Pacific Northwest and New Hampshire

These first eight images were done on a week’s vacation in August 2012 to the Pacific Northwest. I drew to help me remember the high points of the trip. When I draw on location, my memories form in a deeper, more intense way.

In 1962, Seattle, Washington hosted a World’s Fair.  This tower, the Space Needle, was built for the Fair. (Washington state is not to be confused with the nation’s capital,  Washington, DC,  approximately 3000 miles east.)  It was constructed to withstand earthquakes, and it has done that.

At the time, it was the tallest structure in North America west of the Mississippi River. It is 605 feet or 184 meters high. I think of it as America’s Eiffel tower.  The top has recently been repainted Galaxy Gold.  It looks orange to me.  We were visiting a friend in Seattle and this is the view from her apartment window.  The outside windows are reflected in the wavy patterns in the building on the far right.

A short walk from our friend’s apartment led us to the famed Pike Place Market, established  in 1907. It is a huge sprawling area.  We walked around only in the top area featuring flowers and crafts. A grouping of sunflowers peeks out at the far right, and the musician fills the air with sweet notes of a hammered dulcimer.  It was crowded so I drew between the people.  Sur La Table is a kitchen supply store.

I have never seen such gorgeous flowers at such good prices too.  I read that most flower growers are Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia. We didn’t have time to go to the fish market and witness the famous fish throwing.

The market includes housing for more than 500 people, mostly low income.  There are social services included such as a clinic and day care center.  None of this is apparent to a tourist wandering around the stalls.

The streets in Seattle are incredibly steep, and therefore driving was a fun challenge.

From Seattle, we drove south to Portland, Oregon.  Every so often I would yell out “volcano”. The weather was clear so we saw them all:  Mt Baker,  Mt Rainier, Mt Saint Helens, Mt Hood, and Mt Adams. The entire west coast of the U.S. is an active seismic area.

We lived in Washington state a looong time ago, during our graduate student era.  We climbed to the top of Mt. Saint Helens before she blew her top off in 1980.  She used to be the most perfectly cone shaped mountain.  No more.  Naturalists have had a field day watching the local ecology reconstitute itself.

The above drawing was done from the window of our rented apartment in Portland.  Try airbnb.com some time when you are looking for housing during a trip. These condos were built along the Willamette River and really really close to the Broadway Bridge. I am very fond of drawing a view from a window when traveling.

Portland is known for innovative urban design, bicyclists, and breweries.  You see the bikes on the bridge, and behind the bridge is a brewery.  Portland (and Seattle) is also known for rain, mist and cloudy weather, but not in the summertime.  We had none of that in August.  You see the sharp shadows above.

Sometimes I ignore shadows when I draw.  In this case they were important to convey both the 3D volume of the unusual building shapes, as well as the weather.

On our Saturday In Portland, our hosts took us to the Farmer’s Market on the urban campus of Portland State University, or PSU.  We split up to buy differing food options.  After my delicious lunch of Oregonian salad, I drew this klezmer band. It is Eastern European Jewish Folk music.  They were mesmerizing.

 I draw musicians whenever I can, as it is fun to combine two art forms. As I drew this, my family and friends debated whether I was actually lost, and when I might return.  I was right where they left me.

In the Chinatown district of Portland, the Lansu Garden encompasses an entire city block.  It was opened in 2000 after two years of construction by 65 Chinese workers from Portland’s sister city of Suzhou.

Suzhou, known as the Garden City, has a two thousand year old tradition of formal walled gardens that replicate nature in miniature.  Marco Polo pronounced it “a very great and noble city”.  The basic elements are water, mountains, plants and animals, architecture and poetry.  The pitted limestone rocks imported from China are in the right side of the drawing.  Other details are koi, lilies, and lotus plants. 

I am fortunate to have visited Suzhou in 2006. It was so enjoyable to see it again, in miniature.  It was so very warm while I was drawing this that I quit early to seek shade in the gift shop.  But I managed to finish it with my memories of China. The skyline is invented for clarity.

Our hosts drove us to the Columbia River Gorge, where we hiked in the forest.  It was a dry day, at the end of a dry summer, yet we could see the moss hanging off every branch like monkey fur.  Green fur. We could tell that it has a rainy season.

