Alberta, California, and New Hampshire

 

As many of my readers know, we spend a few weeks in the spring and fall in Edmonton, Alberta in western Canada, where our younger daughter and her family live. One fall day I drew this panoramic sketch of the North Saskatchewan River, which bisects the city. It is always a beautiful light green shade. The river is born in a glacier the Canadian Rockies, and it flows north into Hudson’s Bay. Minerals scraped from the floor of the glacier contribute to its color.

I got in the warm autumnal colors too.

In downtown Edmonton there is a new arena for the Oilers, the NHL team. We were parked in the back, where the Edmonton Community Arena is a part of the building. Our granddaughter was playing there on her hockey team.

I just couldn’t resist the curves of this building. The light poles added to the effect.

 

  I keep drawing our littlest grandson’s shoes. Maybe I am trying to slow down his toddler years.

 

 And one day, our older grandson rode his bike over to our condo for a visit. He parked it in the hallway. And while he played, I had plenty of time to sketch it in ink and put in some colors with water soluble colored pencils.

 

  In the airport in Edmonton, I found a display case with these wonderfully beaded moccasins from Sachs Harbour, way up in the Arctic area.

 

 Our other branch of the family, our older daughter and her husband, lives in Los Angeles. Here is a coffee shop called Blue Bottle, on Third and Broadway, a short stroll from their apartment. The sky was its usual clear blue.

 

 My daughter and I took a walk to Olvera Street, a few more blocks east of her apartment. The origin of California as being part of Mexico is widely seen in Olvera Street. The food, the music, and the products in the market are pretty convincing that you have slipped over the border into Mexico.

 

 Back in New Hampshire, on the East Coast, we attended the Holiday Open House at the Button Factory in Portsmouth. This old solid brick building was once the international center for the manufacture of shoe buttons. Eventually, there was no longer a need for those items. Since the late 1960s, it has been repurposed as artists’ studios.

One of the artists had spotted me drawing in Portsmouth a few weeks earlier and invited us to visit her studio at the upcoming event. It was indeed a happy occasion, well supplied with wine and cheese. And art.

 

 It is plenty cold and snowy here now in New Hampshire. But the winter berries are bright red and attract the birds. It is a cheerful sight.

 

Another happy winter sight was the blooming of a red and white amaryllis bulb that was given to me. 

 

And yesterday, I awoke early enough to see the winter sunrise in the snowy woods. 

The art on this blog posting is a mixture of traditional sketching on paper, and images done on my digital art app called Drawing Pad. It is a ton of fun to use it, as I am playing with light, as well as line and texture. And I can adjust the colors to be either opaque or translucent, thin or thick, smooth or textured, and all combinations of these. The digital images are these: the moccasins, the Blue Bottle, the red trees, the amaryllis, and the sunrise. My art tool is my left index finger.

New Hampshire and Maine

A quick note to my New England readers - I’ll be giving a talk at the library in Plaistow, NH, at 6:30 on Wednesday, October 4th. I’d love to have you join me there. You can find more details on my Facebook page, www.facebook.com/colorfuljourneyworld, or email me.

And readers from everywhere can follow my colorful journey through quick Facebook updates almost every day. You don’t have to belong to Facebook to get to the page.

Now, on with the blog.

 

I took part in a few drawing sessions this summer. One of the exercises was drawing with my non-dominant hand. The top two drawings of ink bottles were made with my usual left hand and the other two with my wobbly right hand. When you use your non-dominant hand, two things happen: your expectations are lowered considerably, and you really have to focus. It is actually fun to try.

 

This day I sat in the warm sun, on the ground, surrounded by wild flowers. It is a strong summer memory.

 

I bought sunflowers for a house guest who loves yellow. I love the curve of their stems, as well as the color.

 

We took a short trip to Boothbay Harbor, Maine. I seem to love low tide. It smells so good, and the seaweed makes great drapey shapes. You see the line of high tide on the rock.

It was a foggy day in Maine. The water in the harbor was the whitish color of the cloudy sky. Every buoy floating on the surface marks the spot of a lobster trap.

 

I really like to draw storefronts where the wares are hanging out all over the place. The gas tank is a decorative item with Yankee humor.

Buildings on stilts fascinate me. How do they do it?

A simple quick drawing of a small peaceful harbor. It has all the elements of Maine: rocks, water, driftwood, a boat, and a lighthouse to warn boats of all sizes during the foggy nights.

I drew these fine tomatoes during a tomato tasting at our local farm on Main Street, Spring Ledge Farm. I think there were forty kinds or so.

New Hampshire

 

I have been drawing and painting a lot of buildings lately. I need a break from all the rooflines and angles of perspective. So on this blog post, I choose to focus on plants and flowers.

These two flowering plants in pots were not next to each other really. The two drawings are part of my collection of colorful planters on the street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They make a nice contrast with each other.

 

On the right is another planter from Portsmouth, NH. All three pieces are cast iron. The two on the left are fancy fence posts.

 

A wonderfully large hollyhock bush shows off next to an open doorway in Portsmouth. The chair on the lawn is part of a sale. I believe it is an enticement to enter the house and look at the offerings. I didn’t.

 

And finally, a grouping of wildflowers blowing in the breeze on Star Island, eight miles off the coast of New Hampshire. Star Island is a part of the Isles of Shoals.

