Laurelines

Technical difficulties, begone! Scotland trip upcoming!

Hello! I have been frustrated for a long time due to a glitch with my renewal of Adobe services (i.e I now can't access any of them, including Photoshop) and my scanner and printer. It's a mess. I WILL get things sorted out when I have one or two 37-hour days to talk again with Apple support and with Adobe support. A word to the wise: don't forget to write down your system password. Ever. 

Meantime, I remembered I could at least post this update/outburst.  

My husband and two of our closest friends leave for almost three weeks in Scotland in less than a month. I have made a wonderful itinerary, she said modestly. And I WILL HAVE my computer problems sorted out by then, one way or another. She said, sort of ominously.

This will be a sentimental journey for me. I lived in Edinburgh for a year many years ago, during which time I got married, had my first child, and spent two terms at Edinburgh College of Art (second one was truncated by my advanced pregnancy.) I took my daughter back to Scotland on her 18th birthday and loved it then as much as I had at the very beginning.

I am thrilled to be going back, at long last.

Since I can't access images of my work for now, I am sharing photos from the places we will be staying during our three weeks.

The Farmhouse on the  Duffus Estate near Elgin in Moray, with views of Duffus Castle.

A cottage on the Ardsheal Estate, overlooking Loch Linnhe in Argyll and Bute.

A small hotel in a beautiful Georgian building at No. 11 Brunswick Street in Edinburgh.

And that's not all! You won't believe all the fantastic places we are going to see in the Lothians, Perthshire, Moray, Aberdeenshire, the Highlands, the Lowlands, Argyll and Bute, and the inner Hebrides and even more.
 
So that is all for now. I will be back! Technical matters are not completely out of reach for me.. but they are not, shall I say,  where I shine. But Scotland!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2017 into 2018: The straight way was lost

 

In the middle of the journey of my life,

I came to myself in a dark wood

And the straight way was lost.

Adapted from a translation of Dante's "Inferno,"  Canto I.

  

Not exactly lost, and the chronology is off, but it's just that a new, indirect, and wavy way seems to be taking over here. I believe it comes from that life force, the c'hi, that I sense so palpably in my numinous places, and which inspires me in my art life.

Well, I can't be in my numinous places (Norway, Wales, Iceland, Scotland, etc) every minute of the day, so I'm figuring out how to find charged experiences here, at home, in my daily life. And now, at the beginning of a new year,  I've started following this barely-intuited way, this wavy, meandering way, in my journal/sketchbook.

I feel a huge burden of guilt over unfinished paintings from the past year and more and this guilt has made it ever harder to return to that unfinished work. So, I'm going back, via this new way, to basics and to joy. 

The way appeared one very cold day on my late afternoon walk. Here is what I saw: 

  

I read the message in these lines and now I draw, paint, make marks, collecting my own images, from what I see around me, not just anything my eye happens upon, but scenes and objects that seem charged with a special energy, for whatever reason... and record them in my journal, to find out who... and where... I am.  Again.

I'm not making huge pronouncements or plans for now, just going step by wavy step. And I'm developing an awareness for presence of the c'hi in, say, a plate of apples.

It's a happy life.

 

Pink hyacinth in pot wrapped in pink foil, mixed media on toned paper:

Bowl of nuts with nutcracker, mixed media on toned paper:

Angel drawing after Melozzo da Forli, mixed media on toned paper:

Apples and tangerines on blue plate, mixed media on toned paper:

My new challenge is to be open to charged places and objects and settings near to home. Then, when I get back to Norway this May, I'll be more than ready to receive it!

Happy New Year! May we be filled with energy and joy.

Going to the source: Part 2 of the Caledonian Orogeny in Wales

After a  busy November, I'm finally able to turn back to Wales and that ancient mountain range, once as high as the Himalayas, that dominates my imagination.

Below is a wobbly handheld video of the 12' long drawing I made in a concertina sketchbook over a few days on Anglesey in October. This is the second of two such drawings, the other having been made in Pembrokeshire this past May. I am also reposting the earlier one, for comparison.

 

 

The outcrops on Whitesands Bay are a giant's cornucopia of thousands of rocks of all shapes and every orientation! That landscape is a feast for eyes such as mine.

Here is a still of the Anglesey rock deformations, which are calmer, more markedly horizontal, but still breathtaking to my eyes:

These drawings are made on site, frequently with strong winds whipping my hair across my eyes, my hands struggling to hold a very long, folded (and unfolding at the wrong moments) sketchbook, working fast while the conditions are right.

