Close to home

Travel drawing and painting is exciting for sure. But most of what I make and do happens at home or very close by. Here is some recent stuff.

The poppies are gone now, but only a couple of weeks ago, they were in bloom on Fortini Trail, very close to home. They got painted, as did the view.

My go-to sketching location when I can hardly find the time to sketch in a day? Boulevard Coffee of Almaden, a couple of minutes away from me. Breaking from working at my computer and getting out there is the best half hour of my day, sometimes. Brushpen, pencil and watercolors on this spread with random notes and thoughts about my day, the weather and disposable drink cups. That’s the best bit about working in a sketchbook: what you note in there doesn’t have to mean anything to anyone other than you.

When you switch in the same location over and over, changing the medium up once i a while keeps it fresh. This spread uses little sample vials of ink from Goulet Pens.

On other days, all the sketching that might get done is a little demo in a weekly class I teach. This session dealt with value studies but also with drawing ellipses. And then we meandered into discussing perspective and patterns and messy journals….

Do you have go-to subjects and locations? Is your sketching practice built around a schedule or does it fit into bits of your day, as mine does? I’d love to know.