Fresh Air Painting - St. Patricks Church

I brought my new journal to the park yesterday and did a plein air watercolor painting of St. Patricks Church in San Francisco. It was a great day for it, and there were lots of people laying in the grass enjoying the sunshine. 

I've always wanted to do more public sketches or paintings, but felt self conscious about it. A couple of blog posts* I've read lately encouraged me to give it a try. 

At first I felt weird and tried to hide my drawing when people walked by, but when I started painting I couldn't do that and I started to feel more comfortable. 

I just have to remember that people are curious and are most likely not critiquing my painting when they look over :0) 

* Art by Wiley,  Muddle on Through, and Everyday Treats have great posts about drawing/painting in public. The Everday Treats one is particularly inspiring because her son was so amazed with a women painting in the park that he came home wanting to be an artist. 

I hope your week is going well! 

Illustration Friday - Heights

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "heights." I had a ton of random ideas in my head but didn't feel like most of them really communicated what I think of when I think of heights. 


At the last minute this morning this idea popped into my head of that second before you drop on a roller coaster. I am not a big fan of heights or roller coasters, so I tried to make the drop look extra terrifying (that's a bird flying below haha) to convey how I feel about the subject. 


I started sketching on my Wacom, thinking that I would do a rough sketch and then paint over it but I liked the look of it and kept going with the sketch. I added the paper background (it has schematics on it!) in to give it some more interest/texture. 


I hope you like it :0)

Quick Sketch

I'm trying to get better at sketching (especially using the Wacom tablet to sketch instead of paper) so I did this quick little sketch on there. 

I'm going to Palm Springs tomorrow for a little getaway, and have a bunch of things on my to-do list still! Like packing and finishing my Illustration Friday painting. 

Better get after it! 

Illustration Friday - Capable

I didn't give myself much time to do this week's Illustration Friday, so this one is more of a messy sketch and less of a "painting."

I had trouble coming up with something said said "capable" to me, but one of the things that came to me is how a caterpillar is capable of growing into a beautiful butterfly. Which I think is kind of an inspiring message.

What would you have chosen to (or did you) illustrate for capable?