Morning View from the House

The View from the Terrace (a breakfast sketch)
11 " 16", pen and ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine

I was on my own for a couple of days before the others in the Painting House Party arrived and consequently could set my own personal pace around getting up, having breakfast etc.

Sunrise over Mont Ventoux - about 6am on 12th June 2011

Having arrived on the Saturday afternoon, I had a very sound night's sleep and then woke early on Sunday morning.  Before I knew it, I found myself standing in the road outside the house at 6am in my PJs so that I could photograph Mont Ventoux as the sun rose!  If you look very carefully you can just see the tower on the top of Mont Ventoux in the photo.

I then had a very leisurely breakfast on the outside terrace while I tried to capture the early morning sky above the vineyards opposite the house.  Of course early in the morning the light moves fast - so it actually took me three mornings before I was happy that I'd got the "morning view" right.

I should really have done this view in portrait format because the vapour trails on the Sunday morning were absolutely phenomenal - and they kept changing and weren't there at all on the following two mornings!  I in no way did them justice with my first sketch in the hamlet.

Vapour trails over Couguieux

Blogging while away from home is still a relative novelty for me.  This was the day when I began to work out what I could do in terms of blogging assisted by Julian's computer/modem and my iPad.  This was a little bit more complicated than it sounds.....

I'm getting there via download of images from SD card to iPad, manipulation in photogene, upload to Flickr, change status to allow download to Julian`s computer and then upload to the post. All the while trying to get used to a French keyboard which is decidedly not QUERTY.
Four Go Painting in Provence - A Photoessay of Provence

I decided that I could continue posting to Making A Mark - by creating a photo essay of Provence.  This started with Sunrise over Monet Ventoux.

I thought I might try a visual essay of Provence and upload a photograph each day of something that has "made a mark" on me.

Next on the list was stocking up the fridge with basics from the Carrefour in Bedoin and then finding somewhere nice to have Sunday lunch!

This is a link to my recent review of Ruth Phillip's book about living with a painter painting postcards in Provence - Book Review: Cherries from Chauvet's Orchard

Sketching with Liz Steel and Borromini

Liz Steel sketching St. Paul's Cathedral - with Borromini
11" x 16", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I spent a very enjoyable day yesterday at Tate Modern with Liz Steel and the little bear (Liz and Borromini).  We sat at the windows overlooking the Thames on the seventh floor of Tate Modern, opposite St Paul's cathedral and sketched and talked and talked and sketched and drank tea, ate lunch, drank more tea, sketched more, talked more.  A really fine day.

The funny bit was when our respective plates of Griddled fillet of salmon with broad bean, pea & mint risotto had been served and we both pulled out our sketchbooks and started to sketch.  The waiter came up and asked us if everything was OK - to which we both chorused - "Yes - we sketch our meals!"

Here's my sketch - which is both dishes and Liz's sketch of both dishes.

Griddled fillet of salmon with broad bean, pea & mint risotto x 4
11" x 16", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Liz goes home on Thursday after another epic trip around Europe.  You can see her trip uploads to Flickr here.

Tornados and Travel Sketchbooks

Sometimes you realise you haven't seen somebody's blog in a while.  I've got my blogrolls set up so that they show the top five or top ten of those I have listed in a category.  Which means if you don't post in a while I have to remember that I should be seeing your blog posts - but they're not there.

I was really shocked to find out this week that the reason that Debbie Kotter Caspari's sketchbook blog Drawing the Motmot hasn't been showing up recently, in my blogroll over in the nature section on Making A Mark, is that her home was blown away by an EF4 tornado in May.  Quite literally.

These blog posts record the event - and how Debbie found her sketchbooks from her travels.

• Surviving the Storm
• A Most Unearthly Sound 
• Love, Sweat and Helping Hands
• Anatomy of a Tornado
• Tornado Chronicles, continued: the stuff we lost, the stuff we found
• Nature is a moody Muse

My reason for posting this here?  I can't do any better than quote Debbie from her last post.

"I swear I heard angels singing when my sketchbooks were found"

From Debbie's post Nature is a moody Muse

It reminded me of one of the reasons why I'm glad I blog about my travels and the sketches I do.  Computers may come and go - but once the images are on my blog they are there forever.

See Debbie Kitter Caspari's sketches from her travels with her sketchbook:

• New England Sketchbook 1: Drawings of the Forest 
• New England Sketchbook 2: Critters ‘N More 
• Panama Jungle Sketches Page 
• Panama Plein Air; The Large Drawings

Liz Steel and Borromini at Kew Palace

This is a long overdue post about meeting up with Liz Steel (Liz and Borromini) and Alison Staite (Art Journey) at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in September.  Of course Borrowmini - as you can see below - was also there as well.

