11 May, 2022.

A small group of sketcher friends met up at Union Station this week. A sketcher from Detroit was in town and looking for a group to draw with. Mother Nature drenched us all week long, and the forecast was calling for more of the same as our sketching rendezvous approached. I suggested Union Station as a location because we could stay dry by sketching indoors.

Arriving early, the rain had temporarily let up. A very light drizzle kissed my face, really only noticeable when a slight breeze was felt across damp skin. This view from the parking garage offered a bit of shelter.

A group of four sketched together. Conveniently for us, the coffee shop was closed, leaving chairs and tables at our beck and call.

There are almost no interior views that aren’t characterized by arches – arched openings are everywhere, and our group focussed on them. Me? No so much. I focussed on a corner bereft of archways of any kind.

10 May, 2022.

Just a couple of guys, bellied up to the counter in the diner, in silent communion over two mugs of rootbeer float, waiting on – I imagine – a heaping platter of onion rings.

9 May, 2022.

I dunno why, but I find it interesting to study groups of people dining together, chatting, laughing, gabbing.

8 May, 2022.

I’ve sketched this house down the block from me several times, and almost always from a similar vantage point. As usual, I tend to exaggerate the proportions, my little game of emphasizing certain characteristics of a structure.

When I first moved into the neighborhood about twenty years ago, this house looked almost abandoned. It had certainly fallen into disrepair. Suddenly, and without warning, the owners began to spruce things up. New paint, new trim, and a general improvement of the grounds. The transformation was remarkable!

Some of the original untidiness has since returned, but it’s not an entire regression. It just looks lived in.

7 May, 2022.

I’ve always loved this house. It’s close enough that on a good day I could stand in my driveway and toss a rock down the hill into their yard if I wanted to.

It’s entirely conjecture on my part of course, but I’ve always imagined this was a farmhouse located on the road that must have wound across our ridge well before neighborhoods popped up around it. I’d only been standing there about 30 seconds when a voice startled me. “Why are you making a picture of my house?”

I hadn’t seen anyone standing there, so rapt had I been in studying the house, and that voice scared the hell out of me. The homeowner stood up from her kneeling positiong, gardening along the opposite side of the fence, and we had a good chat. #oldhouse #farmhouse #sketching #bw

5 May, 2022.

There’s no destination in mind, no real purpose other than to enjoy an act of mark making. And sometimes, occasionally, a drawing emerges from out of almost nowhere.

Bicycling up and down the hills in town, I passed through the town square, there to encounter this pristine Volkswagen Bug. I’m uncertain of the year, but it looks a lot like the 1964 model I once owned. My interest piqued, this fleeting moment called out to be captured for some reason – no doubt sentimental nostalgia, I’m quite certain.

Whatever the reason, I’ve not been able to shake off the memory. And I began to scribble.

Caricatures of vehicles emerged, including a version of that Bug.

And eventually, later in the afternoon, I sat back down at the drawing table with a set of water-soluble crayons to add a dash of imaginary color to this thing, and – hopefully! – to purge it from that part of me obsessing over the memory.

4 May, 2022.

A lonesome sight, a solitary diner.

One looks forlorn, a blank look painted upon his face. No emotions register, he simply blends into the place and – sadly – becomes one element in my composition.

3 May, 2022.

I’m not a guitar player, nor do I play one on tv. But I’ve always admired those who do play. I’m an indifferent whistle player with moments of flash and a bit of flourish, and I’ll often relax in my arm chair spontaneously running up and down scales, playing random passages as they occur to me. A trumpet resides on a shelf, unplayed in decades now. Once upon a time it was treated as my most valued possession – indeed, it is now largely forgotten, yet still treasured: an odd thing to say, and an even odder realization.

2 May 2022

I often wonder if the people in diners realize I’m studying them, capturing their likenesses, their poses, their interaction with the people and things around them?

When I retire, I’d like to live in a small house in the country, cozily nestled into a thick grove of trees. The great thing is that rural Missouri, especially the further you get from highways and cities, is rife with such places.