I stopped to draw the first of five or six waterfalls along the trail.  You can see the ferns and lush foliage.  And a rather daredevil hiker tempting fate by sitting on a log mid-waterfall.

We rested at this viewpoint on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the Columbia River Gorge.  The river drains out of glaciers in the Rocky Mountains of Canada and flows north, then south 1,234 miles (2000 km), and finally west to the Pacific Ocean.

It was very windy here, and I included three wind surfers on the river. I read that this area and the nearby town of Hood River are the windsurfing centers of the world!  The dry desert air in the eastern part of the state pulls the cool moist ocean air up the river.  The current flows to the west.  This makes ocean like waves in the river.  It seemed all wrong so I had to look this up.

 The climate and terrain are just changing here from forest to high desert. Other items of note in the drawing...roots in the foreground, a railroad line, and a road far below tracing the edge of the river.  And a swampy light green area to the right.

Next up, we went to Vancouver, Canada.  This part of town is called Gastown, named for a loquacious bar owner, Gassy Jack Deighton.  He opened the area’s first tavern, and he has a statue to honor him for this.

 I drew this between bites of our Indian dinner.  Our table was beautifully sited next to large windows.

Other events for us included the Capilano Suspension Bridge and rain forest, and a whale watching boat tour with a 90% success rate.  The whales were in hiding that day, but we did see seals, a bald eagle near the seals, deer, and mountain goats.  And a black harbor porpoise spotted only by me. We didn’t have time for the large and beautiful Stanley Park.

Last month I got to visit and draw the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH. Frost lived here from 1900 to 1911 with his wife Elinor and their small children. He wrote many of his best known poems here, and others that he wrote elsewhere were inspired by memories of this place.

The poet lived from 1874 to 1963, and won four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry. His first two books were published in London while he and his family lived in England.

 The experts seem to agree that Robert Frost loved the land, but not farming. (His cow dried up and his chickens ran off.)  His grandfather bought the farm for him, with the stipulation that he would become the owner only after he and his family had lived there for ten years.  The idea was to get him to stay in one place for a while.  And the kind grandfather also gave the poet’s family a yearly sum of money too, quite princely by the standards of the time. While living here, he began his teaching career at the nearby private school, Pinkerton Academy.

 I had wanted to go there for quite a while as I admire his poems.  And adding to that, the neighborhood where we lived in Maryland was a constant memory of him and his work.  All of the streets in our part of town, the Birches, and nearby Running Brook, were named for his poems. 

To add to the fun of the day, I was photographed while drawing, and interviewed for a TV show called New Hampshire Chronicle, on Manchester’s Channel 9.  They learned of my quest to draw all 234 towns in the state and plan to feature it in an upcoming show.

This is a composite view, drawn as I changed viewpoints two times.  I wanted the apple tree in the foreground, but then had to move to see around another tree.  I consider this fair play, as that is how you see things, as you move.

I thought it would be a good idea to draw the kitchen where Robert Frost wrote many of his poems.  This is not his actual table, chair or stove.  They are similar artifacts, based on descriptions provided by one of his daughters.  But it is the window, the view, and the stone wall that he saw.

He wrote a lot in the wee hours after all the small children were asleep.  His daughter Leslie helped with the restoration of the farm after his death.  She remembered the colors of the paints and the wallpapers. So the wallpaper was red and the wooden floor was red, and the wainscoting was yellow.  A most colorful place.

Sometimes I exaggerate colors.  This time it was not necessary.

The next five drawings were done all in one day,  as I near the end of my Draw-NH Project.

I never knew about the village of Suncook within the town of Pembroke, so it was a surprise when we turned the corner and saw this tower.  Architecturally, it is an intact mill village. Here we see the mills along the Suncook River.  The water power was harnessed by the 1730s.  By 1900 the Pembroke Mill, Webster Mill, and China Mill employed 1500 workers, most from Quebec, Canada.  They made cotton cloth.

 Now the mill buildings are used for housing and small businesses.  Cloth manufacturing moved to the southern states, then to other countries.  But the sturdily built brick towers remain.