Liz and I sketched Kew Palace while Alison took photos!

Borromini inspects Liz's watercolour sketch of Kew Palace
photo by Katherine Tyrrell

Here's my sketch of Kew Palace

Kew Palace
11 x 17", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Large Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

We talked non-stop from when Liz arrived, all through the visit to the Waterlily House, all through the sketching, through our very late lunch in the Orangerie and didn't stop until I had to leave to go and get ready for the Threadneedle Dinner that evening.

Well if somebody is only over from Australia once in a while you don't want to waste any time!

Here's an action shot of Liz sketching lunch - see the crockery and the sketch in the same shot!  I loved her sweatband/brush wiper - that's a new one on me.

Liz sketches lunch - note the neat brush wiper!

I do so enjoy meeting up with people I've got to know online.  So often they are exactly as I expect them to be.  It was great meeting up and I hope we get to do it again sometime.  Maybe next time in Australia!

Kew Palace

Kew Palace is looked after by the Historic Royal Palaces Trust.  It was reopened to the public not that long ago after a very long and throrough restoration which took some 10 years.

Kew Palace is the oldest building at Kew Gardens and used to be known as the Dutch House.   It was used royal monarchs and their family between 1728 and 1898.

• Queen Caroline leased several parcels of land and buildings in the hamlet of Kew which included Kew Palace while her husband King George II worked on extending Richmond Gardens.
• Their son's wife Princess Augusta established the botanic gardens at Kew
• Her son, King George III lived in various properties at Kew.  He bought Kew Palace in 1781 as a family home. 
• In 1818, Kew Palace was closed after the death of George III's widow, Queen Charlotte
• In December 1896, Queen Victoria agreed to Kew's acquisition of the Palace, providing there was no alteration to the room in which Queen Charlotte died. 
• In 1898, the Kew's Department of Works acquired the Palace and it was opened to the public.

At the rear is the Queen's Garden.  This has been developed in the style of a seventeenth century garden and has only plants associated with the period.

Link: 

• The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew
• Kew Gardens - Kew Palace

Sketching in the southwestern states of the USA - what happened next....

Three road trips across SW States and a stay in Southern California

Top row: (left) San Clemente (right) Sand Bank Mountains

Bottom row: (left) Point Lobos (right) Ventura

It's raining here in southern California on the last day of my trip so I thought I might try and do something really sensible(!) and pull together a list of the blog posts that I need to start creating when I get home to London (end of this week) and back to my computer/scanner/software/etc.

As has been correctly surmised already, trying to post on the road has proved to be well nigh impossible. On the couple of days I've actually had access to a computer I've also had lots of other practical trip related matters to sort out.

So - by way of a tempter - here's a summary of my trip to the south western states of the USA. I'll insert all the blog post links to this summary as I post the entry for each day.

The preliminary indications of some blog post titles are given below - along with some brief descriptions of the journey and some indications of images to come! As you can see there are quite a few sketches and I've very nearly filled my new Moleskine.

[1 October 2006: This blog entry has now been updated to include the final titles and posts relating to this trip and associated hyperlinks - plus a sample of images from the trip.]

A short stay and a pastels workshop in Southern California

I visited my friend Louise - she and her husband showed me the sights and then Louise and I took a weekend pastels workshop in San Clemente

• Tuesday 11th July: travelling / Wednesday 12th July: recovering from the journey and adjusting to new time zone - see "Hello from Southern California"
• Thursday 13th July: "250 miles 'riding bitch' in the desert" - travels on a Harley Davidson through the desert and what happened when it hit 115 degreesF in the shade - and we weren't in the shade!!! (no sketches or photos!)
• Friday 14th July "The Grand Tour of San Diego - Friday 14th July" - fast one day version / lots of photos
• Saturday 15th July: two posts about:
• my first American pastel workshop "Dianna Ponting Pastel Workshop Weekend - 15h-16th July" (2 pastels plus photos) and 
• a highly recommended art supplies store "Service with a smile - San Clemente Art Supply" (photos)
• Sunday 16th July: "The Big Cheese on the Pond - eating and sketching in San Clemente" sketches done during breakfast and dinner in San Clemente before and after the workshop
• Monday 17th July "Dick Blick in San Diego" - a visit to an excellent art supplies store

Road Trip #1 - Santee, Southern California to Albuquerque, New Mexico via Tombstone, Arizona

This trip started because my friends and I decided to go to the Annual Exhibition of the Coloured Pencil Society of America.  The trip to get there from Southern California took two long days.

