to enjoy seeing the bread animals at Boudin Bakery in Corte Madera. I’ll be looking for Mangonada here in San Miguel.
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Rhoda, the San Jose Flea market is Little Mexico, it’s really colorful and has great food and drinks!
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I need to do more sketching…
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I love your Sketches Suhita….so loose and joyful. How long does it take for you to sketch this way? Do you just let go and let the pen do the work? It seems like your pen just dances along and the watercolors follow the form
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Rene, all of these would be over a half hour but well under an hour. When I’m sketching I always forget to check the time…About the penwork: when I draw, it’s about capturing character, mood, atmosphere, and yes, the pen just does it’s thing 🙂
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Thanks for the reply and info…I usually spend about an hour. I will attempt to work faster with my sketches
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I have really been enjoying your more journal-like pages of sketches with text. Do you feel the writing is for yourself? Or are you conscious in your writing that your social media public will be reading it? I ask because when I first started sketching, I really wanted to have the kind of “art journal” I had seen online that was a written journal (thoughts about the day) combined with a sketch or two from the day. But once i started posting my sketches online, I became too self-conscious of the writing (which was sometimes personal, not just captions), and I didn’t want to blur it out each time, so I went back to keeping a separate written journal (as I had been doing for most of my life before I began sketching). And if someone were to ask to see my sketchbook, I’d like to be able to hand it over freely without feeling self-conscious that they were reading my personal writing. So although I’ll probably keep my sketches and writing in separate books, I always like the look of writing + sketches when other people do it.
– Tina
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Tina, if there’s something on a page I don’t want to share, I might just not shoot a full-page shot. But I like the writing to not be censored before it gets down on the page, because the real audience for it is me.
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Nice artwork, I really like your writing style.
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