SabbaticalWhere has the sabbatical gone? Before I became 100% involved with Pocket Sketching, I painted in oil and watercolor, had several big shows and competed nationally. The inventory grew. In about 2010 I switched into Pocket Sketching and teaching. The inventory and supplies have been waiting. Some of you understand, as you also have a huge supply of art stuff. So, I have been relearning oil painting and hope to give painting in oil and watercolor another ‘go’ as the Brits say. As my late brother would say, “We’ll see.” AnnouncementMy question became “Is it possible to achieve a steady income from selling original sketches and original paintings plus reproductions online?” Susan, our very dedicated assistant, has done a huge amount of work to set up a website/gallery at Art Storefronts. Please go look, see if the site is interesting, navigable, worthy and let me know your reaction, good or bad. The new website is: art.pocketsketching.com where you can view both my Fine Art and my Pocket Sketches. Please share your experience with me - your input in the past was extremely helpful: [email protected]. Monthly TipHere’s a very important tip. When you have a sketch you absolutely love, consider keeping the original where it is not exposed to light. Scan it into your computer or take a photo for reproduction. The ink line is fugitive. That means if it is exposed to light on the wall it will fade…over time a lot! There is no black water-soluble pen yet that is archival. India ink is archival but very hard to work with. You’ll see my reaction in Season Four of Pocket Sketching Fundraising for Season 4And where are we on fundraising for Season Four? We are now at $14,700, all thanks to you! That leaves $11,300 for me to figure out. If you still want to send a donation for 2024 (or 2025) click the button below OR phone 866-948-8727. And a giant thank you for all your support!
Happy Sketching and a Very Happy New Year! MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY HANNUKAH, WHATEVER: TAKE A STEP BACK AND ENJOY FRIENDS, MUSIC, CHILDREN, COOKIES, NONSENSE
Tucson is short on Christmas decorations. So I joined Michelle, a dear friend, who has decorated for a party. The deer was on her mantle. Sketch material may come from very small places. Watch for little inspirations. (And that’s my tip this time. It works for me.) Our current travels are sparse. We went to Savannah, Georgia for Thanksgiving as my son flies from there (a pilot). The granddaughters and a delightful friend were all visiting. A wonderful family time.! Old Savannah is gorgeous with architecture, moss-covered huge live oaks, small parks with statues or fountains everywhere. It’s a major commercial ocean port so huge ships pass by on the waterfront of the Savannah River. The J.W. Marriott has a Smithsonian-quality mineral and fossil display including a full-sized brontosaurus hung below the ceiling for most of the distance of the immense lobby. I was too awestruck to even take pictures! Don’t miss it if you go there.
I’ve been on sabbatical with the intent of oil painting as I have a huge stash of unused supplies and the weather has been good to work outdoors (no studio). A whopping two paintings are finished. And I miss students. Here’s the plan:
Dale has insisted on offering Pocket Sketching® Mugs for sale on our website. I told him they's never sell. The went on the website yesterday. One sold this morning. Dale is gloating!!!! Order yours here.
Finally, THE FUNDRAISER TO BRING YOU PBS POCKET SKETCHING SEASON 4. You have corrected my sketches to a total of $13,300 earned. We have $13,900 to go. It is almost year’s end. It’s a great time for a tax-deferred donation to WGVU (a 501-c-3) and to get your name on the permanent credits for the show, as in “This show is brought to you by Jean and Thomas Doe”. Any donation of $500.00 or more will be on the main credits and smaller donations will be listed. Sort of fun to be seen as donating giants of PBS! The people who already sent gifts of $500 or more to alter my sketches will be on the main list. And Thank You All for supporting the release of Season Four. It is loaded with gems you’ll enjoy. Happy sketching! 