There weren't huge problems in Pembrokeshire, other than frequentish rain, because the beach was very deep and I didn't have to pay attention to tide times. But on Anglesey, it was quite a different story. Finding time when it wasn't raining AND when it was low tide was difficult.

I post this photo of myself having just THEN completed the drawing, in spite of the challenges of weather, tide, and limited time. My relief and happiness are evident! This was our very last day on Anglesey, thus my very last chance to finish the drawing. The weather had been forecast to be rainy, but, look, it was perfect!

Next stop on the Caledonian trail is northern Norway. Near Bodø is the dramatic outcrop pictured below, part of our mountain building event that spanned a couple of millions of years and great distances.

Big thanks to Battleboy on Flickr, who gave me permission to use his stunning photo, taken from a boat. 

Brilliant Norwegian photographer Reidar Hernes lives in Bodø and is helping me research possibilities for me to be able to stand on land and draw these deformations. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

This time I will use a different drawing surface: still a concertina sketchbook, but one not as long and with bigger pages, I think.

I leave this post with two images of the two books: different, connected.  We will see what awaits us in Norway.

Only Connect: My Trip to North Wales

Connections are surfacing everywhere in my life this phase. Without going into a long explanation right now on that topic, (but I will soon!), let me share some images from my two weeks on the Lleyn Peninsula and on Anglesey, two very different, but equally magnificent places. 

Walking along the sandy beach on Abersoch Bay, I saw several luminous blue mounds and wondered what they were. They were Velella jellyfish, washed up on shore, a phenomenon that has occurred on the various coastal regions of Wales often recently. Here I started with the Winsor & Newton tube gouache I took along and finished with crayon since the paint took so long to dry.

 Tea time at the beautiful house and gardens Plas yn Rhiw on the Lleyn Peninsula was a great treat. My husband and I were able to sit on the terrace and have our tea, a rare occasion on this often blustery, rainy, chilly trip. Here I used watercolor crayon and Pentel brush pen on site, adding colored pencil green later at home.

Traveling light as I do, I had pared down my paint and crayon palettes to just a few colors, one of which was not green, so I used my blues and yellows to make this sketch of the Italianate garden on the grounds of the house we stayed in at Abersoch. I ended up being glad I had no green; I like the retro Technicolor effect I got from those limited colors.

On Anglesey, at the café of the art gallery Oriel ynys Môn, I had for lunch, what else, Welsh Rarebit. It was warm and comforting on another one of those chilly, blustery days. Again, here I used Pentel pocket brush pen, watercolor crayon, and a blue colored pencil.  And you can't tell this from the sketch, but that was wonderful Welsh sparkling water in the small glass.

On the many, many walks I took on Anglesey, taking advantage of the lulls in rain and high wind, I often started by walking down a magical holloway, or sunken lane, behind our house, leading to the Anglesey coast path. Here is one of the parade of venerable trees that line that old way:

I don't have landscape sketches per se, because I was concentrating on a different way of looking at land forms and that was the underlying reason for the trip. This has to do with the Caledonian Orogeny and it has to do with connections and you've read some about that here before.  Here's just a snippet of the 12' drawing I made this time of the rock outcrops I found on LLigwy Bay, rocks that are 450 million years old, give or take a few million.

The story is longer and so is the drawing and so is the time it would take to tell it. But it's an important story to me and I will be back soon!

Brush pen memories

Help! I'm working on illustrations to go along with the essay on my garden that I wrote for Charleston Style & Design's upcoming fall issue. Deadline: NOW or a time very much like it.

I have made dozens and zillions of drafts for these, mainly because I can't settle on the technique I want to use. My collage approach doesn't fit with this subject and the format of these images. My studio floor, the repository for rejected drafts, is a mess, 

What to do??!! Last night, I thought, "brush pen, why not?" I love working with my Pentel pocket brush pen. It feels almost like an extension of my drawing hand. I've used it for lots of sketch subjects and some illustrations over the years. I looked back at my Flickr account to remind myself of the ways I had done this and was waylaid by memories.

May I share some of these rediscovered images and memories with you?

Below: In Pasadena,a cactus garden, part of the larger Huntington Gardens, that I visited with my friend and brilliant artist Virginia Hein on a sketching jaunt fall before last. This brings back such wonderful memories of our time together.