• Tuesday 18th July "Breakfast in Yuma" and "Gordon drives Dome Valley with the boss" - Day 1 of the San Diego-Albuquerque Road Trip - starting from Santee to Tombstone, Arizona via Breakfast in Yuma, lots of desert and cacti, the Mission San Xavier del Bac and a major rain storm outside Tucson plus how to sketch on the move! (3 sketches plus photos)  Note: The latter updates the original which had coding problems when I tried to update it and hence could not be amended.
• Tuesday 18th July "A Tombstone Epitaph" (photos) an account of an evening with the cowboys in Tombstone
• Wednesday 19th July "Chillis and a big elephant butt" - Day 1 of the San Diego-Albuquerque Road Trip - involved Tombstone to Albuquerque via Hatch (home of the hot chilli), Truth and Consequences and Elephant Butte. (3 sketches)
• Thursday 20th July - Plein air sketching in "Old Town Albuquerque"; CPSA slide show of all entries for the annual exhibition (2 sketches plus photos)
• Friday 21st July - "Plein Air Sketching and a Banquet" Plein air sketching, champagne and the CPSA Banquet (2 sketches)
• Friday 21st July (out of order): "Plein Air Sketching the Sandia Mountains" - a follow on from the previous process with a detailed explanation of the process re developing a diptych sketch
• Saturday 22nd July - "Santa Fe and Georgia O'Keeffe" visiting Santa Fe and the Georgia O'Keefe Museum in blissful weather.  
• Saturday 22nd July - "The CPSA Artists' Reception" - for the Annual Exhibition of the Coloured Pencil Society of America (2 sketches and photos)

Road Trip #2 - Albuquerque, New Mexico to Santee, California via Prescott, Arizona

The main challenge for the drive back was that in the summer of 2006 the USA had a major heatwave . It had started on 15th July and got hotter as July progressed.  There were extremely high temperatures in the deserts making planning for the route for the trip back rather critical.  The aim was to avoid major inclines for a fully loaded car with four people.

• Sunday 23rd July - "Back in time to Route 66 and a bit more...." and "Big Clouds, Big holes and big rocks" Day 1 of the Return Road Trip from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Santee in Southern California - starting from Albuquerque to Prescott, Arizona via Route 66, Acoma Pueblo, Grants, Gallup, Walnut Canyon, Sedona and Jerome. (5 sketches)
• Monday 24th July - "2,000 miles later - Louise drives the desert with style"  Day 2 of the Return Road Trip - from Prescott, Arizona to Santee SoCal - involves "how to cross deserts in a heatwave" - crossing the Sonoran, Mohave and Anza-Burrego deserts - and how temperatures in the 90s can start to feel cool! (3 sketches)

Road Trip #3 - Pacific Coast Highway Trip from San Francisco to San Diego

On this trip I found out that the marine inversions on the coast tend to accompany very high temperatures inland!

• Tuesday 25th July - "a rest day" ie unpacking / washing / drying / repacking plus last minute bookings for Road Trip #2 - the Pacific Coast Highway Trip from San Francisco to San Diego!
• Wednesday 26th July - "Driving Highway 1 - the Pacific Coast Highway" Road Trip #2 from San Francisco to San Diego involves flying from San Diego to San Francisco; then oicking up a car and driving down to Monterey armed with Ed Terpening's guide to plein air painting spots ("The best spots painting tour") and dinner in Pacific Grove (3 sketches)
• Thursday 27th July - "Carmel by the Sea - and a marine inversion" (4 sketches) with a description of what it feels like when it's more than 50 degrees cooler than the weather experienced on Monday!
• Friday 28th July - "The greatest meeting of land and water in the world" Point Lobos State Reserve (sketch and photos)
• Friday 28th July - "Driving down big Sur - at last" the drive along the Pacific Coast Highway down Big Sur (1 sketches plus photo)
• Saturday 29th July - "The best breakfast of the trip - at the Big Sky cafe!" San Luis Obispo to Ventura (2 sketches plus photos)
• Sunday 30th July - "The end of my drive down Highway 1 and the start of concretefreewayville" - Back to Louise in Santee via Brunch in Malibu and crossing LA by freeway (2 sketches)
• Tuesday 1st August - "Flying home and some reflections" on artwork produced and travelling in the USA - after trying to work out on Monday what went home and what went on to New England.

As well as sketching details, my posts also include details of

• routes I travelled
• places I stayed and/or visited
• descriptions of places where I ate meals (which often became the subjects for sketches) 
• PLUS places to buy art supplies .