I was just sitting down to write my reflections and my kitten wanted to curl up inside my shirt. This is the most adorable thing ever, but this time it alerted me to her need for a bath. You'd be proud. I didn't get any large gashes this time. This has been the story of July. It has been all kitten baths and meltdowns over breakfast cereal. It has been a challenging month and I would ordinarily be hard pressed to remember the good moments. Thankfully, I can look back at my sketches and remember some really amazing moments... some with my kids and some without. 

My sister and I got out (no kids) and met up with the Bremerton Urban Sketching group #uskbremerton. This group is filled with wonderful, talented, and encouraging sketchers. They all have great stories to tell and this street even had its own story to tell. I wish I'd captured the seagull that made an unusual noise or the skateboarders that were constantly streaming down this one-way section of street.

Our church services moved back inside this month. It has come with its own set of challenges and you can see I've illustrated the hybrid zoom/ in-person service we've done. As a sketcher moving inside has been tough and i've struggled with picking a subject several times.

This was really the most amazing fourth of July. I met up with some family and our kids ran around and played on the beach and even got themselves pretty wet and salty. I didn't know that there would be an airshow with the Tacoma Narrows Bridges in the background. Such a treat!

The next day I went with my kids and husband to a park on the other side of the Narrows and started to sketch the bridges. Immediately and randomly my TWSBI Eco with Noodler's Ink Rome Burning started burping/blotching ink. I tried to make the best of it, but it took forever to dry and I even had to blot it the next day. Noodler's Ink bonds with cellulose and some of the thick spots didn't have any cellulose to bond with. Thankfully on Goulet Nation's Facebook page someone was having a similar problem. Air was getting into my pen and the suggestion of reseating my nib and feed unit did the trick.

I love our new house color! I might get to painting our exterior doors this weekend. The bubblegum pink color I picked out will hopefully be an amazing pop of color.

We would kind of be cheating if we called this an urban sketch. The cross wasn't really in the background of the flowers. It was in the room, but much farther off to the right. The mess of keyboard, microphones, speakers, and cords directly behind the flowers were not what I wanted to sketch that morning. I do like what I did with the stems under water. I used fountain pen on a wetted spot of paper.

We don't have the most architecturally interesting church, but I believe it was designed to be reminiscent of a barn. 

This is Sally's house. It had more rooflines than I had anticipated when I suggested we get together and I sketch her house. I let her keep it after I took a picture.

Then because I still wanted a sketch to bring home with me from the trip I did this fast sketch of Sally. It doesn't do her justice, but she did have a really cute hair flippy thing happening that day. There was a fun story behind her necklace. It was a souvenir that she had wanted, but didn't get. Years later she happened upon it second hand and snatched it up for a fraction of the price. Also, her lips are not large and red... but I thought large red lips would be fun.

This was another Bremerton Urban Sketching outing and I opted to do this plaque really close up.

This month I demonstrated that I really need to practice sketching people more.

I sketched my StablO portable easel for a review. Check that out here. I posted it up on instagram and I even recieved comments from StablO in France. They hadn't yet seen anyone use it with a spiral notebook the way I had. Very fun!

This church and the trash can below were both done at Kiwanis Park in Bremerton at another Bremerton Urban Sketchers meet up. I hadn't meant for the reliefs on the end of the church to look like music notes, but they look like they are. Also, the power lines look like a disorderly music staff.

I finished the month with a bang. I had day to myself and after I spent the morning screen printing, I headed out to downtown Port Orchard. Our family loves this clock tower on the town hall. The clock is partially broken and it is going to cost way too much to fix, it was all great to sketch. In order to get this view I had to set up on the sidewalk: lots of car traffic, but not much foot traffic.

On my way to find a rueben I spotted a couple of unusual masts in the distance in the marina. The Lady Washington was tied up! It was an amazing view for my dinner and it stayed long enough afterwards to sketch. I got lucky!