Another resource for ‘sketching buddies’ in your area is Urban Sketchers. Go to their map of Chapters. If your town doesn’t have a Chapter, you can start one. “If you build it, they will come”. Urban Sketchers is an international group started by one man. If you want to sketch with someone in London or Paris, contact that Chapter and find a new sketching friend who can show you where he/she likes to sketch. Last blog I said I’d tell you how I get something finished that I didn’t much want to do. Use your timer, just as you use it for sketching. I can do anything for 30 minutes. A kitchen timer is great because you can see it, and probably hear it grinding down. If the time period is short, it’s amazing how much you can get done and out of the way. Big project? Use several short time periods. Put them in your least productive time of day. Save your best energy for something fun, like sketching Every month, because of the PBS show, we have many new people subscribe to the Newsletter who don’t know what an excellent lesson ‘Fix ‘Em’ is for you to benefit from for as long as you sketch. With just minutes of ‘fixing’ mishaps in color, contrast or focal point you usually get much improvement. The exercise is excellent for having you analyze your sketches and figure out what’s wrong, then correct it. If you donate $100 to WGVU, (a 501-c-3 not for profit), you receive 5 of my ‘Fix ‘Em’ sketches, a link to my very good video explaining how to do it, and a receipt from WGVU. If you donate $200.00 or more, you get an additional 5 sketches. (This could be a gift to a sketcher, and you get a write-off.) All donations help pay for Season Four of Pocket Sketching, which is filmed, edited and ready for release. Here are two of my sketches ‘before’ and ‘after’. One was simply hiding a mistake, and keeping the repair not obvious. (Yes, you can correct mistakes in watercolor!)
You have done well with the Fundraiser for Season Four on PBS. Believe it or not, we have raised $14,300!!! (We still have $11,700 to go.) Incidentally, you are more than welcome to simply donate to WGVU to fund Season Four, and not receive any ‘Fix Ems’. In either case, your form for tax-deductible contributions will arrive from WGVU in January. I can’t contribute, because if I do, NETA will not distribute the program to PBS stations, which is a bummer. ANNOUNCEMENTWithin a week I should have some very interesting news after months of working on a project. STAY TUNED!!! Happy Sketching and a Very Happy Thanksgiving!  The Teachers’ Workshop is over. It is 5 ½ days including lunch (so no one is off schedule). Two people had allergies, making it far more challenging. However, we got to everything except my posing, (so they could teach how to do people easily.) Guess what! Me posing in ghastly outfits is actually in PBS Season Four! I have never been willing to do that hideous outfit for a PBS series, but it’s so good for learning, I had to include it. It’s totally embarrassing, but it works. Here’s how the fundraising for Season Four of Pocket Sketching on PBS is going. We are at $12,000 of $30,000 with $18,000 to go. Thanks for your help! I think you’ll love Season Four! Each person who contributes $100.00 to WGVU (a 501©3 not-for-profit) receives 5 of my sketches to correct (my Fix ‘Ems), a link to my new video on how to fix them and a tax credit at the end of the year. If you send $200.00 or more, you receive 10 sketches. (There’s no upper limit, but 10 sketches to fix is a lot!) Here’s a suggestion from “The Teachers.” You get together 5 friends at $20.00 each and one person sends it in, gets the tax credit, the 5 sketches and the link. Then you get together to correct them as a group. I could not get to sending out my 'Fix Em's' to you during the Teachers' Workshop: simply exhausted every evening after we had dinner together (fun socializing)! I'll be mailing out your sketches and the link today. Coming up with great tips is not always easy, basically because I don’t get to talk with you to see what you want. Please send a suggestion: something that’s a problem for which I might have a solution. You’re welcome to send me a scan of the results. Margie Beckett is the first person to send me her corrected sketch. Look at the difference! (And send me yours!) This is a terrific exercise! The problem is almost always contrast of value, color or focal point (or any combination). By doing the correcting, you will see how important contrast, color and focal point are - and how to fix ‘em!
The Teachers group gave me this tip. When you sketch clumps of flowers, the flowers are clumps - not individual flowers. (Remember, you are capable of focusing on any pinpoint). The object here is the clump. The minute you switch to an individual flower, you take the focal point to that one flower, not the total effect. Here are three sketches: One has individual flowers (took forever to do). And two sketches with flowers in clumps as you see them (far faster and effective). 
