North Cascades (The Book)

cover art

Well, I managed to miss the international USk symposium in Brazil this year. And I've been a no-show at the DFW are sketch crawls too. But I certainly haven't been lounging about in my little hermitage of late.

location sketching began Day 1

This Monday (September 15) the Apple iBooks Store launched the pre-order of my latest enhanced (what Apple calls Multi-Touch) iBook entitled The North Cascades: A Tale of Two Seasons (Spring). The book is 155 pages long and (in addition to text) is chock-full of all sorts of visual goodies from my first stint as Artist-in-Residency with North Cascades National Park: 83 works on paper (including sketches, drawings, and hand-drawn maps), 23 plain air oils, 13 videos, 152 photos, scrolling text sidebars, and numerous journal entries.

If you have access to an iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, or MacBook Pro, I invite you to download the free sample excerpt and see what you think. (The free iBook app that powers all iBooks is currently available only on Apple devices. But I'm hoping that, like iTunes before it, we'll see the release of a Windows-compatable version soon.) Pre-order runs through Oct. 14 and the complete book can be downloaded beginning Oct. 15.

plein air sketching -- sometimes in graphite, sometimes pen & ink, sometimes oils

The North Cascades: A Tale of Two Seasons (Autumn), which documents my second residency at the national park, is already in the works.

Introducing Earnest Ward

Hi! When I heard that Texas was getting its own USK chapter a few months ago I was thrilled -- after all, there are hundreds of sketching enthusiasts scattered across our great state and USK is a fantastic way for us to meet and share our mutual interest. And then when I was asked to become a contributing correspondent I was honored. For those of you who don't already know me tho', a brief introduction might be in order.

I was born into a family of intrepid travelers. Every summer, growing up, my folks would pack us into the car and we would camp our way across whichever continent we were living on at the time. And, by the time I graduated from high school I'd lived in Britain (twice), Germany, and Taiwan, and visited numerous other countries. Along the way I discovered a passion for recording the world about me in drawings, paintings, and printmaking -- but most of all in sketchbooks and journals.

Along the way I met and married my soulmate and fellow adventurer. And when our two beautiful children came along it seemed perfectly natural to us to continue the family tradition with them -- including regular voyages of discovery here in Texas and across the U.S., a two-month "slow travel" sketch crawl across Europe and, most recently a stint as Artists-in-Residence at North Cascades National Park.

My personal motivation for sketching is to "see" more of the world around me. (Nothing goes into a sketch that the artist hasn't first consciously perceived. The same can't always be said of photography or video.) And my personal focus tends to be the natural and cultural history -- past AND present -- of the places I visit.

So, I'd like to thank Jim for inviting me to join ya'll and I look forward to, hopefully, meeting each of you in upcoming sketch crawls. In the meantime, "Happy sketching!"