I had hesitated to try brush pen with my current assignment because I wasn't sure I could get the nuances I want with it. But this sketch managed nuance!

Next a scene from Oakland Bay from 2015. I was visiting my daughter Cecelia. Looking at this, I am instantly back in that day, in that place. And I miss my daughter so much. Some nuance here, too!

In another vein, a portrait sketch of Sir Walter Raleigh for the cover of Walter Magazine in 2013. I submitted several images. They chose another one for the cover, but I have always loved this Sir Walter's sassy and flourishy attitude.

Jumping again to a quite different topic, here's a pretty atmospheric, nuancy sketch of a scene in Iceland. Drawing in the twilight, especially the Northern twilight.. aahhh. Heaven. 

The sketch below is another one-way express ticket to the past. David and I were traveling in the Dordogne with our friends Moreton and Drake. Moreton drew me as I drew this scene on the river near Bouziès. I spy nuance! Fabulous memories here, too!:

Finally, speaking of being overtaken by memories, I saw this pen and ink and crayon drawing of our Miles three or so years ago and, though it's not a brush pen drawing, it IS a drawing of a beloved baby, so that counts for a lot, doesn't it? Memories.

Back to work now, keeping my fingers crossed that my brush pen and I will get this done!

Getting back to 'Yay'

I've been drawing all my life, from at least aged three, that is. From my twenties on, I've sketched while traveling, just for the delight and curiosity of it.

Lately, though I've continued with travel sketching, I've fallen off the daily sketching habit, I realize this has to do with all that sketching I've shared here and on Urban Sketchers and other web sites over the past twelve years.

Sketching on location began to feel like a performance, an obligation that grew onerous. The spark that this sort of drawing held for me dimmed the more I felt it a duty and not an inner-generated (even if outwardly shared) activity, the way it had been all my life

This weekend I had to fly to Michigan to attend a memorial service for a dear friend. I wasn't sure if I'd feel like sketching or if I'd have any time to, but I packed some crayons and a brush pen just in case. Out walking in the early morning, I came upon a garden scene in reds and greens and lights and darks. I thought, 'I want to draw that!'  I broke out the few crayons I'd packed and my brush pen and I set to.

After a few minutes I ran out of time and had to wrap it up.

There was my sketch.  'Yay," I thought, yay!' 

'Yay' is child speak and it perfectly expresses that spontaneous delight I'd been missing. I agree with psychologists who say that we carry our child heart inside us all our lives and that is where our creativity lies.  

This quick and modest sketch of a slice of a summer garden seems to me a kind of breaking of a spell. I have lots of other work going, work that I (mostly) enjoy, illustrations and a much-procrastinated-upon painting series, but this is different. This was made by the crayon-wielding child Laura who looked at something she thought was beautiful, took out her colors and said, 'Yay!'

  

 

I have four illustrations due in the next few days and then it will be time to think about my next trip to Wales. As of today, August 1st, I can say I'm leaving next month, even if the date of departure IS the end of September.

I still have so much to say about that trip and where it fits into my larger Places Project. After my deadlines, I'll be back to tell more.

Yay!

Copper runs through it

Well, here I am with a post from February, which cheekily ended way too soon! 

For months I have been elatedly immersed in thoughts of copper and copper-related minerals and copper-related colors, ever since my residency in Alaska last August. One Alaskan sunset in particular was seared forever on my mind's eye and heart... the sky all tints and hues of orange, pink, red, and the glacial waters of Lake Clark looking like pale oxidized copper,  and then the mountains, Copper Mountain, in particular (yes! That is its name!) was set on coppery fire by that sun. It was one of those holy moments; I felt lifted to a world of thrilling and pure beauty.

And then, everywhere I looked afterwards, I saw copper... in the salmon leaping from the water, in the colors of the native blue geranium leaves as they turned autumnal, in the bonfire flames, and on and on. My work started to be filled with burnt orange, cadmium oranges and reds, phthalo turquoise, cobalt green, teal, burnt sienna, ochre... the orange/blue- to- red/green world I saw when I thought of Alaska.

This is a bonfire built the night of that coppery sunset.The magnificent fire was a brilliant celebration of that place, that day, that glory. Here we see my orange/turquoise palette in an early manifestation.

