Drawn the Road Again

Category: Mister Ranger Sir

  • 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…

  • Lurking in doorways

    Lurking in doorways

    You already know that I have a thing for doors, but I also love sketching through doorways. It’s one thing to compose a scene within the rectangle of a page spread—but it feels like an extra challenge to use the doorway itself to frame a scene within a scene. I find myself doing this sort…

  • The wind through the trees

    The wind through the trees

    After Monday’s post, and all the noise and disruption present in that sketch, I felt like something a little…quieter today. I did this drawing almost a year ago, on a gorgeous Sunday that should have had the park packed with picnickers. For whatever reason, though, the Tailor and I had the place entirely to ourselves.…

  • Baa ram ewe

    Baa ram ewe

    Friday’s post got me thinking about other places where you can see (and sketch) wildlife that’s totally unfazed by your presence. And since we’re coming up on the beginning of the Year of the Sheep, the Badlands zoomed right to the top of the list today.

  • Bird- and beastwatching

    Bird- and beastwatching

    Whenever I travel closer to home, where the flora and fauna are familiar to me, my birdwatching sketches look a lot like any other in my sketchbooks: full scenes, with plenty of time taken to get the details right. (And if my subject should happen to wander away—well, if it’s something I’ve seen before, memory…

  • Big rig

    Big rig

    The day I made this sketch was the first time I’d ever stayed in any sort of RV or motorhome (the Tailor and I are more of a tent-camping couple ourselves). But when we joined the Tailor’s aunt and uncle for a few days in Rocky Mountain National Park, I felt like I was having…

  • Engineered by mountain goats

    Engineered by mountain goats

    When I’m planning a road trip, I try to avoid interstate highways whenever possible. When in doubt, state and U.S. highways are almost always a better choice—both for scenic drives and for interesting road vistas. But even better than that are the roads through most national parks—which are specifically designed to give visitors the most…

  • The road ahead

    The road ahead

    Tomorrow this little travel blog turns one year old. In that time, I’ve jumped around in time and place, in hopes of showing you as many different sketches as I could: country scenes, cityscapes, vintage kitsch, wildlife, you name it. But while I love me some roadside attractions, I must confess that my very favorite…

  • Blue, and gray, and green

    Blue, and gray, and green

    It always amazes me how different the ocean can be, depending on what the sky is doing. I did the California sketch in the winter, and the Washington one at midsummer, and it seems like the seasons are reversed.

  • Guiding Light

    Guiding Light

    Okay, so the title of this post is not an accident. Apparently this lighthouse actually was a guiding light—on the soap opera of the same name, that is. But I’ll have to take Wikipedia’s word for that one, because vintage soap operas aren’t really my cup of tea. Vintage lighthouses, on the other hand, are…