Another Week of Travel, Every Day for Five Days in November, Ann's New Blog, More Coffee Houses, and Book Sales

 

Driving to Oregon

 

 

 

We took off on October 23rd for Oregon (I shared part of it last weeks post/scroll down to next post to see more) First night was spent at a Motel 6.

 

Fred drives, I draw!

 

 

Danny Gregory from Sketchbook Skool keeps us on our drawing toes with occasional optional assignments. This time it was to draw from the TV. He drew politicians during the debates; I chose to draw some baseball players while watching the World Series with my son in Portland, Oregon.

When we visit with family there sometimes my first husband (my kids dad) and his wife come by.
I drew Michael. He's unwell and it was sad to see him so infirm. But it was good to be spending some time with him still.

 

On Halloween evening my two eldest grand kids and Kaeli's beau, Michael came by.

We took them out to dinner.

They chose a Cuban place. The food was tasty.

I drew them over dinner. I also drew our waiter, who was dressed as

"Where's Waldo" in red and white striped shirt and cap. He was mesmerized by my quick drawing and that led me to do something I almost never do ... I ripped the drawing out of my art journal and gave it to him. I think I made BOTH OUR NIGHTS!

 

 

More driving after a week with the kids we said good bye and headed to Port Townsend, Washington. We had a sweet AirBNB there in the woods. I have a knack for finding us nice places to stay using AirBNB. It was comfortable, clean, nicely decorated and we had a full apartment to ourselves in the woods. We were minutes to the ocean.

We were meeting up there with a couple of long time friends. Fred and Richard have been friends since their early 20's in the Bay Area. Richard is a writer/poet/creator of Pongo Press, (a writing process for wounded teens)  and Celeste is a docent and a wonderful artist. We also got to meet another friend of theirs, also an artist. We all five had lunch together and walked around Port Townsend enjoying the ambiance of shops and a walk on Fort Warden. (where An Officer and A Gentleman was filmed)              .

The second day we were on our own. Went to coffee and drawing at the only Starbucks in town at the Safeway Grocery store. I drew the shoppers instead of the drinkers there. We shopped in art stores, book stores, antique stores and saw a wonder mixed media art show at a gallery.

I see these drawings are out of order, as this is back in Oregon at the Clackamas Barnes & Noble café earlier in the week. I loved drawing these two, who were actually in different parts of the room, but close together on my page.

And he was there too, alone and busy.

Meanwhile back in Washington, at a Starbucks where in actuality we did not have time to sit and drink and draw, but got our food and left. I took these folks in my memory and drew them in the car. Painted them there too while we got on the road.

And the next day found me having to repeat the memory/drawing in the car gig. We got as far as Yreka, California, got a room in a Super 8, not as glamorous as a BnB, but a sure sign that vacation was over and we'd be home the next day.


And here starts Every Day in November. We are drawing to photo prompts. It's a Facebook Group if you are interested just Google Everyday in November, I am sure it will take you there.

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3: From a photo of sewer pipes. I like that we can use our imaginations and jump off from the prompts in any direction we want to take it. This one was fun.

Day 4: A starfish

 



 

Day 5:

 

 

And another new place to draw from photos is at Ann Hyde's new Blog (well, really an old blog revamped) called Somewhere 2 Sketch . I encourage you to come join us there

and become a contributing artist! It's already a fun group and growing.

The first prompt is a photo of a lighthouse.

All the photos are Ann's so there is no worry of copyright infringement, as she gives us permission to use them.

 

 

Today  I was back to "normal life", went to Starbucks close to home in the morning. It was crowded I thought for a Thursday morning. So lots of choices of who to draw.

and then I drew them:

Thanks for coming by and wading through all my art of the past week and a half.

I got a check this week from Blurb Books reminding me that my BOOK is still selling. Since holiday time and gift buying is upon us I thought it might be a good time to give it another shout out.
Many of you already have copies and you can tell others if you like it.
For those of you for whom this is news, a couple of years ago I complied some early art (I was just starting drawing in public) into a book and self published my story. It's called

 

One Fish Taco and Half an Order of Guacamole, A Year of Drawing Over Lunch at Tacos Jalisco

Many have told me it was inspirational for them and encouraged them to break through their own fears of drawing in public. You can check it out in the preview and/or get a copy at this link.

Thanks so much for coming to visit me here and letting me share my life with you through art!
See you at Paper, Paint, Pencils & Pens too, my other blog where we draw to a new theme every two weeks. Wow, we sure have lots of places to meet up and draw!

Have a very Creative Week!