Below are two of many, many studies I'm working through to try to figure out my own idiom for expressing what I saw and felt in the coppery Alaska. In addition to those zillion studies of all sizes and impulses, I have 12 paintings in progress, filling up my studio walls and floor. Who knows which of these will end up resolved? I don't mind, though. This is the slow way I work. I am an eternal pioneer in the studio, scrabbling for ways to get where i want to go.

Here is copper in the vegetal world, spangles of it appearing overnight on the leaves of wild native geranium:

Later, on my trip to Austria, I was thrilled to learn that the Natural History Museum in Vienna has a vast mineralogical collection. I headed straight for the specimens that were copper-related. Oh, those colors, my new colors! I stood my ground there on the cold tile floor, sketching carefully for hours, as rivers of school children flowed everywhere around me. This was the micro view of my copper world and with my love of geology, I reveled in it.  Here are two spreads from my Vienna sketchbook:

Since my return, I've made several sketches, unrelated to my Alaska project, without realizing as I drew that I was still using my coppery palette!

A bystander at the Women's March in January asked me why I'd chosen the colors I used for my sketches. It was then that I realized what I'd done!

I want to finish at least SOME of the Copper Mountain series before I leave for Wales again in May. I'm slow, but I'm optimistic!

2017, the plan(s) and hopes for a newish year

I'm late posting my new year plans because I've been waylaid by flu for a good first ten days of the year.

 Waylaid times can be useful for thinking and such was the case for me. I started keeping a daily journal again. My writing had become sporadic and sparse in the busy, extroverted year that 2016 was. There were also world events that eclipsed my inner life, at least the act of thinking and writing about it. 

World events loom huge today, but I separate from them by taking to the studio, to the outdoors, and to the balm of friendship. And on this page, here, with you.

Painting!

On the studio score, I'm very excited! All that pent-up painting energy, accumulated over the months of travel in the fall and winter, is coming out in leaps and pirouettes! My Places Project gave me so many opportunities to experiment and store up ideas and inspiration. In 2017, I'll be able to see what emerges from that in the form of more sustained pieces, paintings and such.

I was afraid that my trip to Wales might eclipse the ideas that occurred to me during my Alaskan residency, but no!! The Wales imagery and ideas seem to be patiently waiting in the queue for Alaska to happen first. I have several paintings started and a sketchbook bursting with color, texture, and compositional studies, but I resist the urge to share those here. Let us not queer the deal by showing too much, too soon. But the textures and the colors are giving me ecstasies of delight!

 

Drawing!

Oh, and I've been drawing, too. Drawing is central to my life. As I've said before, drawing is one of my earliest memories, and one of the happiest, of my often-challenging childhood. Here are two simple pencil drawings I made last week of our Jonas lost in Legoland!

Pop ups in my sketchbook!

I don't know exactly where the impulse came from, but I started making pop-up sketches in my sketchbook a few days ago and now I'm in love with that idea! Here are a couple of recent examples. The pop up approach seemed especially right for expressing that mental image I've had since October of jackdaws wheeling in the dawn sky at St.David's Head. Not that this one perfectly captures that image, but it's a start!

I wanted to learn more about this technique, so I bought two books on the subject and quickly learned I had been doing it all wrong! ;D. That didn't bother me a bit. I can carry on my way, but still add traditional techniques to my repertoire. Here are some early attempts at learning popups the normal way. Who knows where this will take me? I have no weighty plans or expectations. Pure play is what this is. But there WILL be more to come!

Illustration!

I'm going to carry on working for Charleston Style and Design. I love working with the AD and the editors there. It's a quarterly, so the timing perfectly suits my resolve to keep work for others at a minimum. There is ONE other job that I've been approached about and I'm very happy about it, but the when is uncertain. This year, for sure. Or, for maybe. I'll let you know more when I can.

My latest illustration accompanies an essay by Katherine Wilson on her mother's lifelong obsession with Italian style and notions of beauty. I am sharing a just a few of the many  draft sketches I made to show how, at my searching hand, Sophia Loren looked like Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gina Lollobrigida, and other anonymous retro beauties, until I got the style I wanted and a good enough likeness. 

Travel!

Because I found Wales deeply inspiring, I knew I had to get back and see where  those geology-based images would take me. So I have made arrangements to go back to Pembrokeshire for two weeks in May! And maybe in fall, too. We shall see. I long to go back to Norway and that will be my next big travel goal.

As long as I draw breath and can stride, I'll be on the move. Who knows what the future holds? And that last question, dear friends, will be last allusion I make here to the events of the world for a while.

