We are filming Pocket Sketching Season Four in Grand Rapids the week of October 17th . And I get to raise $30,000 for Season Three between now and then, plus plan the next 13 Episodes. All of you sponsored Season Two, so I’m not begging, but you are welcome to contribute. I am looking for businesses that target the same market, such as retirement companies, travel companies, AARP, etc. You get the idea. If you have any contact who would like to be seen supporting an art PBS program aimed at this audience, please let me know. The sponsor’s names are shown with the episode as many times as it’s played, and we are being played nationally: WOW! Most of you are sketching: is there a subject you would like covered in Season Four? This is the planning period. I can’t leave without a sketch, so here are two more of my favorites. Happy sketching! KathMy brother died May 24th, just before our four Northwest workshops. Teaching the four outstanding workshops was a delightful relief from all the financial and legal mess. Between workshops, and probably through July 30th, we’ve camped in his condo because much of the mess involves accounts in Portland. When I say ’camped’, I mean it. There is one pan and one water kettle in the kitchen. (The condo is on the market.) We carry a camp box on the road. It has 2 glasses, 2 cups, 2 sets of table service, paper plates…you get it. Because there’s nothing to cook with, we’re ‘forced ‘ to go out to dinner: very nice. My day begins before 6:00 AM with paperwork and goes to about 5:00. This is not my forte!!!! An amusing note: my brother never referred to anyone by name, only description, as in “the woman who lives on the 30th floor” who was a very good friend. Letting his friends know he passed is difficult. No lists with names: only phone numbers. (He knew the names). We have found and met a few of his friends and I wish I had known them earlier: great people. DO GET ALL YOUR PAPERWORK TOGETHER SO YOU DON’T LEAVE A MESS LIKE THIS! You all spend periods where you can’t sketch. Hopefully at some point frustration brings you back to being creative. Looking back over this time, I have very little to show (or maybe can’t find the sketch books in the loaded car). We’ve been to beautiful places. We’ve had fantastic people as students and they have done marvelously. Terrific way to spend the last over-the-road workshops. When we leave here, I get to sketch on the way back to Tucson, ignore the computer and the stress. It’s hard to keep working on my brother’s stuff when a break is coming. This is like looking forward to a vacation…for the mind!!! Keep sketching. ENJOY!!!! Kath PS: Here are two sketches from the trip. Coupeville is typical of the place. The Portland house was a demonstration in Oswego from a difficult setting: parts are moved around to make it work. A change of pace: finally back to teaching workshops: YEAH!!! First one’s in Salt Lake City June 9, 10 and 11. A great opportunity to get going on sketching. Contact [email protected], 801-997-8902. The weather will be perfect and the scenery is awesome!
Next is Oregon Society of Artists in Portland, June 24, 25, 26. This workshop will combine beginning with advanced technique and will be loaded with new material I teach in my ‘refresher’ class. It will take people from beginning to professional in just three days! Contact [email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected].or 503-228-0706. I rarely combine everything in one workshop and this will be exciting! This workshop will include homework and notes for take-along. Coupeville, WA is home to the Pacific Northwest Art School, where I’ll teach the Basic workshop July 8, 9, 10. The location couldn’t be more beautiful on Whidbey Island. Contact [email protected], or 360-678-3396. And last for the season and possibly for travel-teaching, is Lake Oswego, Oregon, July 15, 16, 17. This is a Basic workshop and the location is lovely. Contact shelly@lakewood_center.org, 503-635-3901. Our plans are to not teach on the road again. It’s tough hauling everything, getting it out, teaching a loaded-and-high-energy workshop for three days and haul it to the next place. In the past we did these back-to-back. This year there’s time to see the gorgeous places where we teach. We may become ‘sketching tourists’ in the future, just like you! And where have we been while not writing blogs? Like you, things get in the way for us. Christmas Day my brother fell and broke his humerus right below the shoulder. (Would you believe Medicare , with tremendous experience and wisdom, refused to pay for the ambulance because “it wasn’t necessary”? He was 87, had a broken arm and was expected to drive to the emergency room!!!! He wasn’t safe driving before he fell. Where do they get these evaluators? Surely between now and then I’ve taught and done sketches, but I can’t find them. The last month was spent clearing out my brother’s condo so it could be sold. It’s over the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. Only one morning, between 5:00 and 6:00 AM, did I find time to sketch. It was incredibly gorgeous with fog and subdued colors. Fortunately, sketches bring back memories! Point of this, he has passed, we’re in Tucson, and last night I tried a sketch at The Lodge on the Desert. It’s pretty bad, but it’s a start. Having started over before, I can say “Put up with the bad ones. Every one is a step to get back to where you were, and it’s the only way you’ll ever get there.” At one time I was very good at sketching and painting animals in motion, live. My life goal is to get back there. Attached is a watercolor done on location, I named “Flies”. (I have a pretty long way to go.) Enjoy the trip! Happy sketching! By your request, we now have the three Basic workshop DVDs downloadable! Susane, who has done this amazing IT work, just got it done and I bought #3 which was filmed in Sedona. Not only do I love Sedona, I looked pretty good back then! Maybe we should all make videos on vacations so we can review them years later. Do it like journaling, but with camera-video, sketches, the location and you. Anyway, the downloads are available at https://www.pocketsketching.com/supplies.html
Enjoy! Sunday we begin a Teacher’s Workshop here in Tucson. In the future I want other people teaching this easy-to-learn, easy-to-teach technique. The ‘future’ is here. We are teaching 4 workshops in Oregon and Washington this summer and may not teach any other than in the Tucson area after this summer. As my brother says, “We’ll see”. Hauling all the equipment and teaching workshops back-to-back has its limits. We will schedule online workshops beginning in the Fall. I do plan to make some very short videos of things you’ve asked for, including drawing. They will be available on the website. If you know anyone who enjoys teaching art, let them know they can add Pocket Sketching by taking a Teacher’s Workshop and becoming certified. And they can own the entire business. Just ask. Here’s the weird discovery. I have ‘readers’ (glasses), on to read the screen easily. I looked out the window. Many of my people have a problem sketching trees because you can pin-point focus and so sketch leaves in trees. Try looking with ‘readers’ and sketch, leaving the glasses on. (You can lower them on your nose if inappropriate with your vision.) The glasses reduce the scenery to lights and darks with full color, but no detail. You don’t get confused because YOU CAN’T FOCUS ON THE DETAILS! I bet you have to do this only a few times to get the idea of not putting tiny detail in the distance. Both of these sketches are favorites of mine, because they are so loose but still carry the message. They were FAST too! The Live Oaks has wax in the tree tops. If you had in mind taking my “Refresher Workshop”, there is one at Tohono Chul Park this coming week end, March 18, 19 20 with room for you! Our future plans for workshops are now totally changing after ten years of full schedules with major teaching trips each summer since Dale and I met. (He was the only man I interviewed who wanted to go with me on my business. We met on match.com.)
