Drawn the Road Again

Category: Off the Beaten Path

  • Sunkissed sketching

    Sunkissed sketching

    In my studio I have a massive collection of vintage fruit crate labels from the 1930s and 40s (they’re still fairly easily obtained here on the West Coast). So it’s probably no surprise that when I found myself standing in an orange grove this winter, all I could do was imagine my sketchbook plastered on…

  • Forest fossil

    Forest fossil

    Millions of years ago, central Washington was a lush, dense forest (complete with prehistoric sasquatch-park-rangers, maybe?). The only evidence of it now are some petrified logs, a little museum—and this sign, looking a little fossilized itself. Which, I have to say, is why I love it so much.

  • Pumpkin-mobile

    Pumpkin-mobile

    This had me laughing for days afterward. And now I can never look at a VW Bug in quite the same way.

  • Celtic Colours

    Celtic Colours

    Well, okay, my visit missed the actual Celtic Colours music festival by a couple of days (sad but true). But even a short two days on Cape Breton gave me a nice taste of the Celtic heritage of the island— —as well as a panorama of stunning autumn color, absolutely everywhere I looked. If that’s…

  • A world where there are Octobers

    A world where there are Octobers

    “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?” —L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables And I’m so glad my first visit to Prince Edward Island was an October one. Even without the peak fall color everywhere, the…

  • Rock of ages

    Rock of ages

    There’s a little trail that makes a circuit around the base of Devils Tower, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s just no bad angle anywhere—every side of the mountain is its good side. For me, the problem wasn’t finding a good sketch spot—it was racing the clock and recording every “shot” I wanted…

  • Bear crossing

    Bear crossing

    Okay, no more bear jokes. Especially since we didn’t exactly feel like laughing after the Tailor and I almost hit the real thing. (Thank goodness for reflexes and broad daylight.) Obviously I didn’t do this sketch while the moment was happening—but it was easy enough to cobble the scene together from memory. Because, you know,…

  • Notes from the front

    Notes from the front

    Don’t let these pictures fool you—it might look like I was sketching in an idyllic environment, but I couldn’t spend much time marveling at the scenery or relaxing with my paints. That’s because I had to take a break approximately every 4.5 seconds to swat at biting insects, or to take cover from the dive-bombing…

  • Cropping up

    Cropping up

    I spent one of my teenage years living on a rural military base in North Dakota. An interesting side effect of having to bus half an hour into town every day for school is that I learned to recognize every type of crop in the fields along the way. But when I moved to Washington, where…

  • Dark skies

    Dark skies

    One of my very favorite things about the Red River Valley (of the north) is that the land is so perfectly, endlessly flat that you can see entire weather systems grow and unfold before your very eyes. Then again, it’s not so fun when that weather catches up with you. I did this painting in…