"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary"Pablo Picasso
I've started setting up a new blog called "Travels with a Sketchbook" and will be spending some time over the next day or so getting it ready to roll! It will be a blog which I use periodically to record sketches and paintings - and the stories behind them - that I do whenever I'm travelling away from home. It will also link into the Travels with a Sketchbook gallery on my website.
The sketch with this post is one my favourite ones - called "Contemplating Baga Beach" it's of a fellow artist sat sketching boats one morning on the beach at Baga in Goa (on the west coast of India). It's an early coloured pencil work of mine c. December 1993; as you can see I've been sketching for quite a long time!
My website will have a new USA section in the "Travels with my Sketchbook" gallery very soon as, in July, I'm travelling to the west coast of the USA and then in September I'm on the east coast in New England.
In July, I shall be visiting the following places.
- San Diego
- San Clemente (for a pastel workshop with Dianna Ponting)
- Tijuana
- Tucson
- Albuquerque (for the 14th Annual Convention of the Coloured Pencil Society of America)
- Santa Fe - and back to San Diego
It's debateable how much I'll be able to post to either this blog or the new one while I'm away. If it's too difficult I'll post when I get back in the same way as I did with my Venice Blog thread last year (on Wet Canvas). (In fact I might move the text of that over to the new blog to get it off to a good start!)
I'm then hoping to collect recommendations about places to sketch and buy art materials etc so as to make it a good reference source for anybody doing the same sort of trip. So - a bit like this one - but much more focused on being a journal about a specific trip to a specific area and plein air sketching.
If anybody would like to tell me about good places to visit to sketch I'd be very happy to get your recommendations - you've got the next week to come with them!. However, I suggest that you post them to the new blog which should be up and running in the next couple of days. I'll give you the link when it's ready for publishing.
I hope you're going to enjoy it - I'm very excited about it!
Artwork: "Contemplating Baga Beach" (coloured pencil 8"x 11" in a Daler Rowney black hard back sketchbook) - click to see a larger image.
Technorati tags: art , art journal , artist weblogs , art blogs , drawing , plein air , sketching , sketchbook
How interesting your new blog will be. I've only been following your blog for a month or so. We are from New Mexico originally and will be in NM in july. I keep up with the pastelists in NM and they have a good plein air group. Deborah Christensen Secor on wetcanvas is a good contact, you'll find her in the pastel section. We will probably be in Ruidoso that weekend for an art event there. I will follow your travels .. sounds like fun.
ReplyDeleteI like that painting, more so since I've visited Baga beach in Goa often.
ReplyDeleteYou write well.
Thanks Jo, Ann and Anil for all your kind comments and good wishes.
ReplyDeleteAnil - the sketch is of the area looking out to the Indian Ocean right up at the top end of the beach - just you get to the river.
I keep trying to work up this sketch into a 'proper' piece of art and have tried two or three times so far but my efforts always look sterile compared to this sketch.
Will you still be coming to New England next month? LOTS to see and draw here!
ReplyDeleteI'm still planning to. And it looks like I might be able to take a change of clothes after all - they've relaxed the carry-on luggage constraints which I rely on to get the sheer bulk of stuff across. For the workshop I'm doing on Cape Cod I need to take a full set of pastels and supports and watercolours!
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ReplyDeleteI've the urge to drive down to the Cape just to watch you work!
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