I liked the red and white paint scheme of the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Allenstown. This building is within sight of the tower above, just across the river into a different town.  The signs at the church memorial are in English and French.  This indicates the lingering influence of the mill workers from French Canada.

A branch of my family came down over the border from Quebec into New Hampshire in about 1900. (My ancestors came from France to Canada in the 1600s.) The men worked in the quarries. In our family, we lost the language within two generations.  But I was interested in learning French, and did so in school and university.  For one year of my university training, I lived in Dijon, France.  And drew in my sketchbooks.  It is all a circle.

I am attracted to old buildings that look like they were once general stores, and I love to draw barn red buildings.  So in Epsom I drew the Valley Artisans shop.  I didn’t have a chance to go in, but will next time.

The towns in New Hampshire either have native names, like Suncook or Merrimack, or English names like this one, Chichester (pronounced Chy’ ches tah - none of that condensed Brit pronunciation here!).  This is just the signcap of the Pineground  Bridge in the town, of a parabolic lenticular design. For you bridge engineers.  It was in use from 1887 all the way through to 1981.  It has been replaced by a modern bridge next to it, and restored for pedestrian use.  I just love architectural flourishes.

Loudon is a town east of the capital Concord.  It is well known for an automobile racetrack which I didn’t see and probably wouldn’t have drawn anyway.  Here on the right is the brick town library, the Maxfield Library, on the bend of the road.  I do love to draw curves in the road (sort of like a racetrack), and the yellow paint stripe that always accompanies it. The private home on the left, with wooden clapboards, is an unusual pumpkin-like color.

New London, our town, has a fine old yet modern library on Main Street at the blinking light.  It is the Tracy Memorial Library.  It has a slate roof with copper edging which turns a green color similar to the slate.

This building has been a family home with a saddle and harness shop, and much later the first town hospital. In 1926 the owner Jane Tracy of Cleveland, Ohio gave it to the town as a library.

This is in my collection of odd windows.  See how there are four to the left of the door, and five to the right?  The building is yellow painted wood clapboards.

Plainfield, New Hampshire has a treasure inside this plain, and weirdly asymmetrical town hall.  There may be a reason for the two extra windows, but I don’t know what it is. 

The treasure is a stage set design by Maxfield Parrish, painted in 1916 and restored in 1993. Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966) was a top ranked American artist and illustrator, and a resident of this small town. He was commissioned to paint a stage curtain for the town hall.

He painted a local scene of water and nearby Mount Ascutney, across the Connecticut River in Vermont.  There is the backdrop, six wings, and three overhead drapes.  And the original lighting makes changes that go from dawn to noon and back to dusk. The local people in charge of the stage will go through all the light changes for the public on certain Sunday afternoons. You can read more details at phsnh.org/stageset.html. It is magical.

The stage is still used by the town for various events, and all the children in town are raised with the admonition of “don’t touch the curtain”.

Opposite the town hall in Danville, NH is this shed or garage.  I had to draw those unusual windows. I feel that there is a story here.  I don’t know it yet.

Another in my collection of odd windows at the Sanbornton Historical Society and Lane Tavern, circa 1800.  I drew this a year ago, and I can see the evolution in my drawing style and use of materials. (It is ok if you don’t see it.)

  I very carefully placed the windows exactly where they are.  The lilac bush in bloom on the right tells me it is May.  As almost every building in NH, it is white painted wood clapboard.

Groveton is a village in the town of Northumberland, NH.  The rocky capped mountains on the right are the Percy Peaks.  The river is the Upper Ammonoosuc. 

The paper mill in the right side will be dismantled soon. And the long time paper making industry will close up shop in this town.  So this drawing is a kind of record of time and place.  That in itself is another reason to sketch a scene.

We met some nice people in the town library who enjoyed showing us maps and scrapbooks of the history of the town.  I hope they approve of my rendition.

200 towns drawn, only 34 to go!

Today we headed south to Rindge, on the border with Massachusetts, to fill in a hole in my coverage of that part of the state and to score town #200 in my quest to draw all 234 towns in New Hampshire.  The area around the Town Green was so rich with architectural diversity.  The drawing isn’t finished yet, but I’ll be posting it here soon.

