Elm Street Bakery

It's after lunch at Elm Street Bakery and Miz Dee and I are in a quandary again about where to sketch. We discuss several possibilities and none seem appealing.

I go outside to look around to see what I can see. Well! The very restaurant we're in is quite lovely from the other side of the street. We won't have to move the car or nuthin'!

Off we trot to take up a position on a planter with nice shade from a crepe myrtle. We don our Crazy Sketcher Lady hats out there in front of God-n-Everbody. We are some serious sketchers doin' some serious sketchin'.

We attract the attention of a photographer from the local newspaper. Oy. It must have been a slow news day. He jumps out of his car, takes a few shots, asks our names. He goes away for a bit and comes back later on and takes a few more. It's a *very* slow news day.

So, Miz Dee and I make the local paper, somewhere in the back pages, right between continuation headlines declaring Murder! and Bedbugs! I thought that was appropriate since we look kinda like bedbug infested mass murderers in the shot.

I got in a heap o' trouble when Hubby saw the picture in the paper. My Crazy Sketcher Lady hat is actually *his* boonie hat. He ordered it special to wear playing golf. It had gone missing since early spring. It was only missing to him, I knew right where it was: in my sketch kit bag.

He made me give it back. (pout)

Main Street Pizza

Downtown, late afternoon, Miz Dee and I are looking for a good sketching location. We prowl around in front of the buildings and back in the alleys, but nothing is catching our eye.

We plop on a bench rather exasperated. Told Dee I was just going to draw what I could see from here. That would be Main Street Pizza.

I was going to leave out the light poles and just draw the building, but the light poles and wires called to my little sketcher's heart. I luvs me some light poles.

Decided to make the poles transparent ala Gabi Campanario, the Seattle Sketcher. I've always thought his transparent people and vehicles sketches were cool.

As we sat and sketched, people in passing cars would honk and wave yelling, "Dee!" I can't take her anywhere and be anonymous. Maybe she really is everybody's third cousin twice removed on the husband's side. I'll have to ask her about that.

Hammond Shed

Miz Dee has dragged me out into the middle of nowhere to sketch a barn she spied and wanted to draw. The barn was a bit overwhelming, so I opted for the little shed next to it. I intended to add color to this when I started but got caught up in the visceral pleasure of crosshatching. Decided to just leave it as a pen and inker.

We were out on the old Hammond homeplace. Miz Dee said, "Oh I know these folks! I'll go knock on the door and ask permission to sketch the barn."

She did, but the Hammonds had moved away long ago. Dee started chatting up the current resident and by the end of the conversation Dee had convinced the lady that they were related somehow, third cousins twice removed on her husband's side or something like that.

By the time the poor lady had processed what Dee had told her and realized her husband didn't have any cousins, we were long gone. Dee is crafty like that. I stood back and marveled at the skill of a master. (grin)

On The Patio

Out on a sketching adventure with Miz Dee today. We were sitting outside the restaurant where we had just eaten lunch and Dee had to make a phone call.

I whipped out the Little Red Emergency Sketchbook while I was waiting and started to draw two ladies lunching on the patio. They, of course, got up and left right in the middle of my sketch. Isn't that always the case when sketching people in the wild???

Harumph! Some people are just so rude! Don't they know they should sit still whilst I'm covertly drawing them without their permission????

Green Wheel Statues

Sep. 14, 2010 - Continuing the story....

The truck blocking the view of the statue finally left and I set to drawing.

Indian music was blaring from a nearby Italian restaurant's outdoor patio. (Yes, I thought that was odd too.) The high nasal whine was like nails on a chalkboard. Then the restaurant behind us started blaring hip-hop music.

The combined noise was deafening and made me nervous and twitchy. It was very hard to sit still and concentrate.

Dee and I were sitting about three feet apart and couldn't carry on a normal conversation. In fact, we couldn't hear ourselves think.

I yelled at Dee, "Are you a drinkin' woman Dee?"

"No!" she yelled back.

I bellowed, "I'm not either! But if I listen to this much longer I'm gonna need a stiff bourbon and Coke!!!"

Oh, the trials and tribulations of the Urban Sketcher life. Thankfully, the bartender came out to chat, realized the music was too loud and turned it down. Thank you dude, you don't know how much we appreciated that gesture of kindness.

These were the oddest statues. They are two guys dressed in work clothes, both kinda hunched over. They aren't holding anything, aren't looking at anything. They're just two random guys in bronze. Very odd.

I wonder who thought they were worth statutizing???

Process notes:
I goofed up the perspective on the wheel rim. Oh well. There was no eraser on my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen.

I couldn't figure out what to do with the background. The actual background was buildings and cars and bushes. That would have been too busy to draw. It would have taken away from the statues. Finally just painted sky down to the ground like a second-grader would have done. I need to work on that.