I've started to notice that different seasons of the year bring their unique traditions, flavors, and demands on my time. Duh, right? In the spring and summer much time is spent in the garden: planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting. The spring's return of light is so exciting that I need to get outside and sketch. In the summer I get so distracted with all the fun random projects (this summer was screen printing). In Western Washington, the fall brings a constant drizzle from the sky and then the daylight just evaporates. It is just so so so so dark in December and there are holiday festivities that distract me. In October 2020 I started to draw bunnies... and I didn't stop until the weather got better and the sun came back. I drew a lot of bunnies. Check out the post about it here. Also, 2020 holidays had a refreshing lack of activities which left me room to get my creative repetition on.

The bunnies happened by accident. My sister, Chelsea, turned me on to the idea of projects. She recently re-picked up photography (and a new camera) and this video gave her some great ideas. So now I am in the process of being proactive in choosing a winter project. I'd like to pick something:

• attainable
• fun
• that develops skills

Here's some projects I've thought about:

• Golden Arches: I sketch a ton of McDonalds either on location or from pictures
• Walking Distance: A collection of sketches within a 30 minute walk of my house
• Too Soon?: Sketch real and/or fictitious headstones, but change the epitaphs so that they are funny
• Children's Picture Book: Lots of options here...and I am not sure how far I'd get in a winter

What do you do in the winter to keep yourself sane? Leave a comment.

June was a busy month for me creatively, but I didn't get in as much sketching in June as I did in May. However, I do like to focus on the 3 W's (What Went Well).

• I made some great headway on my "Learn to Screen Print" project.
• We finished up a lot of much needed exterior upgrades on our home. While we weren't doing most of the work ourselves, there were a lot of extra details for me to take care of.
• I filled in a Col-o-ring with ink samples and made a YouTube video about it and I learned how to do voiceovers!
• I finished filling up a Stillman & Birn Beta 7.5x7.5" sketchbook. It has heavyweight watercolor paper and I fit 30 separate sketches in it. I really loved this softcover sketchbook, but when I went to get another one... it was out of stock... almost everywhere. So I decided to try a different format. After much deliberation (talking to my husband who was likely ignoring me), I picked another Stillman & Birn Beta, but hardcover, spiral bound, and 7x10". I am loving the hardbound because it works so much better with my Stablo, but I think next time I'll go with one that isn't spiral bound. I do plan to do a sketchbook review post/video in the coming weeks.

I have found taking random notes in cursive and then adding a bit of a random sketch on top to be quite fun and relaxing! Ducklings are always really cute!

My son turned 7 in June and he did this sketch at church. He also changed his tune from "I don't sketch, I draw" to "I am good at sketching"... one of our greater achievements this month! Microphones really are fun to sketch!

I met up with the Urban Sketchers Bremerton group @uskbremerton in downtown Bremerton at the marina near the giant propeller. I didn't feel like tackling the propeller and there was this great cluster of giant planters nearby. It was so great to chat with other sketchers and find all of the other things we also shared interest in. 

My husband is very active in this local club that gives train rides to the public for free. So there is often a line and it was very fun to sit and watch all the parents and kids waiting. I was able to sneak this sketch in while our littlest one took a nap in the stroller.

My cousin really enjoys meeting up with my while I sketch and she knits... so we went and checked out the cool old buildings at her alma mater, Pacific Lutheran University. The campus was extra dead for the summer + COVID and there was a nice warm rain (something we don't get much of here). 

I've done a lot of sketching during outdoor church services and I mixed it up by trying to do the beautiful rose. The windows behind the rose are actually kind of special to me because they belong to the office my mom used for many many years. 

Gateway Park on the Key Peninsula in Gig Harbor was a blast for our family. After we enjoyed the splash pad, I tucked myself up on the hill and sketched. For some reason I wanted to do a really really good job because it was the last page in my sketch book. I am really happy with it. I especially like all the dandelions on the bottom left.

We had a second meet up with the Urban Sketchers Bremerton group in June. This was the Saturday morning of a very hot weekend. We had record setting temperatures the following Monday. So we sketched from where we could find shade to sit... a bit of a limiting factor, but I think it worked out great. The group can be found on Instagram @uskbremerton​. Megan @heythere.chickadee has been doing a great job of organizing the meet ups!

Looks like I was using my Kung Te-Cheng Ink on the 26th and I did these last two sketches indoors where it was cooler.