Happy and safe 2017 to one and all! Thank you for your support and interest.

2016 turns to 2017

 And so do we all. This year has been a fraught one, to say the least. We have had way more than one year's share of loss, despair, and dread. I know that many of us around the world are looking to the new year for some, for any, relief. May we find it.

On a personal, artistic level, however, this year has been one of the fullest ever, with trips and work deriving from my Places Project. I began to experiment with painting and drawing with found, organic materials. I have a long way to go and, I assume, lots of time to continue with this. Mud, paint made from rocks and soil, sand, charred twigs, berry juice were some of my means along this path.

The red earth of North Carolina, gathered here from Peregrine Farm, is highly pigmented and is a total joy to smear and brush on surfaces. Soil from my area makes paint in this deep red and in various other ochre, umber, and sienna hues.

 Rows of celosia flowers at Peregrine Farm, supported by white plastic mesh made for a striking subject. Mixed media : mud, acrylic, watercolor, found charcoal on toned paper:

Other studies and sketches from Peregrine Farm can be seen here and here:

 In Alaska, at my residency at Chulitna Lodge on magnificent Lake Clark, there was peaty soil and sand to dip into. I brought back some soil I ground and dried for use in my studio this year. I overestimated what I could do pursuing these means in a limited period of time, restricted to materials I could pack in my carryon! I need to be somewhere for an extended period, with lots of space to work and to store materials. I am working on just such a scenario for myself for 2017.

View of Copper Mountain from across Lake Clark. Mixed media: watercolor, sand, soil.

/p>

 There were wild currants to squash and smear to add color to drawings:

This and other spreads and studies from Alaska can be seen here and   :

 

 

In coastal Pembrokeshire, the world was rich with beautiful mud and rocks that told stories 450 million years old. I was in ecstasy there and have just made plans to return for two weeks in May to continue those explorations.

Above, I paint and draw with sand and rocks and below I smear in my sketchbook mud from the source of sacred St. Non's well near St. Davids, with blackberry stain added for color.

Other paintings and studies from the 12' long accordion sketchbook

I used in Wales appear here.

I enjoyed another year of working with Charleston Style and Design Magazine, producing illustrations that allowed me to stretch and play and that were such fun to do

 

<

I led my second three-part drawing series at the Nasher Museum of Art in September and it was a lovely, successful experience, just as last year's was. It is a thrill to work with enthusiastic students from all ages and backgrounds. 

 

 

December trip sketches and thoughts

(Please click on images to see them in full.)

 

The days after our return from Bavaria and Austria raced by. I felt breathless trying to get everything ready for the holidays. But part of me is still there, in lively and friendly Munich, elegant Salzburg, and imposing, glittery Vienna. The sketches I made this time were idiosyncratic and totally self-directed. It was cold out and we were traveling with friends, so I didn't have, or didn't arrange for, many urban-type sketching opportunities.

I took a limited mix of art tools: big Pitt artist pens, a smattering of Inktense pencils, a couple of micro pens and a Pentel pocket brush pen. I wanted to add color on site, get it done! I  often take gray or brown toned paper sketchbooks when I travel to cold climates in the winter time and I did this again this time. The toned paper gives an atmospheric quality to what I draw that is just right for those cold places.

My first sketch of the trip was in Munich, at a little café in the Viktualienmarkt.  We were on a glühwein quest and we found a fun, spartan place to sit and celebrate the first night of our trip.

Another successful glühwein stop! This was the second night of our Munich adventure.

The wild boar mounted on the wall at Goerreshof restaurant in Munich took me back instantly to memories of our first trip to Sweden, to Gothenburg to see our daughter Cecelia, where I sketched another pig's head in the food market there:

Here's my Swedish pig from 2005:

And here's my Munich pig from 2016:

 

In tiny Frielassing, where we had to drop off our rental car, we had dinner at a family-run, cozy restaurant. I made this sketch in the darkish interior, using dry Inktense pencils. 

 

At the Naturhistoriches Museum in Vienna, I was compelled to sit and draw skeletons from the long- ago past. 

 

Leaving Vienna for Munich again and our flight home, I drew this lovely woman at the Hauptbahnhof very early in the morning.

 

 I admit that I have had mixed feelings about starting to write this post. My cheerful words and images seemed inappropriate at best. A few days after we returned home, 12 people were murdered in Berlin and 56 were injured at a Christmas market very like the ones we went to in Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna. I had, in fact, at first hesitated to return to Munich this year, after last year's terrorist events in Munich and other parts of Germany ...and elsewhere. In the end, I decided not to let fear guide our plans and so we went. We were lucky this time. Others, tragically, were not.

