International Sketch Crawl November 13th, 2005

Well, I met Teri and Jeannie for a day of sketch crawling in Tucson. We missed you Marnee, sorry you could not make it! Maybe next time. Here they are, the world famous sketch crawlers. It looks like Teri is drawing Jeannie while Jeannie photographs Teri, and of course, I am photographing them both.

We finally settle down and pick this gate as our subject.

Here is my version of the gate, done in watercolors in my Moleskin. I forgot to add soap to my brush, so struggled a bit with the watercolor sticking to the surface. I started out drawing and by the time I decided to watercolor instead, the wonderful shadows in the photograph were gone. The weather was gorgeous by the way, I think in the 80's. I might try another painting of this in my studio later.

On our walk around the neighborhood, Jeannie pointed out the Cochineal on some prickly pear cactus. Jeannie volunteers in Sabino Canyon giving nature talks, so she has a lot of great information! It looks like the prickly pear is diseased with this white gooey substance but it is actually a scale insect that survive by sucking on the pad of the prickly pear. They store a maroon pigment in their body tissues/fluids. So if you scrap it off the cactus and squeeze between your fingers, you can see the wonderful color it produces. Indians would use this to produce a red dye in their clothing, which is a traditional red dye of pre-Hispanic Mexico. Just some sketch crawl fun facts! You can go to this link to read more. I think it would have been perfect to use to color the flowers on the Bougainvillea!

We took a break for lunch at Bison Witches and there was a wait to get a table. So, we all headed outside and started drawing again. I did a painting of a tree across the street while Teri drew me. Come to think of it, she never did show me that drawing! I am curious. I will have to check her blog and see if she will post it there. Anyway, here we all are, outside of Bison Witches. Left is Teri with Jeannie in the middle, and I am on the right.

It was a wonderful day and I can't wait until we do it again!!!