The Houston Farmer's Market

The Group

 The Houston Farmer's Market has been one of our sketching venues before. Back when it was Canino's, it was a riot of color and smells. Could the new, rebuilt market still excite us? Well, we needn't have worried. The beautiful new space has many of the same vendors, booths crammed with merchandise and tempting produce, and the thrum of busy shoppers. Our turnout was great. The only dilemma was how to capture it all on the page. Francisco's sketch, which you can see on our masthead, is the outside of the beautiful new building, with a nod to its use.

Arthur

Arthur Deatly brought his easel. He likes to work in water-soluble graphite and watercolor.

Jenna

Jenna's sketches show exactly what we were up against. How do you get all the produce, the shelving, the people that are crammed into every space? Well, you invariably have to simplify just a bit. The colorful background on the top sketch stands in for an even busier background.

Carlos Chua

Carlos also captured just enough to "read" as fruits and vegetables but he used simple watercolor shapes to represent all the produce.

Michael settled onto his stool and let the scenes come to him.

Joel

Joel liked the long view down one side of the narrow vendor corridor that gives you a real sense of the new space.

Chris

I wanted to focus on one vendor space and practice my people-drawing skills.

Bruce

Bruce picked just one section of a booth with an interesting background treatment to fill the space.

Jeff

Jeff simplified by indicating the architecture of the building but focusing on the boxes of produce.

Then there were those who were seduced by all the colors of the produce.

Linda

Linda chose vignettes of several things she saw.

Kathy

Kathy picked one interesting arrangement.

Nancy

Nancy grouped several colorful things in a sort of watercolor/collage approach.

Chris

I went looking for pumpkins (my personal favorite) and I found them! But then I saw all the lovely mangos shining in the sun.

Sometimes just getting it all on the page in the time we have is a challenge. Fahmi and Judith have their own solutions to this problem.

Fahmi

Fahmi sketches on location and goes back with reference photos and watercolor later. She likes to compose her pages with the date, captions, and a bit of writing.

Fahmi

You can see the resulting two-page spread before and after. The border "contains" the image and frames it in the space.

Judith takes a somewhat different approach. First, the bracket on the roof pole makes a handy place for the watercolor kit to rest. It also provides a bit of "cover" when you are drawing people.

Judith captures it all on the spot. Very often she works in watercolor or pencil on site. But she also goes home and pumps up the contrast in Procreate. It avoids the problem of overworking the page in the moment and causing the sketchbook page to buckle or pill.

You can see the "before" and "after" below.

Judith

the throwdown

Of course,  we did the throwdown and the group picture at the end. And that was followed by lunch together at a nearby restaurant.

Next month's sketchout will be in Galveston. The weather should be great and there will be a lot to sketch. If you are a USKHouston sketcher, plan to join us.

Urban Sketchers Houston on Vacation

Richard Scruggs

Whether it's a vacay or a staycay, a trip or some relaxing time off is a great excuse for some urban sketching. Judith has her retreat down in Galveston. And she enjoys the seaside views like the one in the blog header. Richard Scruggs headed out of town to New Mexico. Here he commemorates the closing of a classic old motel.

Susan Bruhn

Susan Bruhn didn't go far. She visits her parents in Spring Branch, Texas which is just outside San Antonio. She says her father feeds the deer every night.

Cissy Geigerman

Similarly, Cissy Geigerman didn't go far for this sketch.  Her trip to Corpus Christi took her to the flagship WhataBurger location. Architecture and history in one sketch.

But she also went a little further afield. Her trip to Alaska gave her lots of sketching time. The perspective from the viewing car on the Alaska Railway shows us that travel time should never be wasted.  And the scene in downtown Talkeetna is charming. Hopefully, it's a stuffed moose.

Cissy Geigerman

Barbara Daily

Barbara Daily took a trip to Asheville, North Carolina where she visited the Biltmore Estate.

Susan DeCourcy

Susan DeCourcy took a trip to Florida. The sketch on the left shows the Port of Tampa as seen from the city. But what would a trip to Florida be without a day at the beach? On the right, we have two people strolling on the beach at Fort DeSoto Park off the tip of St. Petersburg. Both the long, narrow vertical and wide, horizontal are perfect perspectives.

Peter

Then there are folks who got to take multiple trips. Peter's landscapes from Arizona make you feel the sun on your skin. The top one is from Sedona and the bottom from Montezuma's Well.

Peter

He also took a trip to Florida. What is more iconic at Cape Canaveral than the rockets on display and the huge launch complex sitting near the dunes? The launch complex sketch definitely gives you a sense of scale.