Here I am starting out, with the Ingalls Memorial Library on the right, the town offices in the background, and an unidentified but intriguing building in the center.

 

And where better than the bandstand to proclaim the conclusion of the afternoon’s effort!

The big news for the upcoming couple of weeks is that I’m going to be interviewed by Channel 9’s New Hampshire Chronicle, a real institution here in the Granite State.  They learned of my Draw-NH! project and think that it will fit well with the kind of things they like to highlight.  They’ll be here at my studio on Wednesday, followed by more activity at the Market on the Green that afternoon.  And the following week they’ll accompany me on an on-the-scene drawing expedition at the Robert Frost farm in Derry.

We don’t yet know which of the people associated with the show will be doing the interview, or when it will actually air.  Stay tuned!

New Hampshire General Stores

I am going to focus almost entirely on general stores in this month’s blog post.  They are fixtures in small towns in New Hampshire.

In our last road trip we learned of two village stores that had been saved by the local inhabitants.  Here in Freedom, NH is the Freedom Village Store. It is built of wood, and of Victorian design.  It was built about a century ago, thrived for a long time, then went empty and forlorn.  In 2009 it was reopened as a non-profit space.  I didn’t have much time to spend there, but it looks worth a return visit.  It is a true community center, with food, and art. And coffee, gazpacho, and blueberry soup. Sounds good, and colorful too.

The town of Freedom, with almost 1500 residents, took its name in 1831 when it broke away from the town to the south, Effingham.

Here we are in Campton, NH, a town of 3400 people or so.  It lies in the foothills of the White Mountain National Forest.

First of all, I drew this building because I was taken by the color.  Pale aqua is one of my very favorite colors, and in a clothing store it draws me like a magnet.  But it is an unusual color for a building, here painted wood.

This is a general store with groceries and more.  But notice the lack of any large signs.  Nothing that tells you what is on sale this week.  Or even a hint of all that might be inside.  I drew the tiny sign that is above the door, on the very far right.

The sign says Crawford Notch General Store, but it is in the town of Hart’s Location, population 41 as of the 2010 census.  It is a ribbon shaped town 11 miles long and 1.5 miles wide (18 km by 2.4 km), running along a valley in the White Mountains. It’s the smallest town in the state.

New Hampshire state law allows a town of fewer than 100 residents (not just registered voters) to open its polls at midnight and close when all have cast their votes.  Therefore this small community, along with the neighboring Dixville Notch, gets a lot of attention during New Hampshire’s first in the nation presidential primaries for their early results.

The building is a log cabin, with rugged decor....antlers, snowshoes, and wagon wheels.  New Hampshire’s mountain passes are called notches, some say to echo the shapes cut into the logs for cabins.  The mountain notches are Franconia, Dixville, Crawford, and Pinkham.  The rock outcropping I drew is called the Frankenstein Cliff.

In the middle of the drawing is the wire shed filled with firewood for campfires. There is a ban on importing out of state firewood, due to invasive nonnative insects.

Atkinson, a town with a population of about 7,000, is on the border with the state of Massachusetts.  We got lost and were in Massachusetts for an hour or so trying to make our way north again back into New Hampshire.

As I have mentioned before, we travel with four maps and our GPS and still have our troubles finding our way around.  This little store, under new ownership, was filled to bursting with beautiful flowers and plants. Mother’s Day was just around the corner, so the owners were in preparation for holiday purchases. The owners looked worried that I was outside for a long while, seemingly taking notes about their business.  I went inside and explained that I was an artist, and harmless.  This led to my husband creating a ‘Get Out of Jail’ card for me, explaining my quest to draw all the towns in the state, which I now hand out to those who show a close interest in my activities.

It is quite a busy road, and very narrow too.  I drew from across the road, next to a granite post.  The nickname for New Hampshire is the Granite State.  It refers to the ubiquitous hard stone, and the toughness and resiliency of its inhabitants.  Some stone posts have metal rings on them, leftovers from the days of tying one’s horse up at curbside.

