Saturday, June 21, 2014

Watercolor Sketches


If you want to know what something looks like, draw it.


After many years of making sure my camera was packed for a trip, now I often leave it behind. Places I loved seemed so disappointing when I looked back to remember them. That's when I bought my tiny watercolor box and now sketching is my favorite way to create these artifacts.



I drove east from Wisconsin last month and spent the afternoon by a creek that runs past a little town called Oxford on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It's a scene whose beauty can overwhelm you.
I edited, rearranged, and colored to suit my mood and to show what I felt was important at the time. I like the roughly torn edges of the paper and the documentation inked at the bottom.


Will these pieces lead somewhere else?
They may just be memories put in an accordion book and tied with a ribbon to be discovered another day.

My next adventure is north to the Porcupine Mountain Folk School to teach tapestry landscape with handspun. I might bring my camera, but I know I'll pack my sketchbook.