The Nicest Restaurant I Never Ate At

 Sometimes travel doesn't go as planned. I had a trip to a small town in Missouri. In my spare time I could see a plan develop. A neat coffee shop close by that I can sketch in! Got there at closing time. But a neat mostly restored old mill was close! Tour closed. Restaurant open but I just ate elsewhere. Oh well. I had time to sketch nearby with a view of the mill and water rushing close by. It was a sunny day with perfect temperature and I had the time. Who needs a plan?

The steel truss bridges remind me of some bridges we have on our rail-to-trails back home in Kansas. Love the design and feel.

Fountain pen, watercolor pencils and waterbrush. I used a spare empty half pan to create a wash from pencil pigments to use for the sky (a new trick I'm trying). 

How Many Is Enough?

 Over the years, things accumulate. We've had 40 years of travel and I like to buy coffee cups to prompt the memories as I get older. Thus, a huge selection of coffee cups. Wilma and I would always disagree on how many I NEED. With her gone, I can be guilt-free on how many I NEED. 

So, I attacked my collection this week. I pulled them all down from the cupboard and set them on the kitchen island. This had to be sketched!

If you read the sketch, I ended up with 70 coffee cups. BUT some have already been repurposed to hold pens, pencils and loose change, some are hot/cold travel cups (don't count since they are dual-use), and some are easy to give away.

Final count: 31 

Yes, I concede I only NEED one. But that's no fun. I love the memories in each cup. If Wilma's ghost haunts me, I will reconsider. 

The Homeplace

 This is located in Land Between the Lakes in western Kentucky. We like to camp there. The "Homeplace" is an 1850 re-enacted farm. I stop here every time I'm in LBL. This time the house was closed for some roof repairs. So I found a comfortable rock to sit on and did this ink sketch. No pencil layout. I liked how it came out. It is in a sketchbook that I recently re-found. I was camping there last October for this sketch. This one took me a while but I love being in "the zone". I considered applying color but the pen and ink feel told me to stop.

Resting Molly

 I just re-located a sketchbook that had this sketch of my 1.5 year old Lab Molly. She is usually a ball of movement but toward evening she can stay still long enough to sketch. This was back in September. She's both frustrating and lovable to be with. This week she ate a stick of butter.

Primed and Ready

 'Tis snow season. In eastern Kansas in the last few years we haven't received many big snows. But we did last week, with lots of wind and the resulting drifts. My driveway blew shut four times. Now that I have a side-by-side with blade I can handle most of the storms we get, but this was the first true test.

Since it's just me now, I have the luxury of dedicating one of my two garage stalls to this machine, ready for action on a moments notice.

I only have this machine because I'm a volunteer in a trail group that maintains 15 miles of trail up my me. However, I will admit I have lusted for one even without the trail work.

This year I decided to help out some neighbors. I live in a rural area where the roads are on a 1-mile grid (mostly). On my 'mile' we only have twelve homes. Most of us are self sufficient and have the equipment to push snow. However, four don't. Three I know and like. The forth one drove by as I was clearing my driveway and asked to hire me. I went over (they weren't home) and their driveway was really drifted in. They could not drive into their house for four days! It was -8F with -10F wind chill but after 2.5 hours of work I cleared it. The biggest job I've ever done. Left my contact info in their door. That was four days ago. They are back but haven't thanked or paid me. Maybe I won't be helping them in the future. The other three neighbors were very thankful and I was glad to help.

The snow plow was a prime example of the brain telling me it's all black, but the eyes are telling me it has shiny very light value areas. I went with the eyes and it worked.

Denver REI Store Visit

 REI is an outdoor gear store that is not focused on going out in nature and killing things. I say that as a hunter and fisherman, but it's true. I've been an REI member for over 40 years, and Denver has one of their flagship stores. If at all possible, on Denver visits I spend some time here. On this mid-December trip I had a couple hours to kill so I went. 

There is SO MUCH STUFF in a retail store like this so I needed to focus on something. The climbing wall wasn't being used but it always draws my attention. I found a spot on the stairs I could draw from, and incorporate people in the sketch (a weakness of mine that I'm working on). Very enjoyable time. The only drawback was the price of parking in their parking lot. I was over 2 hours here so the charge was something like $20. Rather punitive if you ask me. I spent plenty of money inside and outside of the store.

I have a thing for maps and compasses. In Topeka, Kansas nobody has a serious compass. So, when I'm here I always check on them. This one was sketch worthy. Using one is a fading skill. I use a GPS, too, but you're depending on battery life to keep you alive and I don't like that. Worse yet is a trend of depending on your cell phone GPS and map to keep you alive. Never!

Sketchout with a friend

 A good friend of mine, in a similar place in life, has done formal art many many years ago, before marriage and before kids. Then life happens. She wasn't familiar with the type of sketching I do in my journals. I figured we could go out to a coffee shop and I could show here what I do and give her some supplies to do it. She didn't buy into my no-pencil-layout ink first approach but that's OK. Once she laid pencil to sketchbook I could see it reignited those past days of emersion into the creative process. It made my day!