I was very careful where I stood to draw this image, as there seemed to be some very healthy poison ivy plants trailing over the stone wall.  Poison Ivy is horrible stuff. It causes an itchy rash. Be thankful if you have never heard of it where you live.

The building in the distance is the fire and rescue department.

You can see the railroad tracks to the right, in this drawing of Newton Junction,  a part of Newton, NH.  I read that the Amtrak train goes by but doesn’t stop here anymore.  The oval sign says “Trackside Professional Building”.  And the sign over the door says ACI Family Takeout. This business is not quite a general store.  But I think the shape of the building indicates to me that it once was.

There’s that beautiful teal color again, on the old sheds to the right.

Kingston, with a population of 6,000, was originally a part of Hampton, NH.  And in 1694 it was granted status as a new town called Kingstown.  The king involved was King William of England.  The town green is rectangular and unusually long.  Early industries included shoe making in one-room shops and homes, silversmithing, and a rather extensive charcoal manufacturing industry that supplied many of the growing industrial cities of northeast Massachusetts. 

We stopped in here for some coffee at about 4 PM, when I need a pick me up.  Then I stood out on the town common and drew this very vertical building.  As is almost every structure in NH, it is painted wood clapboards.  (In our family we pronounced this word as ‘clairboards’.)  The signs say Kingston Country Store and Groceries and Lottery and Subs and Beer. And Power Ball, a multi-state lottery.

Subs, or submarine sandwiches, are sandwiches made on long rolls as the word suggests.  In the US there are over 20 regional names for this kind of sandwich.  Where I grew up in Massachusetts, they were called grinders. I salivate as I type the word.

This view is in the town of Jefferson, NH.  And this section of town is called Jefferson Meadows.  The mountains are the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  This range is called the Presidential Range.  The names are Mt. Washington, Mt. Adams, Mt. Jefferson, Mt Madison, Mt. Monroe, Mt Eisenhower, and some others named for notables of American history.  The native people had their own names of course.  When the mountains were first formed they got along well with no names at all.

I put this drawing in as a little break from all the architecture.

Milan, with the stress on the first syllable, is a small town. It is near the much larger town of Berlin, also with stress on the first syllable.  I was struck by the unusual color combination in this storefront.  The name sign is very new and modern, possibly plastic.  I forgot to include the word ‘Inc.’ in the sign.

Like almost every building in NH, it is constructed of painted wood, probably about 1900.  There is a lot of granite quarries in NH, but most of the stone is shipped away and used in major metropolitan areas.  Like Washington, DC.  Or the capital city of Concord, NH. 

General stores are the traditional meeting places for the townspeople and those running for elected public office.  The sign above the door says ‘Geo. A. Robie and Son’. The business was in this family for 110 years. It sits along the railroad tracks in the town of Hooksett, NH.  It has been a stop for presidential candidates since the 1950s. The walls inside are lined with political buttons, photos, bumper stickers and the like.

At one time the business received merchandise by barge from the Merrimack River, and also served as the town’s post office.  We ate lunch here, and tried to remember past presidential campaigns and running mates.  The names of the Vice Presidential candidates really fade into oblivion fast.

To the left of the wooden structure are the railroad crossing lights and gate.  Road level crossings are dangerous places when drivers try to beat the oncoming train.  It was fun to draw however.

Errol is a small town north of the White Mountains, with a population of perhaps 300.  Like many, many towns in New Hampshire, the name goes back to some British gentry who never ever visited.  In this case, the town was named for Scotland’s James Hay, 15th Earl of Errol.

The soil was considered poor, but suitable for hay, oats and potatoes.  And the forests were full of lumber.  Today the area is known for fishing, hunting, and sno-mobiling.  There is an enormous outdoor goods store there.  We wandered through it a bit.  And I wondered at their sign which states that ‘All footwear must be paid for at the fudge counter.’

The drawing has a bit of twisted perspective.  It was unintentional.  I guess I moved my feet somewhere in the sketching process.  It can be a hazard of on the spot drawing.  I find the long addition colorful but oddly shaped.  I liked the orange kayak on the red car. 

