Drawn the Road Again

Tag: California

  • S is for…

    S is for…

    …well, yes. But also…uh…Shameless Self-promotion. And very quietly, the Sigh of relief I’m breathing. Because at long, long last, after lots of technical difficulties and a whole bunch of back-end work, my Souvenir Shop is live! (And I even managed not to miss the holiday season—though only just.) In the shop you’ll find a whole…

  • 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…

  • Ghost palace

    Ghost palace

    Even on sunny days, the Claremont always seems to appear from nowhere as you turn a corner or follow the curving roads uphill. But in the chilly morning fog, it seemed to emerge from some other world.

  • Heaven and Hells

    Heaven and Hells

    I never pass up a chance to visit my friends Sarah and Jesse. Not only are they some of my favorite people on the planet, but they also happen to live in one of my favorite neighborhoods in San Francisco: Dogpatch. (How could I not love a place where my friends live on the same…

  • False fronts

    False fronts

    A perfect sunny afternoon in Napa Valley. The still-bare trees were the only reminder that spring hadn’t quite sprung yet. Coming from chilly, rainy Washington, it felt like summer by comparison.

  • Miracle Mile

    Miracle Mile

    More vintage goodness along Highway 99: sunny Redding, California is filled to the brim with old neon signs. On this day I was road tripping with a fellow travel blogger, my friend Mary-Alice (and her pup Chloe). The girls were remarkably patient with me while I insisted on stopping every thirty seconds to sketch more…

  • Towering guilt

    Towering guilt

    You know, if you think about it, a place that lets you pay money to drive your car through a hole cut into a centuries-old living redwood tree is kind of the perfect illustration of the bad side of American culture. The first time I was (literally) in this neck of the woods, the guilt…

  • On a mission

    On a mission

    Someday I’ll get to all 21 missions along El Camino Real, but for my first-ever mission visit, I had to choose a starting point. Who wouldn’t pick the one used in an Alfred Hitchcock film? And one starring Jimmy Stewart, no less! I mean, come on. Though you’d never know it from the sun and…

  • Crack of dawn

    Crack of dawn

    Hitting the road two hours before sunup is never exactly my favorite way to travel. But with a cup of strong coffee, some loud sing-along music on the stereo, and a worthy goal to shoot for… …it can be well worth the effort.

  • Have sketchbook, will travel

    Have sketchbook, will travel

    You know when you’re on a road trip, and you see a highway billboard that says something like, “World’s Largest Two-Headed Calf, Exit Now!” and you consider stopping, just for a moment? And then your spouse looks it up on the map, and you discover that yeah, it’s this exit, plus maybe another 140 miles…