Monday, August 29, 2016

The Art Mob met at the Nelson-Atkins gallery last Thursday to sketch and eat.  And to do a whole lot of chatting!  The gallery allows only pencil, which turned out to be a blessing as I kept making mistakes on the 2 styles of arches in the medieval cloister.  Some of us added color at lunch in the Roselle Court where the museum kindly reserved tables together for us.


USS Silversides - Muskegon, Michigan

This past Saturday was a rainy and dreary day at the boat. So, my wife and I drove down to Muskegon, Michigan to tour and visit two WWII museum ships. We toured the LST (Landing Ship Tank) 393 which is a veteran of the D Day landing in France. Today the ship houses an museum and hosts an enjoyable self guided tour. By the time we were done with the LST the rain had gone and the sun was out. So we headed over to the Muskegon channel into Lake Michigan to where the USS Silversides is docked.

The Silversides is a decorated WWII veteran that is docked on the channel wall. You can tour the ship and on shore there is an excellent museum that informs visitors about the Silversides and the the US Navy's WWII silent service. We've toured the museum and boat before so I found a spot to sketch from and did this sketch of the USS Silversides's conning tower structure. The sketch was done with a Pigma Micron Pen and a set of cool grey grey scale Prisma Color marking pens.


Monday, August 22, 2016

Grand Haven and Saugatuck

My wife and I took a short trip down to Grand Haven in our boat last week. On the way south, I did this quick sketch of the dunes that are south of White Lake and Whitehall...our boat's home port.


The town of Grand Haven sits next to the Grand River which exits into Lake Michigan through a wide west facing pier head. The town itself is overloaded with tourists throughout the summer months. While there, we stayed at the municipal marina and had a slip that was conveniently located next to an ice cream store (the banana split I had was excellent). There's also a board walk that runs past the marina and heads west along the river bank to the Grand Haven pier. The second day in town, I unloaded my folding bike from the boat and took the board walk all the way to the pier to do some sketching.

The sketch below is of the two lights, pier, and cat walk that makes up Grand Haven's south pier head.


Turning to face north from where I was sitting you take in the view of Grand Haven's north pier and beach houses which dot the dunes and shoreline. The day I was out sketching the clouds were enormous and towered over town and the shore the entire day.


We headed back to Whitehall mid week and on Friday afternoon we drove down to Saugatuck, Michigan to meet a friend for dinner. While my wife wandered through the stores, I sat in a park by the river and enjoyed the afternoon doing this sketch of an old tree that anchors one corner of the park.


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