The flowers, flag, and round wreath (backwards to the viewer) are a small war memorial across the street. I was standing in the memorial park while drawing.

Eaton is a small town, with a population of about 400.  But it has a lot of heart.  The residents saved their village store. And painted it ‘barn red’ again. It houses the post office, a grocery store, and a restaurant.  We ate lunch there and visited with our friend.

As soon as I started to draw, a gorgeous antique car pulled up.  I had to sketch the car first, as I had no idea how long it was going to be posing for me. It stayed the whole time.

Danbury NH is a town within a few miles of our home base of New London.  It was not so easy deciding what to draw.  When unsure, I tend to look towards a general store.  It is a gathering place and meeting point.  There is another general store across the street from this one, and I just heard today that this one has now closed.  It was an unusual situation.  Nonetheless, here it is, the (former) Danbury General Store.

On the orange bench is a sign advertising Ragged Mountain, a ski resort in the town.  It is 2,225 ft above sea level, or 678 meters. The Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge Greenway hiking trail runs through a corner of the town. 

I love to draw large ice cream cone signs.  It probably drew me to this view point.

This is the general store in Lyndeborough, NH.  It was dark by the time I stopped here as you can see.  I liked the effect, and I don’t mind drawing in the dark.  General stores often have a lot of additions to them.  Probably this building started out as the far left section.  Or maybe the far left and the far right were joined with the middle part. 

At this time, I was drawing in autumn, and it gets dark so early.  Things are easier in the summer.

We spent a fair amount of time in Tamworth last week.  I popped into the library (the long white building on the right half of the page), and had a nice chat with some employees.  And I showed them my Draw-NH sketches at their beginning stages. Which I don’t usually do. They were very encouraging people, and I hope they will log on and see this post.

Then I checked out some books, knowing I can drop them off at my local library and they will be returned to this library by the state of NH book van. You can apparently do that anywhere in the state.

Bruce took a nap. While I took a walk.  We had a lovely dinner of local foods on the back deck of the Lyceum. 

New Hampshire has 21 playhouses, small professional repertory theatrical companies. Our town, New London, has one called  the Barn Playhouse, in a refurbished cow barn on Main Street. Tamworth’s playhouse is called the Barnstormers.  They all appear to enjoy marvelous support from the townsfolk.

One cannot see this view from a single location on the street.  I drew it as I walked down the street to the right.  Which is how you see things in your daily life, right?

 As I stood in front of the town offices drawing, a man asked me what I was doing.  He was curious.  I jokingly told him I was the town’s new meter maid, ready to write a ticket.  And that I was prepared to stand there until the new parking meters were installed.  A little joke...this town is so small that it has no need for meters or parking regulations (other than to control parking during Barnstormers’ performances).  But I did give him a start for a second or two, and then a laugh.

Ok, I admit it.  I imagined the fall foliage behind all the white buildings. When we were there it was lush green.  I know in my heart it will be these glorious colors.

Today was Hospital Day in our town of New London, NH.  Various activities raise money for our local hospital.  This year some inflatable games for the children were sited on the town green.  I just couldn’t resist drawing this large colorful dragon.  There are several children playing inside it.  To the right is a slide, with parents waiting at the bottom. 

New Hampshire and Wisconsin!

On Friday nights in the summer, people gather on town commons in New England to listen to band concerts.  There’s a different band here in New London every week. They vary in size, and they vary from good to great.

Besides the music, there is the entertainment of watching the hordes of kids—running, chasing each other, doing somersaults, and climbing trees.  Usually we get little ones who want to pet our dog.  He goes along with it.  The band stand is the far right of the drawing, then in the middle the town offices, and at the extreme left is the New London Inn. 

These very long brick buildings are the Cocheco Mills in Dover, NH, as seen from the corner of Orchard and Central Streets.  I wanted to include the spire of the church in the background, St. John’s Methodist Episcopal.  It is hard to see well, but it is topped by a weather vane. The vane is shaped like a three masted sailing ship.  Dover is not very far from the Atlantic Ocean.

The Cocheco Mills were built in 1815 for the purpose of printing designs on cotton fabric.  They were in business until 1937.  Today the solidly built structures are used as housing and small businesses.  In 1828, the workers in the mills, who were mostly young single females, went on strike.  I think that this strike is well known and remembered in the history of unions in textile mills.