As long as I am hounding you to help fund PBS Season Four, I'll be sending you tips. Next time my tip will be on how to get things done if you are a proscrastinator or have ADHD like me. Speaking of what works, I like to be incognito. I love teaching Pocket Sketching because it's such a breakthrough for so many people. It's meditative. It's artistic. It's creative. So many things. And I like to stay totally under the radar. This morning I was finally able to go for a hike in my favorite place for 28 years. No roads. No cars. No houses. No cactus. It has been possible to discreetly 'take a whiz' in heavy cover. Today, for the first time ever, a person recognized me from the PBS series and simply hung out. I couldn't get away! Is this what happens to Carol Burnett? New experience. Happy Sketching! Happy Escape!!!  Normally I don’t bomb you with blogs. As we’re working together on funding the final PBS Season, you need to know how it’s going. I’m finding it just as hard to write frequently as you are finding it hard to read often! I hope the included tips make it more interesting. Here’s the update. We are at $10,750 (Thank you enormously!!!!), out of $30K so that leaves only $19,250 to go. Wow! And I have sent out 170 sketches to be fixed. Where else will you get your instructor’s work to fix? One person sent back a ‘before and after’. I’d love to see more of your results. And where is Season Four in progression? I just spent three days reviewing all 13 Episodes over and over, looking for technical accidents. This Season has lessons I never planned to film. Many of you liked the striped outfits I use to pose for live workshops. They are included! Man, that outfit looks horrible on me! I can see why you laugh your way through that exercise. Zach, the engineer at WGVU, is amazingly good. Only one tiny flub and he’ll fix it. Pretty good for merging 4 cameras and one dialog, plus editing the two Episodes filmed outdoors in an uncontrolled setting in Tucson. Here’s the ‘ask’: You DONATE to WGVU $100 and I mail you five of my ‘Fix ‘Em’ sketches to correct plus email the link to the excellent video showing you how to fix color, contrast and focal point. If you send $200 or more, you receive an additional five of my sketches. I planned to fix these myself and some are really quite good. Click the link below to donate or call if you don’t want to donate via computer: 661-331-6680. WGVU is a 501-c-3 and you will receive a receipt for tax purposes. Here’s your tip for this blog. When your sketches have been working well and then they become consistently worse, invest in a new brush. It’s not you! The brushes wear down and you don’t notice until you ‘can’t sketch’. If you are planning to sketch a lot, you might keep a new brush zipped in with your credit cards. It’s quite rewarding to suddenly sketch much better! The example with the sky has no control on the buildings and truck. The stream has great control and I’m happy with it. (I did correct the color in the background rocks, adding blue to drop them back. See it work?)
Happy Sketching!  PBS SEASON 4 IS ALMOST HERESeason 4 of Pocket Sketching is fully filmed, awaiting payment, editing and release to you. It contains a bit of review and stuff I have never been willing to make public! Normally this would be paid for by my soliciting sponsors. I totally hate soliciting sponsors. Would you like to do that? You're like me: NO!!! However, I have a favorite exercise I love, you'll love, AND it will pay for Season Four. You've heard me say that I love taking out 5 bad sketches from my 'Fix Em' file to figure out what's wrong, and attempt to fix it. It's almost always contrast, color or focal point. Out of 5, two usually get worse, one stays just as bad, and two really improve and go to the 'Really Good' file.
Here's the deal: You donate $100.00 (or more) to WGVU/pocketsketching. The Station is a 501(c)(3) and they will send you a receipt for your taxes & send me your address and email. I mail you five (5) of my own sketches from my 'Fix Em' file and email you the link to my brand new 'How To Fix Em' video. You identify the problem with each sketch and have a blast fixing it. The lesson is terrific! If the sketches get better, you have a good sketch that we did together. If they get worse, at least it wasn't your own sketch. (They're pretty good or I wouldn't have kept them in the first place.) If you choose to donate $200 or more, you will receive ten (10) sketches to play with (more than that is overkill!). The amount we need is $30,000. That seems like a lot, but divide by $100 and it will take donations from 300 people: totally doable. Meanwhile, I need potentially 1500 not-perfect sketches that I can't find time to get around to. Basically, it's $100.00 for an invaluable lesson and you may end up with originals for your wall done by you and me! WGVU gets paid for Season Four, which you will be able to see on PBS, and eventually buy as downloads. You get the tax write-off donation. Come play! Click the button below to donate or phone: 520.318.9291 to send a check. I'll let you know how we're doing toward our goal with short blogs. The blogs will also contain recent sketches, news and tips. NEWSThere's still room in the Teachers' Workshop, October 20-25. Read about it on the website: pocketsketching.com/teachers. Register or get more information by contacting me: [email protected]. Because of your comments, I will teach a few more live workshops. Don't know where or when now. Watch for the coming Blogs. Happy Sketching!  I am so very honored by comments many of you have sent since I mentioned in my last blog that we may be moving into retirement. We are somehow getting older, which sort of leads to ‘The Shipping Department.’ Sorry about delivery problems while we were on our big trip. Dale, (Vice President of Shipping) shipped daily from wherever. (Did you notice the post office on the package?) He received supplies at each place we knew we’d be for two days or more. There were mistakes. If you are still missing something, let us know. If you received more than you paid for, happily keep it. [email protected] From the trip here are three sketches and a journal page, all from Victoria, BC. Journal pages have writing, usually telling more about the location of the sketch. I love food and often guess at contents so I can copy the dish at home. The fountain in ink is typical. The color sketch of the same fountain is pretty poor. However, both trigger the memory, and I can make a good sketch or even a painting from them. Once you take the time to sketch, you become immersed and you lock the memory in the computer of your mind. Your camera pictures don’t make this connection. There are more trip sketches coming: I got some good sketches and some great lessons.
