Just Sketching

12 May, 2024.

A week or so ago, about a dozen sketchers met up on a cold, breezy, wet Saturday morning. Some of us, having watched a weather report that – ultimately – turned out to be wrong, were dressed in t-shirts and khaki short. We’d gathered in a gravel parking lot and trekked up a rocky path to the Shoal Creek Living History Museum, a “town” created out of nineteenth century historical buildings from around Missouri, and now relocated to a pleasant grassy hill here in Clay County.

Speaking for myself, I found my fingers stiff from the damp chill in the air, and the wind was slicing right through my thin shirt. I was thankful for having the foresight to wear hiking boots though, and once acclimated found that thickets of trees and the windbreak of buildings offered some respite from the steady breeze.

This was a day for carrying as small a kit as possible. I didn’t want to be digging around at the bottom of a rucksack in search of mark-making tools and brushes and paint. No, this was meant for a pencil, maybe a pen, and a sketchbook… period.

Other than our hardy group of sketchers, there were few visitors to Shoal Creek on this morning. Those that were visiting, like me, wandered down the paths offering the shelter of foliage. I’ve visited the smithy during special events where the doors are open, the fires blaze, and the ring of hammer on anvil beats out a steady staccato. The warm glow of the flame from the dark interior lights up the sweaty brow and muscled arm of a man wielding the hammer, and horse shoes sizzle as they are pronged into water, having been beaten into shape.

I like how a pencil encourages me to sketch quickly and loosely. I’ve always got the option to add detail or shading if I feel the urge, or simply leave things in a state of immediacy, an impression of the moment.

I’d been out to Shoal Creek a week earlier and sketched this church then too. Standing at a distance, this place always makes me think of the iconic scene from High Noon. I was disappointed that my sketch failed on the previous visit and was determined to sketch something I liked better this time.

By the time I got around to sketching this old jail we’d been on site for nearly ninety minutes. I’d filled several pages but by this point my fingers were growing numb, and I noticed that several in our group had gathered on the front porch of the Mercantile, which was mercifully blocking the mist and the wind.

Time, I think, to pack it in.

27 April, 2024.

It’s always fun to work with a client who owns a nearby house. This quick little commission is, in fact, about a five minute stroll from my own house.

I made a second, slightly looser sketch and gave my client a choice between the two. It is unusual for me to do that, but it worked out for the best I think. (She chose the top sketch.)

25 April, 2024.

I like to people watch in diners and cafes and other eateries. Their interactions interest me: animated conversations, laughter and serious facial expressions. I’ll often make quick sketches of people I’ve seen dining or enjoying a libation.

As you might imagine, the dynamic of dining is very different from the act of dining alone to that of joining another in repast. A solitary meal feels more contemplative, less rushed. I’ve seen many a single person enjoying a book or with work papers spread about as a meal is consumed, almost an afterthought.

Couples, on the other hand, are intriguing. Sometimes there is palpable tension, other times chuckles, but always there is a sense of intimacy. Conversation or simply quiet comfort, a meal with one other can reveal a lot about a couple.

The dynamic shifts yet again when diners are in a group. People seem to let their guard down when at table with others in a restaurant, and groups are often spontaneous and laughter is abundant. Gossip of the day, storytelling, good natured ribbing – it’s all the stuff of group dining. And yet there are also moments of quiet, like this family, the mom and dad holding hands for grace before diving into a plate of burgers and fries.

I turned one of my diner sketches into an all-to-true comic strip story.

23 April, 2024.

It’s getting to be much more temperate and these last few weeks I’ve really been feeling a pull into the outdoors. Long bicycle rides along rolling country roads, fly rod packed in country to a river with rising trout, hiking boots laced and walking stick at hand.

It’s been really windy for much longer than normal, or at least it seems that way to me. That makes it frustratingly difficult to throw a fly line, and it also means that sketch paper needs to be very securely fastened to a drawing surface! At our recent April USkKC sketch out, my page was held in place by no less than four bulldog clips. Even then I worried the page would catch and tear.

The day began a bit cool. Nevertheless, around twenty-five or thirty hardy souls showed up with their paint kits and sketchbooks and easels. Our sketching location was in the heart of the city, in the parkway along Brush Creek near the Country Club Plaza. Walkers were out in abundance, everything was beginning to turn green, the day was promising but blustery.

22 April, 2024

I visited a fly tying demonstration in Clinton, Missouri last weekend. Around fifty enthusiasts were set up along rows of tables, quietly tying in bits of feather and thread and wire and hair and synthetic stuff onto various tiny sizes of hooks. Each fly follows a particular recipe, and many are so small that the person tying requires a jeweler’s loupe or similar just to see what they are doing. Each person was bent to their task, very focused it seemed, and yet also very willing – and encouragingly so – to chat with every passerby ambling by their table.

I dabble myself in tying, less out of any sense of passion or aesthetic than of frugality. Variations on a half dozen patterns that I use when fly fishing are what I know how to tie with competence, and that saves me having to buy them. Flies are all hand tied, and – rightfully so, given the laborious nature of their making – have gotten quite expensive to purchase. So several times a year, and primarily in the gray months of winter, I sweep everything off my drawing board and set up a tying vice on a side table. I spread out specialty tools and the colors of feather and thread I require, and set about tying imitations of bugs.

19 April, 2024.

End of the day, somewhere in the Ozarks.

18 April, 2024.

Rural signs at a crossroad in the Missouri Ozarks.

17 April, 2024.

Sometimes it seemed to me like Spring was never going to arrive. But just like that, the world is green again, and I’m struggling with how to mix the variety of hues around me.

16 April, 2024.

When I drive long distances, I explore places in my mind. I like to “discover” fragments of the original highways that have long since been replaced by larger, four lane routes that now circumvent towns that in their turn have also become “lost” to those passersby in trucks and vans and various sundry vehicles carrying families to lake country in the south.

It’s a four hour drive to the house on Table Rock Lake, passing largely through farmland. The geography changes about two and a half hours due south of our home, flatter lands replaced by rolling hills and rich river bottom soil suddenly changing to red, rocky dirt. Cornfields become pastures of hay, which grows better and is more readily harvested in this terrain, and large fields of beef on the hoof are frequent road companions. Stretches of “ghost highways” – those segments of outer road that mark the original highway are sometimes just a hundred feet away, and other times peek out from groves of trees off in the distance. Old, abandoned farm houses and buildings on the cusp of disuse are regular markers, and they often enough catch my eye and my attention, as well as my imagination.

This is especially true when my journey takes place near dusk. The sun, low on the horizon, lights up the white and bleached gray highlighted side of those houses, in stark contrast to the darkening landscape around them. Instead of a lumbering silhouette, they are momentarily transformed back into a vital, living thing, and I, in turn, am transported back in time with it. I see well tended yards rather than overgrown brush, and people, long since gone, move with purpose, completing the day’s chores.