The opposite side of the street is lined with small shops and businesses, almost all in the pleasingly warm tones of red brick.  I drew this in the spring time.  I see that my red bush blends in with the brick.  And a red car too.  It’s a study in red and green.

One day we felt like leaving the woods where we live and driving to Nashua.  It was cold and snowy in our little town, and warm and not snowy here in Nashua, only about a 70 mile drive away.  Of course it was south and downhill and well farther along into spring.  I do enjoy drawing towers and turrets, and Nashua abounds with them.

  When I was a child, in the 1950s, Nashua was a major shopping destination for our family. It had department stores, a true sign of urban life,  One of the department stores had a system of pneumatic tubes.  You handed your cash to an employee, who fed it along with the bill of sale into a tubular canister.  This went into a pipe and woosh, disappeared.  Except it didn’t really disappear.  You could watch it whiz around and up until it reached the cashiers on the top floor.  They made change and sent it all back again.  I feel like a fossil telling this tale.

I drew my peach and blueberry pie at Schubert’s Bakery in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin.  I travel to this town in southwestern Wisconsin twice a year to visit my mother and my sister and her family.

In the 1800s, many settlers here came from Norway.  You can still see signs in Norwegian, and Norwegian clubs put on ethnic festivals.  I have eaten herring many ways in Mount Horeb!  ‘Mange Takk’ on the sign above the door means bon appetit. Funny we don’t have such a saying in English.  Most people say enjoy, or sometimes cheers.

This is my sister’s favorite vista  She has painted it in the past, and she took me there so I could sketch and paint it too.  The corn is just starting to grow.  They look like lines of tiny v shapes. The long rows of hay have just been cut, and it’s drying out before baling.  It is a lovely grey-green color in the foreground. 

The peak is called Blue Mound, and it is in the tiny town of Blue Mounds.  It is always blue.  This part of Wisconsin is called driftless, which means the glaciers never got here during the last ice age.  Which means it is more hilly than the surrounding parts of the state.

A neighbor once suggested that we go to the lupine festival in Sugar Hill, NH. It took us a few years to make up our minds during the correct time, but we got there. Beautiful. (Thanks, Carolyn.)  We learned from a festival brochure that a lupine plant is the same as a Texas bluebonnet. And that they grow around the world.  But we had never seen large masses of them.

 This view is across the street from the famed Polly’s Pancake Parlor.  The yellow field is buttercups.  The peak is Mount Lafayette.  You’ll notice a white horse grazing in the field too. The blue is caused by a haze in the air caused by moisture.  I thought it went well with the blue of the blossoms. Some stalks are pink or even white.

After this drawing was done, we drove a couple of miles to another gorgeous field of lupines  This place had a winding path mown through it with white signs here and there.  On the signs were short quotes from poems about nature.  We were able to enjoy this private land because the owner wished to share it with the public.

These gliders are at the Franconia Soaring Center in Franconia, NH.  I really enjoy drawing things that I have never drawn before, like here.  I was amazed to notice that the design of each glider is so different from the other.  Different tail, wings, nose shape, body shape. I have no interest in actually doing any gliding.

I drew the mountain profiles carefully.  I would like them to be recognizable.  Kinsman Mountain is on the far left.

 

Usually I draw sights that I find along the main street of a town or near the town center.  I broke my own guideline when I got to Moultonboro, NH, because we decided to visit an historic home called Lucknow, with the nickname of ‘Castle In The Clouds’.  First you drive a long ways through the woods on a very steep narrow road,  stopping along the way to hike to a waterfall. Then you get to the visitors center in the former carriage house and stables—quite an elegant structure in its own right.  Then you transfer to a trolley which winds up an even more narrow and more steep road.  You try not to think how far down the drop is on your right.

