Nice Weekend

Enrico and Marit, needle-felted

Saturday was the 17th Worldwide Sketchcrawl. I went down to SF with Amelia and a new friend whom I met in my Architectural sketching class, Diane. We spent the day in Chinatown & North Beach. Aproximately 65 sketchers gathered in SF, with many more groups gathering around the world. Diane is an architect and does amazingly beautiful buildings, street scenes, trees, people, shading, you name it. And she's fast. Amelia did probably her best sketchcrawl work yet. I intentionally left my camera at home so that I would sketch. Most of these people are art students or professional artists, and the work we saw at the end of the day was simply amazing. My sketching is nowhere near the same league, but I try not to beat myself up too much about it. I don't like to share my work at the end of the day. Fortunately, only a couple of people asked to see my sketchbook. Diane & I both felt like it was such a gift to just dedicate an entire day to sketching. What fun. It's sort of like shutting out the rest of the world when you're concentrating on drawing, and I love the peace that it brings.

I had a little gift I had made last summer for Enrico and Marit, and this was the first time I'd seen them since then, so I was finally able to give it to them. Enrico is the mastermind behind Sketchcrawl. I had made little needle-felted likenesses of them, based on Enrico's charicatures in The Venice Chronicles - a cartoon documenting their trip to Italy, ending with a proposal of marriage. I was so charmed by it, and by the couple themselves, that I made them these dolls. I think they liked them. Since I made them, I learned that Marit is pregnant with a baby girl. So I'll probably be adding a little pink bundle of felt in the near future.

The Venice Chronicles: http://enricocasarosa.com/wordpress.1/VeniceChronicles/
Sketchcrawl Forums: http://www.sketchcrawl.com/forum/

Mail truck ... it drove away before I finished, but that's ok. Colored in Photoshop




Francis Ford Coppola's "Zoetrope" building, Columbus & Kearny. Colored in Photoshop.
We had soup at "Nanking" across the street - reputed to be the best Chinese food in SF. Soup was great - will have to go back there again.

Today we went to visit Jo at her new place in Sonoma. Dave & I brought our bikes & Amelia brought her new scooter, so we rode from Jo's to the square, and met her there for a little lunch at Basque Boulangerie. Now I know where General Vallejo's home is and the Sonoma Overlook trail. I love being a tourist in my own county!