Cap City Diner

Several weeks ago, we celebrated a few family milestones with lunch at Cap City Diner. It's always fun to read snippets of meal conversations later, memories preserved in time capsules of ink.

Chex mix, berry trifle

We recently visited the Ohio Glass Museum, arriving too late for the tour, but just in time to view the holiday gift shop offerings.  A few shelves of interesting, inexpensive Anchor Hocking pieces were stacked in the back, behind aisles of colorful blown glass.
I picked up a sturdy trifle bowl for $6.00, and a few days later, layered my first trifle. Prepared ingredients made it easy.  The next time, I want to try making the components from scratch.

My mother sometimes made Chex mix to snack on, when we started off on family vacations. I decided to make it this holiday season, for old times' sake.

(I can tell my sketching practice has been neglected, when "hairy lines" creep onto the page.)

Friends, memories, feelings

These were sketched after watching illustrator Marloes De Vries's Sketchbook Skool class, a month ago.
1. The first assignment was an experience. The identifying caption in that sketch required kept it private.
2. The second, shown here at the top of the page, was to draw a few friends, reduced to simple lines and labels. (I doubt anyone here can be identified! I am having a hard time remembering who they were intended to portray, myself.)
3. Childhood home, from memory.
4. Internal (art) critic.
5. A feeling. (This was while listening to Willie Nelson's Down Yonder, even though I mistakenly wrote Bandera in the note here. I think it features his sister, Bobbie, on the piano. The whole Red Headed Stranger album is great.)

This type of drawing can be very therapeutic.

The Egg Man

The Egg Man came to my grandparents' farm every week to pick up eggs.

Drawn with watercolor pencils for Nelleke Verhoeff's Sketchbook Skool class.

Remembering Grandma

Mattias Adolfsson's class in Sketchbook Skool showed me the emotional connection between drawing and memory.  Penelope Dullaghan's gave me an appreciation of the fun of playing with patterns.

Here, I remembered Grandma: above, the rows of canned fruit and vegetables lining her cellar wall; below, the rows of women she sat among Sunday mornings and evenings, on the right side of the small Mennonite church nestled in the hills. I remember their names.

Small Cachet sketchbook I usually practice tv people in; graphite;  Ph. Martin watercolor on top, pastel pencil (with a little Uniball Signo white gel pen) on bottom. 

Memories, Logan & Louisville

First Day of School

Waiting for the Bus

Church Basement

In memory of Thelma Howdyshell, May 4, 1907 - March 22, 1992. (Mattias Adolfsson Sketchbook Skool assignment: first day of school.)

Note, added later: The public school I attended had an overflow first grade class, housed in the basement of a nearby church.
Further note: Grandpa drove me to school the first day.