New Yawk

This is long overdue, but I went to New York a few weeks ago, and finally got to meet the amazing France Belleville-Van Stone and sketched with her on New York's High Line for an entire morning. One of the great highlights of my life. I did a few other sketches while I was there, including quite a few whilst stuck at La Guardia in airport hell for eight hours. None is as good as the first sketch from the High Line with France, at least to me.

Here they are.

Highline #1:


Highline #2:


Broadway from Columbus Circle:


Atlas's butt, from Rockefeller Center:


Conservatory Water, Central Park:


Unfinished Woolworth building:


La Guardia:

Lots more Stillman & Birn sketches

At 1pm on Saturday I'll be doing a Sketchbook show & tell at Meininger Art Supplies with Michael Kalman from Stillman & Birn.  I'll be showing a lot of the work I've been doing in my Stillman & Birns these past few months, so if you're in the area you should come and check it out!  In case you haven't noticed, I think these are great sketchbooks- easily the nicest I've ever worked in.  I've even tried out some new materials.  Here's a few of the sketches I'll be showing.

The Colorado State Capitol

I've been biding my time since we moved to Colorado.  The beautiful, golden-domed capitol building has been undergoing renovation for some time.  What that means for me is the dome has been partially covered by scaffolding the entire time we've lived here, which is less than ideal for sketching. Until a few weeks ago.  That's when they covered the entire dome in scaffolding.  Enclosed scaffolding.  Nary a glimpse at the dome within.  I finally figured I might as well get it over with so that, when everything's done (assuming we still live in Denver) I can do a companion sketch with the dome as well.  Fingers crossed.

Done in my new Stillman and Birn large Alpha sketchbook.

A few more marker sketches

It's interesting to do these marker sketches, because I feel I can spend more time laying them out and less time hatching, as the markers take care of the value pretty quickly.  I've been using a Stillman & Birn sketchbook for the first time with these, and so far it's great with wet media like Tombow markers.

Water tower in Federal Heights, Denver

This was sketched from inside the car.  It's near a hospital, and apparently this street serves as overflow employee parking, as there were people in scrubs getting in and out of these cars all day.  When I arrived, the sun was out and casting the nice shadow on the base of the tower you see here.  As I began laying in values with the markers, it clouded up and rained, and just about all of the shadows disappeared.  Fortunately I had penciled in the location of the shadow early on, or this would be a pretty dull sketch.


Wooden derrick in the rotunda of the Western History and Genealogy dept, Denver Public Library

This space is one floor above the reference area I sketched on Sunday of this week.  I spent almost an hour laying out the derrick in pencil, which is probably the longest I've spent on a preliminary pencil sketch in a long time.  But once that was done, the rest of the sketch seemed to fly by.

One of these things is not like the other

There's two ways to interpret that title.  One of these sketches is not a coffee shop.  And one of these sketches was done with markers.  Um, that's it.

Ziggi's Coffee, Westminster, CO:


Reference room in the Denver Public Library:


Another Starbucks for the pile:


Bonus video: Linda took a short vid of me sketching in the library.

Unfinished business

It may seem hard to believe, but I don't share everything I draw or sketch.  In fact, I have tons of unposted and/or unscanned material.  Sketching takes time, and that's something I often run out of.  So making lots of sketches equals making lots of unfinished sketches.

Here's a few unfinished sketches, most of which I haven't shared before.  You'll notice in the Moleskine sketches that the left sides are done but the right aren't.  In my other sketchbooks I often use pencil beforehand, so the sketch can develop a bit more organically, but Linda pointed out to me that I work from left to right pretty much without exception in Moleskines.

Details from the Majestic Theater in San Antonio, TX

Facade of the Express News Building, San Antonio, TX

The Leaf and Bean coffee shop, Bozeman, MT

The Gourmet Burger Grill, San Antonio, TX

Biryani House, Berkeley, CA

Crowd at Red Rocks, Denver, CO

Counter at Magnolia Pancake House, San Antonio, TX

Self Portraits

We have mostly stationary mirrors in the house, except for a tall skinny one that I have to drag out of the bathroom for self-portrait sketches like this:


So I finally went and bought a $5 small mirror at Target and did this self-portrait last night while Linda watched "Cold Case Files."

Lots of coffee

Obligatory coffee shop sketch post for the month.


At Stella's Coffee Haus


Tenn Street Coffee and Books


Bardo Coffee on Broadway


Dazbog Coffee on 17th and Browning


The soon-to-be-relocating Common Grounds at 32nd and Lowell.


Inside Caribou Coffee on the 16th St Mall.

More soon!

More urban sketching goodness around Denver

I haven't done as much sketching outside in the past month as I would have liked, even though the weather has been fantastic, but I did manage a few doodles here and there.  I humbly submit them here. though if you follow me on Flickr they are old news.  But I present them anyway out of a sense of duty.

This first one was done from near the same spot as my other sketch of the Brown Palace Hotel, this time looking west down 17th behind it.  It's unfinished I suppose, but I like it.


This one was done in Castle Rock, a southern suburb of Denver.  Linda was there for a book signing at Stash, a very cool yarn shop.  While she signed I sketched.


A rare non-architectural sketch, in Cheesman Park in Denver.  I think our Grand Canyon trip may be having some effect on me.


Bagged another great old building in Denver, the old Chamber of Commerce building, now residential.

Road Trip

Linda and I took a short trip last week across the Colorado Plateau, from here in Colorado through Utah to Arizona and back.  I got the opportunity to do a few sketches, and we also got engaged somewhere along the way.

Our first stop was in Grand Junction, Colorado, on the western border near Utah.  We ate lunch downtown at a great little Nepalese/Indian restaurant, and afterward I had enough time to do this little sketch while Linda checked out the local yarn shop.

That's Linda's little Honda Fit in the middle.

We continued on into Colorado National Monument, just outside of town.




After driving the park's main road and stopping for some (very hot) photo opportunities, we continued on to Moab, Utah, arriving in the early evening.  The last leg took us into the Colorado River canyon as the sun was setting.


The next day, we went to Arches National Park and hiked around all morning.  We checked out the Courthouse Towers, Sand Dune Arch, Skyline Arch and the Devil's Garden, where I did a quick watercolor sketch of Landscape Arch while being watched by some nice German tourists.


Afterward we went back into Moab for lunch and a nap before returning to the park to tackle the Delicate Arch trail in the late afternon.  It was super hot and mostly uphill, but we were rewarded at the end with an amazing view of the arch just before sunset.


We were tired enough that I had plenty of time for a sketch while we rested.


After an amazing dinner that night in Moab, we set off the next morning for the Grand Canyon, arriving in the mid-afternoon.  We took a lazy drive through the park to our hotel room and saw some amazing sites.  Over the next two days we went to some great ranger programs, walked along the rim trail, saw some amazing sunsets and got engaged!  I also did these sketches:



















Of course, there was some stuff I didn't sketch.




On our trip back we stopped for a night in Mesa Verde National Park and saw some amazing Anasazi cliff dwellings.  We took a tour the next morning, but there was not enough time for a sketch.  Ah well, another time.