Red roses climbing

By Marcia Milner-Brage, Cedar Falls, Iowa

Steps to garden

Every year I attempt to express the beauty of my Iowa, May garden in a painting or drawing. The climbing roses on the arbor are usually the impetus to see if I can convey what I feel and see in my backyard paradise. Once again, I'm afraid I've fallen short. Nothing from my hand approaches the reality. l enjoyed trying though. May 30, 2016

Here's another attempt that includes our rose trellis from six years ago, shy two days. Note that the roses had not yet climbed over the top. May 28 2010.

Back patio roses

To Windy to Sail...

Sunday afternoon it was way to windy to venture out of the slip to go sailing so I got out the art supplies and went to work.

This is a sketch of one of the marina buildings at Crosswinds where we keep our boat. Right to the left are a couple of boats that are still waiting to go in the water. If you look closely, between the boats, is a guy on a ladder waxing and polishing, trying to get his boat ready for launch. Doing the sketch was a great way to relax the afternoon away.

date night at Houston's Eisenhower ISD high school

After finishing this fun little e-book, Bill and I had a date night, eating out at Freddy's (they seem to have followed us from Kansas to Texas), then on to our son-in-law's spring band concert. Fabulous music, from jazz to symphony to wind ensemble! But I only got a bit of a jazz band rehearsing before lights went low and it was too dark to sketch.

Hay Fever

It's been a while since I posted. That's 'cause it's been cold up here and I spend the winter skiing. Well, it's finally warming up, the boat's in the water, and I finally felt like getting out and working with the sketch pad.

This is a sketch of a tree that's in our front yard. It has lots of twists and turns and is interesting to draw. It was also a bit of a hazard since I have spring hay fever. Oh well' finished the drawing and am thanking Zyrtec for keeping the sneezing under control.

Lawrence Sketchcrawl

I've been in a sketching slump lately. Gotta get over that. Going to a sketch crawl helps with that. We went to a local artist's farm today. She had a beautiful homestead with plenty of landscaping and neat buildings. She had a nice hospitality committee that consisted of a Great Pyrenees and another large dog and friendly cat. They would make the rounds to see everyone and steal some affection. Nice touch. I just wanted to spend the day there.

lunch with friends

Earlier this week, we ate lunch at Las Fuentes with some friends. Instead of stuffing myself with tortilla chips and the yummy green salsa they serve, I began drawing what was on the wall next to our table.

Then the food arrived and I finished later at home, from a quick iPod photo. I would have had to finish at home anyway; I didn't have my white gel pen with me, to draw in the silvery embroidery on the hat.

A great loss to the sketching community...

As many of you know, Florian Afflerbach was killed in a traffic accident in Germany a few days ago.  He was one of the original members of the Urban Sketching movement, and a lovely, lovely man.  I was privileged to design the above banner for the USk blog years ago and always remembered working with him...

The memorial tribute is on the Urban Sketchers organization blog, here.

R.I.P., Flaf, you are sorely missed.

It has been quite some time since I've posted here.  In fact, it has been quite some time since I've drawn anything to post.  I took a bit of my time this past Sunday afternoon to go out and do some sketching around my hometown of Indepencence, MO.  What you see here is the result.  I need to make this a habit again.