After 5 minutes or so, you have arrived at the back door of Lucknow.  It is a home built in the American Craftsman style in 1914.  The owner was Thomas Plant, who made a ton of money owning and running a shoe factory in Massachusetts.  This was to be his retirement home.  He did a lot of philanthropic good deeds with his spare cash as well.  He was a world traveler, and Lucknow is the name of a beautiful city in India.  Most people think it was also a pun referring to his good fortune. He employed a thousand people all at once to work on this home in order to finish it as quickly as reasonable.  It was wonderful.  I LOVED every room and every detail.  Every thing was so thoughtful and skillfully done.  For example, in every window were individually painted glass roundels of local vistas, flora, and fauna through the seasons.  And the home had the latest in inventions too—in the kitchen, multi-headed, full body showers in the baths, brine cooled refrigerators, central vacuum cleaners, etc. They entertained a lot of people well.  A local golf course was established by him that continues today.

Mr. Plant did lose his fortune through poor and unwise investments, such as the purchase of Imperial Russian bonds in 1916.  Many of these were advised by his friend Theodore Roosevelt.  But he was allowed to live out his life here by a subsequent owner. The house gradually fell into disrepair, but it has now been purchased by a non-profit foundation that has done a loving and wonderful job bringing it back.  They’re still working at it and hope to have the basement area containing the wine cellar and the various mechanical systems open within a year or so.

The view I chose to draw is from the front garden of the house, showing the panorama overlooking all of Lake Winnipesaukee and the mountains beyond. The overhanging roof is suggested by the open rafters and supports.  There is a ring of stone planters and rose bushes.  In the foreground is a very small wishing pool with a bronze statue.  The little winged creature is raising its face to the sun.  There is a frog at the feet.  It is challenging to pull off a composition which includes very small and closeup retails as well as the full horizon.  And the feeling of shelter as well as expansiveness. Phew.  But I felt it was worth the effort.

Waterville Valley is just south of the White Mountain range in NH.  We drove in circles for a while as I had trouble finding a vista that said ‘draw me!’.  I chose this one when I saw the red barn with the nice door.  I liked the shape of the mountains with their summer view of the skis slopes.  I also just loved the shape of this paved driveway. 

Wolfeboro is on the eastern side of Lake Winnipesaukee, and also borders Lake Wentworth. It is a small, charming, resort town, with lots of scenes begging to be drawn.  But I was getting antsy about not being close enough to the water. And then we found this park, named Town Park, established 1967.  It was a set of semi-circular terraces leading from the street to the lake’s edge.  Some parts were in full sun, some in shade.  All very carefully designed and maintained.  So lovely. 

 

I was wandering up and down the main shopping street in North Woodstock,NH,  not quite settling down on a subject to draw.  I was mumbling ‘hmm’ a lot.

Then I saw a hotel named Cascade Hotel.  I thought, perhaps that implies that there is a cascade, or waterfall, nearby.  I turned 180 degrees and read the sign Cascade Park. It is a newly made small urban park leading from the shopping street to the Pemigewasset River (generally called ‘The Pemi’ by locals).  I thought the place was quite enchanting.  I loved the way the stones had been shaped by the water, over eons of time.  And the trees echoed the wavy shapes too. The water must flow up over the trees in spring runoff to shape them like that. There were tiny patches of sand here and there.  And a few people lounging with their feet in the cool water.

Alton Bay, NH is at the very southern most end of the large Lake Winnipesaukee.  The road makes a sharp turn here to follow the western side of the lake. In the bend of the road is this Victorian era building.  It was long known as the Busy Corner Store and owned and run by my husband’s aunt and uncle.

It has a new owner and is now called Amilyne’s Corner.  You see the sign for haddock sandwiches which caught my eye.  We had them and they were delicious!  So delicately battered, and fried just right. Hundreds of motorcyclists were passing in front of me as I drew this.  It was Bike Week in NH.  It was a real exercise in concentration.  I considered drawing them, but it’s hard to draw a blur.  The building on the left houses the town post office.

This is my latest attempt to draw New London’s Community Garden behind our town library.  It is such a charming spot.  Many volunteers in town maintain it.  It was originally designed in 1923 by the famed Olmsted Brothers, pioneers of landscape architecture.  This firm over the course of many years designed parks such as Central Park in New York City and the Emerald Necklace in Boston, along with many college campuses and private estates.