A Little Plein Air

Some entries from my watercolor Moleskin sketchbooks. Watercolors are some of the most portable art supplies, so I take my sketchbook on most hikes and outdoor trips. Here's a few from some of my recent trips.

This one is from a Joshua Tree camping trip last year in August. The moon was too full to really see the Perseides meteor shower. Painting the sunrise from on top of a rock at the Sheep's Pass camp site.

This one is from the Joshua Tree camping trip this year. With a sickle moon, the Perseides viewing was amazing! We camped out at the same campsite as last year. This sketch was also done at sunrise, but at a higher elevation. That mass near the foreground is the rock that I did the sunrise sketch from last year.

Another camping trip that I repeated from last year was to visit the Channel Islands off the state of California. Last year, we went to Anacapa Island and I sat down to do a longer sketch from a rocky outcropping about 1/2 mile from our campground.

This year, we went to Santa Cruz Island where I went on an 8 mile hike up to the radio tower. We wanted to get back before it got dark, so this is a much quicker sketch up on the Montañon Ridge of the cloud cover.

Compressing a City

The image above was for the TED conference when they came over for an event at the aquarium. I had some time to work on it so I was able to put in a lot of details in the cityscape. My only directive was to draw something that represented Long Beach. I knew that the ports would be an important element and that the Long Beach skyline would need to be included and of course the Aquarium of the Pacific had to be part of the image! Pulling together elements of what represents the city of Long Beach, I made a couple of quick sketches of the idea I had and then went to the internet to find images that would fit what I had in mind. Only on an illustration can you get this many disparate views and elements into one image! The original sketch is done in Adobe Photoshop, which was later vectorized in Adobe Illustrator. The gradient was added to reflect the idea of new ideas, green practices, and positive outlooks to represent City 2.0.

Hot Off the Press!

This past week I went to go visit friends and family over in Washington D.C. and New York. It was a museum/ memorial walk fest! This time, I remembered to scan in the sketches early on, so here's a few sketches from my journey through D.C. and New York.

A sketch of the Lincoln Memorial done in a cheap Japanese brush pen, a water-soluble Pilot pen, a waterbrush, and a pencil.

Very cute elephant shrews at the National Zoo. Ink pens and pencil.

The only full color image I did on my trip. Watercolor and pencil of Passenger Pigeons from the "Birds of D.C." display at the Smithsonian Natural History Musuem. The female is a little rougher since my arm was getting numb by then.

A giant sloth skeleton at the Smithsonian Natural History Musuem. Pens and pencil.

An Allosaurus skeleton at the Smithsonian Natural History Musuem. Pens, pencil, and a little watercolor.

A Sakhmet statue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Pens and pencil. Her waist got a little truncated.

A quick sketch of the Greek mythology statue called "Andromeda and the Sea Monster" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with pencil and colored pencil. The hand is a little rough.

Ballpoint pen sketches of NY subway commuters. The lower lady got a little compressed, probably because of the way I was holding the sketchbook.

And the conclusion of the trip! Rough mountain sketches with the brush pen on the plane returning home.

Thanks for coming along!