 Fishermen from England sailed all the way across the ocean to catch the plentiful cod here. The fish were salted and dried and hauled all the way back. This was in the 1600s.

Since the 1800s, summer visitors have been arriving to spend quality time on this rocky outcropping. An enormous old wooden hotel is still there, looking proud to offer respite.

Musicians

Musicians

 

Pike Place Market, Seattle, Washington, USA

 

Farmers' Market, Portland, Oregon, USA

 

New London, New Hampshire, USA

 

Concord, New Hampshire, USA

 

Concord, New Hampshire, USA

 

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA

 

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA

 

Windsor, Vermont, USA

Füssen, Germany

New Hampshire

The .art Internet Domain was recently activated, and I jumped in on Day 1 and registered the name www.colorfuljourney.art to use as the primary address of my blog.

You will see me using this address in the future, although I will retain the original www.colorfuljourney.us address so as not to interfere with my readers’ established address lists.

I had a little spare time while in the New Hampshire town of Jaffrey last week. So I drew their one room school house, which is located on the town green. When children walked to school in the 1800s, schoolhouses were scattered all around and numbered in the dozens in the larger New England towns. A few still exist. Most serve as mini museums of the old ways of education. Others are now private homes.

Behind the Jaffrey Meeting House, also on the green, is this graveyard. The markers shown here are from the early 1800s and are mostly slate, but some white marble. All the graves and their inscriptions are facing the majestic granite topped Mount Monadnock.

The author Willa Cather is buried here. I read that she came to this quiet little town to write. Her favorite inn is nearby.

The above drawing and the next three to follow are a preview of the next book I am working on. My goal is to do one hundred drawings of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. For those who wish to count along with me, I have now 35 drawings. I am budgeting one trip a week, or more, till I reach my goal. The miles mount up. And the seafood lunches are delicious.

These buoys and floats are hanging on a fence in South Portsmouth. They are no longer used and now make a fine display, but they have not been prettied up. The paint colors are nicely faded.

 

On a sunny spring day, I found this wooden, teal colored, garden fence. My favorite part is the tiny view of red bricks on the other side of the fence.

This block has a row of mixed architecture. I wouldn’t give it high marks for harmony, but it caught my eye. Mostly the sagging roof caught my eye. The one on the right is art deco style and is about a hundred years younger than the other two.

I also delight in small details in the streetscapes. These three mailboxes have been heavily painted over, but they still open and they work. I am amused at the tropical theme bas-relief sculpture on them. New Hampshire is a long way from palm trees and flamingos.

At first I thought the bas-relief on the right was depicting a crocodile, another non New Hampshire animal. But after spending a few minutes drawing it, I feel certain that it represents a lizard or salamander, and we have plenty of those in these parts. The lizard is on a building from the late 1800s, a little above eye level.

Alberta and New Hampshire

 

 Here’s a really nice display of New Hampshire themes at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, New Hampshire, the state capital. My book Colorful Journey is right in the center of the photo, behind the two cups. Gibson’s is a really fine independent bookstore, and large too. I just happened upon the display as I went in after two months away.

  Here is where the ‘away’ was, Edmonton, Alberta, in western Canada. Where our adorable four grandchildren live, with their parents.

Anyway, back to art. I set off to the pop up garden centre (British/Canadian spelling) in the parking lot at Super Store with my sketch pad and the goal of five drawings. Picking a number of drawings to do is a way I motivate myself. In the rest of my life, I am definitely not a number oriented person.

Here is a row of lettuce growing in pots. Just after I finished the pencil sketch, they were moved to a less windy location.

Rows of objects is one of my recurring motifs. It is a theme and variation theme.

More rows of flowers in flats for sale for eager gardeners in Edmonton. Mind you, they are not safe from frost yet, but the tender annuals are for sale anyway. Buyer beware.

But they were fun to draw and color and reminded me of Holland, in a miniature sort of way.

More rows, and lineups of pots too.

Who does not love a topiary? And one made of lavender. Think of the people who have been growing, caring, and pruning these plants for how long.

See how easy it was to find inspiration at the pop up garden centre?

OK, this is a line up of only two objects, also closely resembling one another. Our two year old grandson’s suede shoes. Shoes are very evocative. Vincent Van Gogh painted muddy field boots. Actually, I drew these shoes right after scraping mud off of them.

The tangle of bright laces was so much fun to draw. Once you take the time to look carefully at something, you can never unsee it.

And what could this be? A rocket ship from a very colorful alien planet? No, it’s a plastic slide for a two year old who calls it his ‘whee’. It is all interlocking pieces. He rolls a ball down it, he slides down it, and he loves to hide underneath it.

One more bit of color. Our daughter’s front garden greets us. How we waited this year for the tulips to open.

Lilies

Twas a month of being under the weather. The outside air was grey, damp, cold, and persistently snow-flake filled. And various viruses were setting up competing shops in my throat, mostly. So here is my artist’s solution. I bought a bunch of orange lilies, all tightly budded. When lilies bloom, they do it with drama, flair (literally and figuratively), energy, and life. I drew them over and over again, about 24 times. Watching them open, watching til the petals fall off after giving it their all. And drawing that too.

I drew them on my iPad with a my digital art app, without a plan of progression. I present a selection of my thought process.

And the last drawing is a another bunch of lilies, bought for a birthday party. The weather has improved. My cough has been beaten back, and we all get to witness the lilies do their dance again.