That we live in highly dangerous times is obvious to everyone. Hatred and violence manifest daily around the world. It is easy to feel hopeless and I often do. It is not a state of mind I can sustain and yet what is there to replace it with?

For my own comfort and with that stubborn human hope that, against all evidence and against all odds, there's a better world coming, I repeat to myself these words from the Buddhist Metta prayer, the prayer for lovingkindness:

May all beings everywhere be happy, be safe, and be free from suffering.

May all beings everywhere be at peace.

 

Love and peace to you.

 

Wales, my traces. Thin Places. At last.

[Please click on images to see them whole! ]

 

It has taken me a long time to get my Wales sketches ready to post. Life, with its illustration deadlines, its family obligations and pleasures, its holidays and feasts, its ordinary hiccups and flare-ups, intervened. And then there was my being daunted at the beauty of the Pembrokeshire coast, that thin place, as Celtic Christianity would have it, where heaven and earth share an unusually permeable and fragile boundary.

Anyway. Here we go. I used an accordion sketchbook from Sea White of Brighton, one I'd had for several years and rediscovered before I left. It seemed a perfect sketchbook for my adventure on the Welsh coast! When spread out, the book is over 12 feet long. I filled one side. I drew, I painted, I cut and pasted, I slathered mud and sand and berry stains... the place called for many responses and evoked many of my passions.

My husband and I walked sections of the Wales Coast Path, a dream I've had ever since I read Richard Fortey's 'The Hidden Landscape.' On the coast path there are many places to sit and sketch and bask in the glory.

 The coast is dramatic, stunning, magnetic.  A large part of my heart is still stuck there. (And I'm working like anything to be able to go back soonish...more about this another time.)

I took my little scissors and a glue stick with me to be able to add some collage elements to my sketches, the way I do with my illustrations. I got a start with this practice in Wales and am eager to do more on subsequent travels.

 

The rose hips I saw, pictured below, in the front garden at Ty Gwyn, the historic house where we stayed in Pembrokeshire, were luscious and huge... that must be the climate that rugosa roses pine for. My garden certainly isn't.

A chief goal of my Places Project is to use found organic materials in making my drawings. I discovered in Alaska there's a limit to how much you can do as a visitor from far away,in a short period of time, with necessarily portable and spartan materials... but, again, I did what I could. The day pictured here I was ecstatic...painting with soil and sand, dripping with chilly water, standing, striding, drawing in the midst of one of the richest geological spots on the planet! Heaven and earth side-by-side, indeed!

 

My second mud and sand drawing, below. Those rocks! That movement! Those textures!

 

 

Farther down the coast, David and I walked to St. Non's Well. There I gathered mud from the well's source and smeared it on my page, adding berry stains from nearby wild blackberry hedges for color and good measure.

Since I  couldn't always attach organic elements themselves, I made paper and paint versions of them and pasted them to the page, as below.

I chose coastal Pembrokeshire to visit, as mentioned above, because of the incredible geologic history of this part of Wales. The energy of the earth, 450 millions of years of it in this case, is visible everywhere you look. And this part of Wales was once connected to Scandinavia, which is another reason I, the ardent Scandinophile, wanted to go. The rocks here are vestiges of that Caledonian Orogeny, which produced the mountain range stretching then from Norway to northwestern Scotland to Wales and to the present-day Appalachians. Back then, of course,  there was no Atlantic Ocean separating these lands.

I made simple and stark drawings of some of the rock formations at Whitesands Bay, some of which you see here. I don't know exactly what I will make of this inspiration, but with this and my experience in Alaska, I have a huge crowd of ideas and images waiting in the studio wings for 2017.

I made the sketch below from one of my own reference photos, something I rarely do, but here I was trying to capture the look of very rocky rockiness with bottled ink and palette knife, a method I couldn't use as a transatlantic, carryon-only traveler, on site.

And, speaking of 'thin places," this sketch I so enjoyed making one morning in Fishguard is way off in terms of rendering of depth. Everything is very smashed together in thin space, which gives it , for me at least, a kind of quirky charm!

Do you see why I loved Wales so? I am hoping to go back in spring and fall next year, but its going to take a whole lot of fixing and arranging. Wish me luck!