St. Mary's of the Nativity-Plantersville

Our group

Carlos's lovely watercolor gives you some idea of what this tranquil spot is really like. Everyone commented on how quiet and peaceful this spot is.

For those of you not familiar with painted churches, they were mostly (but not exclusively) Catholic and founded by German and Czech immigrants to Texas. Many of them are southwest of Houston in Fayette County. I've heard two versions of why the churches were painted. One was that in the early days the congregation couldn't afford stained glass so the paint dressed up these simple wooden buildings. The other version is that the painting recalls the gothic splendor of European churches for which these immigrants were homesick. St. Mary's in Plantersville is a fine local example.

Everyone had their own plan for tackling this subject. The morning was cool-ish, so folks like Carlos went to capture the outside of the church.

Ken

You can see Ken Roy hard at work if you look at Carlos's sketch.  Ken did a fine job with a little ink and watercolor.

Susan

Susan chose a three-quarter view to give the church a more 3 dimensional look. She also got a bit of the history of the church from the historical marker. Imagine this country spot in 1873.

Rick

Rick did a closer look at the entrance in pencil.

Chris

I went over to the parish cemetery, which still has some of the old metal German grave markers. It also has live oaks that, I'm sure, date from the founding of the church.

Some people went right inside to attempt to catch the lovely painted sanctuary. To give you some idea how complicated that was, here are some photos.

The sanctuary, the altar and some paint detail

So, the only choice would be to greatly simplify. Kyoko did that very well with soft, luminous watercolor.

Kyoko

Britt

Britt focused on just the chancel and stuck to watercolor only.

Shaw

Shaw made a similar choice keeping her focus specific.

Susan

Susan moved a bit farther back and got a nice view of the ceiling and the painted posts.

Chris

I climbed into the choir loft and tried to get the entire sanctuary. Susan and I both found that we had to go to colored pencil for the smallest details. There was just so much to draw!

Cori

Cori tried a bit of everything. The interior, the entrance and a stone from the cemetery. She stuck to pen and ink.

Of course we had a throwdown on the church steps. Then a couple of us went off to lunch.

If you have not yet joined us on a sketchout, please join us for the next sketchout. We try to stick to indoor options in the summer and we are a friendly and nonjudgmental group. If you are interested, please follow us on Instagram or join our Facebook group by answering a few questions. We had some new faces this time and hope to see more in the future.

USK Houston Sketching in Quarantine

Working from home- Robert's wife at work

Living in close quarters and working from home has been the challenge for the past few months. And for urban sketchers it has been finding time and subjects for sketching....or at least things that somewhat resemble the mission of the group. But we have succeeded. Robert caught his wife hard at work in the sketch above.
I know that you can all relate by this point to Judith's comment on the right corner of the blog header.  Judith took refuge in her house in Galveston and gave us a view of the lovely garden.

Judith says, " I am very lucky to have my art supplies in isolation. Drawing 'the view from here' during times at home makes me take a fresh view of my daily vistas...A view from the front porch through the flowering Angel's Trumpet...when I'm filling my sketchbook there is no space in my brain for worrysome and stressful covid thoughts"

The stay-at-home order caught Mary McJunkin's extended family mid-move so she found herself on grandma duty with limited time to sketch.

Mary McJunkin

This restful domestic view reflects her limited time to draw. Mary says, "I'd watch the grandkids for several hours each day and had been trying to at least sketch a little with help from Danny and Koosje when I got a free moment." (Danny Gregory and Koosje of Sketchbook Skool)

Renata Lucia

Renata has been following along the Instagram videos from USK International. One of the assignments was to storyboard your day.

Joel

I guess I know where Joel has been spending his time. And in March and early April that fire pit would be nice.

Cissy Geigerman

How many of us went out "for groceries" and came home with something like an ice cream bar? Cissy captured the moment for us.

Cindy Chandler

It looks like Cindy got some fresh air somewhere by the bay.

Chris

I took on a more ambitious project. I sketched every day for almost thirty days and posted daily to Instagram. You can see the other sketches here. But on one of the very last cool afternoons of this spring I sat on the glider on my porch and enjoyed a good book.

Here's hoping all of you are well and still working in your sketchbook. When this is resolved we'll have some interesting lunches passing around our sketchbooks!

Fredericksburg

I love a chance to get out of town and sketch some of the cool little towns all over Texas. When the chance came to spend some time in the hill country outside Austin I took it. Fredericksburg is a sketching goldmine, but it seemed that every time I was there in the past it was about 104 degrees and miserable for sitting. This week was lovely so I drew my favorite building-the former White Elephant Saloon. It now holds a very swanky home decor shop.

39th Worldwide Sketchcrawl-Salado, Texas

This sketchcrawl weekend found me on a craft retreat in Salado with only a little time for sketching. However, the town is charming and I did manage to get out on Saturday and record just a bit of it. This is a bicycle fence, which is a small-town phenomenon I hadn't heard of. Very cute. And this is the pedestrian footbridge over Salado Creek. The weather was gorgeous and the bluebonnets were out, but it was a busy weekend!

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!"

TX Pow Wow

Every November in an arena at a local Trader's Village (a sort of flea market) a Native American Pow Wow is held. I took S and one of his buddies a couple of years and ago and knew I needed to go back this year to sketch it. There were Pawnee, Cherokee, Alabama Coushatta and many other groups from around the U.S.

Otto on the left is from here in Texas and Chuck on the right came all the way from California.

In the center of the arena under a shade canopy is a large drum with drummers seated around it, also to the side of the arena is another drum circle. An announcer would call out the competitions, like Grass Dancers and the dancers would enter the arena, the drumming would start and they would dance. They were judged and a winner was declared. During some dances you could enter the ring and drop donations or buy raffle tickets for blankets and the money raised was awarded to the winners. There were dances for children, women and even audience participation.

On these sketches I put most of the color on the page before I left the house, (technique from Lining Over Color workshop in Lisbon) drew with a pigma pen and added more color with watercolor and Inktense watercolor pencils.

Sweet Tea and Dust

My friend M and I drove out to Warrenton, TX for the big, antiques fair on Saturday afternoon. We left a little late, so it was only a half day adventure. On the way out we drove through a small section of the wildfire burn area, less than 20 miles from the house. It was pretty scary looking. Everything along the drive was parched dry. So many brown trees, a lot dead, hopefully many have gone dormant until it rains.

The antique fair is just fields and fields of tents set up selling every kind of junk, trinket and treasure. All the fields were really just dusty baked dirt. And the sun shone down on us all. A giant glass of ice tea under a shady tree was in order. Slurp.