At last we are showing on PBS, KAET in Phoenix and Prescott, Arizona! Could you believe it has taken over five years to get Pocket Sketching PBS shows into my hometown and state, though we show in 730 stations nationwide?! Thanks for asking them: It finally worked. In Phoenix we are showing on PBS Life which is: Cox channel 80, Century Link channel 9, Northern Arizona channel 142, Maricopa channel 211. The near times are Monday, Aug. 19, 12:00 PM, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 3:00 PM, Monday, Aug 26, 12:00 PM, Tuesday Aug. 27, 3:00 PM. Go to their schedule to find more times: obviously this is an experiment. If you like it and want to see more, please contact Lisa Sepulveda, 855-818-6613 or [email protected], and ask for more showings. We have a foot in the door! If you are in Tucson, AZPM Plus will show Pocket Sketching® at 9:30 AM each Monday on Channel 82 (Cox) and Channel 396 (Comcast). View AZPM schedule here: https://tv.azpm.org/schedules/episode/266772 Happy Sketching! 
But There Was MoreWhile we were sketching at the Empress Hotel Bar, a family was sitting next to us. They were celebrating their twelve-year-old daughter's birthday (she picked the venue). Julie began sketching the girl. The family started asking questions. Julie did a great sketch, which she gave to them. They were delighted! Then Julie, Eva and Joy did a marvelous sales pitch for Pocket Sketching.® I was the 'elder-sketcher-sitting-at-the-side-saying-nothing.' Totally amazing!!!! I couldn't have pitched Pocket Sketching batter!!! It felt strange...like it's time to bow out and find a new, younger person to take over Pocket Sketching. I am left complimented and contemplating. Below are two of my sketches from Victoria.
If you are in Tucson, AZPM Plus will show Pocketsketching® at 9:30 AM on Mondays, Channel 82 (Cox) and Channel 396 (Comcast). View AZPM schedule here: https://tv.azpm.org/schedules/episode/266772/ Happy Sketching! 
As you know, we are on our first vacation in 12 years. Dale is doing the shipping, packaging and finding Post Offices every day wherever we are. If you get a mistake in your order, let us know by emailing [email protected] OR call/message Dale @ 520.270.1452. People are still human and we do make mistakes, plus we're slower than Amazon. Dale will fix it!
Happy Sketching!  Pocket Sketching Becomes DependableIn trying to graduate to bigger paper and not use the pen (to go to large traditional watercolors), I have been forced to accept again how valuable the pen is. Here’s a dreadful attempt of a beautiful resort. The right stuff was there: I certainly wasn’t! You are not alone: I get bad sketches too, and lots of also-rans. (There’s a super use for them. See the next blog!)
Next was Chama for the Chama/Antonito Railroad. If you go, sit on the right (starboard) side of the train: it gets all the views. Beautiful ride and will be spectacular with aspens in September. I drove back up the highway and did several sketches.
Next was Ouray, then Telluride, CO, where we 86 year-olds didn’t adapt to the elevation, but the scenery was phenomenal. The car did well. I got a great sketch of Red Mountain during a roadblock. Next we stayed with friends Rex and Denice in Montrose at 5000’, an elevation where we could walk again. A local man grows peonies for people to pick at no charge. The sketch was done in the car while Dale drove to Orem, Utah, where we are now. It’s the best peony sketch I’ve ever done.  The mountains here are one of my major destinations for sketching. It’s just light...time to explore!!! Happy Sketching!  |
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December 2024
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