Mary McJunkin

Mary McJunkin went first to Wisconsin and then to Minnesota. This is the bridge over the St. Croix River from the Stillwater side. 

Mary McJunkin

Stillwater is the oldest city in Minnesota, Mary reports. So of course she recorded one of the older homes.

It looks as if lots of our Houston sketchers took advantage of vacation time to do a little drawing. Drawing on your vacation records memories in a way that a camera never will. If you haven't tried this yet, I recommend it as a way to slow down and savor the moment.

Beating the Heat at Sawyer Yards

So what do you do when it's August in Houston and the temps are near one hundred every day? It's too hot to be sitting out in the heat and humidity trying to sketch. In the past we've sketched in museums, we've sketched in shopping malls and even coffee shops. This time, we were invited by the owner of Local Pho in Sawyer Yards to come in and sketch before the place opened. The plan was to sketch each other away from the pressure of a public presence. That, plus the air-conditioning must have appealed to a lot of people because the turnout was excellent. Although there is something very meta about the sketchers sketching the sketchers.....

Michael chose the broad view of the service counter and kitchen that you see in the blog header. He used green tones to tie together the two-page spread.

Francisco

Francisco also chose the wide view and caught the cook at work.

Britt

Britt's version gives you the unusual angle on the service counter and captures the depth of the space. He also included a couple of people.

Jenna

Jenna turned that view around and caught sketchers hard at work and the view out the front window. A little splash of red or green really livens up the scene.

Judith

Of course, Judith had to sketch the counter area and one very distinctive customer. But when it was lunchtime she sketched her lunch as well. Recording something of the place makes the experience memorable.

Lisa

Lisa also included a person, but her focal point was the portrait of the chicken and those light fixtures. The composition makes this interesting to look at and the chicken is whimsical.

Amy

Amy stuck to the mission of drawing people with two sketches which are very different in both mood and materials. The trees and cars in the background on the right put the sketch in a very real space.

Joel

Joel's choice of simple line and a limited palette makes these sketches of the sketchers very effective. 

The group in the back of the restaurant found a lovely air-conditioned view of the Houston skyline to draw.

Bruce

Bruce also stuck to a limited palette and simple line. He worked on capturing the distinctive shapes he saw at the top of each building that give the Houston skyline its character.

throwdown

Of course, there was a throwdown where we shared our techniques and materials and then some lunch at Local Pho. Yum.

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Two Sisters Take a Trip to New Mexico and West Texas by Judith Dollar

 

10 Days on the road…2,400+ miles across Texas and New Mexico in a Mini Cooper, 2 sisters, and plenty of art supplies. What could go wrong?

In mid-July, my sister, Penelope, and I made a plan to drive, sketch & stay in 7 different towns across the two states. She made a spreadsheet and I filled our palettes with fresh watercolors.

Our route took us to Fort Davis, on day 2 some rebar sticking up out of a parking lot peeled the front license plate and part of the body trim off the front of my car. Which ultimately led to being pulled over twice for not having a front license plate on display. Lucky me, Penelope was taking a turn to drive both times! Oh well, the scenery was worth it. 

Next down to Marfa, which lived up to its reputation as a funky, cool, and interesting town. Yes, we stopped at the Prada art installation as well as Little Riata where the movie Giant was filmed. 

From there we headed into New Mexico, stopping in Hatch for fresh roasted peppers and a stop for the night in Truth or Consequences. After sketching the colorful courtyard of our hotel we drove up past Santa Fe to Abiquiu, near Ghost Ranch, one of the places Georgia OKeeffe had a studio.

In Abiquiu we stayed in a yurt at the foot of a craggy red mountain. (see blog header) It rained during the night making the low-water crossing on the road out a muddy red river bed. Before driving across it I thought I should check it out on foot. After about 20 minutes of deliberation two cars finally came along behind us. They told us they had come in thru the opposite end of the road and it was not a mess. So, debate over, we turned around and left the mud pit behind.

The next night was in Santa Fe, then Cloudcroft, down to Monahans, and finally back to Round Rock to drop Penelope home before I headed back home. The final mileage reading was 2,472 when I pulled into my driveway.

Trip highlights: stunning landscapes and big, big skies, a sketching partner, friendly people, picnic meals, petroglyphs, the yurt, Santa Fe’s International Folk Art Museum, Acoma pottery artist, Chihuahuan Desert cactus greenhouse, and icy margaritas. The only change I would make to the trip is longer stays in fewer locations.