Drawn the Road Again

Category: Before & After

  • Blown away

    Blown away

    At precisely 8:32 am local time, 35 years ago today, Mount Saint Helens erupted. I wasn’t around for it—I wasn’t even quite born yet. But I’ve had a thing for volcanoes ever since I moved to the Northwest, so St. Helens has never been far off my radar. The funny thing is, it’s taken me…

  • Milking it

    Milking it

    Remember my post about Mary Lou’s Milk Bottle? Well, it might be the best giant milk bottle in Spokane, but it’s not the only one. Built in the 1930s, the bottles served as neighborhood satellite stores (read: ducks!) for the Benewah Dairy Company. After Benewah folded in 1972, the bottles came to serve different purposes.…

  • Mountain mornings

    Mountain mornings

    I love coming back to a place I’ve already sketched, and giving it another go—I always end up with completely different results. These two drawings, for example, were done from precisely the same spot, almost exactly two years apart. Even though I’d been there before, and already spent a good amount of time studying the…

  • Dinner with Shiro

    Dinner with Shiro

    Note: I think this might be a first on this blog—showing you a drawing I did only in (gasp!) pencil. But the night I did this sketch, I only had a regular notebook with me, and I needed to work fast—there wasn’t time to dig around in my bag for a pen, so I reached…

  • Color theory

    Color theory

    Well, I got my wish. Friday morning ended up being the perfect time to visit the tulip fields. I spent the whole morning in the valley, and over an hour in just this spot. And to make the moment last just a little longer, I bought a little bit of the Skagit Valley to bring…

  • Tulip town

    Tulip town

    By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be headed up north for this year’s Tulip Festival. The last time I was there, the day I made this sketch, the weather was iffy at best. At this time of year, forecasts aren’t worth all that much, so I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping for decent…

  • Rock n’ roll

    Rock n’ roll

    Speaking of quiet places, usually the last place I’d think of as meditative is the airport. In fact, airports are usually at the top of the list of places that send my stress levels sky high (yet another reason I’m not a huge fan of flying). I should have known better about the Asheville airport,…

  • Of man camps and mass destruction

    Of man camps and mass destruction

    I always embark on road trips with the expectation that I’m going to delight in what I see along the way. Mostly that’s the case—I’m interested in just about everything, and the road is always full of pleasant surprises. But while this blog mostly has been a collection of things I love, I also sketch…

  • The final tally

    The final tally

    If you happen to follow along on Instagram or Facebook, you’ll know I’ve just returned from a 4000+ mile road trip across the south and west of the county. One of the things I like to do at the end of a trip (and the end of my sketchbook) is a map and recap of…

  • Lone wanderer

    Lone wanderer

    I just got back from two and a half weeks of wandering in California—and by the time you read this, I’ll be on the road again, after just a few hours at home. The pre-trip scramble is never the most fun part of traveling, but I know that the trip ahead will have plenty of…