The Refresher has one day of review, a second day of all new exercises and both new and plein air in the Park the third day. If interested, contact Karen Hayes, [email protected], 520-742-6455, ext. 228. At this time, I have no other Refresher Workshops planned. The Teacher’s workshop is April 3 through 8 at our home/studio. There’s room for two more people. It’s intense, has everything I know, includes use of the Trademark, Pocket Sketching, and will allow you to teach this fun, easy-to-learn technique anywhere. Contact me, [email protected], for more information. After this we have 3 on-the-road workshops, Salt Lake City, Portland, Oregon and Coupeville, Washington. Only one workshop is scheduled after that. It is a fundraiser for the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild next October. Do you see a trend? Season Four for PBS is still a probability, and I’m learning new things to include. Let me know if you want something covered. That brings me to PBS news: Season Two was released to stations in February. It has been running in Albuquerque and Lubbock, TX, that I know of. If your station isn’t playing it, phone them and request it. If they don’t, you might try the General Manager, if you want to see it. In Tucson, it isn’t planned to begin until May 2 (when many of us are gone for the summer), and end July 18 (We won’t be here either: sort of ‘support-for-home-town-artists’, eh?) The colored sketches are from two workshops just finished. The ‘people sketch’ is from Steve Griggs’ demonstration for SAWG last night. (If you carry your sketching stuff with you, you can capture things almost instantly plein air, wherever you are!) He’s teaching a workshop for SAWG in Tucson the next two days. A VERY DARK TIME
Since 2010 Pocket Sketching has been hugely successful. The technique is easy to learn, easy to teach. I’ll admit the website became “pooty,”(Kathryn Hepburn’s word). So, I agreed to have a new website. It’s beautiful, but is it functional? Do take a look, www.pocketsketching.com, and let me know what you think. Any suggestions to make it more functional? We do have two online workshops coming up very soon: both start Feb. 4 and run five 2-hour sessions. They are both a terrific review. The Basic workshop is at 11:00 to 1:00 MST and the Refresher is at 2:00 to 4:00 MST. You can be a participant and interact or be just an observer (very reduced price-probably not as much fun). The sessions are recorded and the recordings are available for two weeks after each session. What an opportunity to learn or re-learn! If you need supplies, you must enroll very soon so we can get them to you! Basic online link: https://www.pocketsketching.com/basic-workshop.html Refresher online link: https://www.pocketsketching.com/refresher-virtual.html Live workshops are back, finally: Basic workshop at Tohono Chul Park, Tucson, Feb. 24, 25, 26 is almost full: https://tohonochul.org/event/pocket-sketching-workshop Refresher workshop at my home studio, Feb. 18, 19, 20, [email protected]. The images are old but among my favorites and a reminder of summer. My best, Kath Sorry for the long delay. Here’s a bit of a synopsis. June was workshops at Carlsbad and Sebastopol, CA, (darling town), Coupeville, WA, Oregon Society of Artists in Portland, Lakewood Performing Center in Lake Oswego, OR, Sun Valley and Salt Lake City. August was Grand Rapids and Lowell, MI and Sept. was Petoskey, MI, Dillman’s Resort in WI, White Bear Lake in MN, Ann Arbor in MI and back to Grand Rapids to film Season Three for PBS. Somehow I don’t remember October. November was a Teacher’s Workshop and that took three solid weeks of preparation. It is followed by 2 online workshops going on now through Tuesday. Then Thanksgiving and then a live workshop at Tohono Chul Park here in Tucson December 3, 4, 5. THIS MAY BE THE ONLY LIVE BASIC WORKSHOP, SO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, CONTACT TOHONO CHUL PARK. [email protected], 520-712-6455, ext. 228. The rest of December is DARK, as they say in theater. And there’s no ‘light’ yet planned. I’ll start working on that Nov. 29th, and expect to do more workshops online and another Teacher’s Workshop. Here’s the rest of the news. SEASON TWO POCKET SKETCHING WITH KATH MACAULAY IS COMING OUT IN JANUARY! (Believe it or not, it will be shown in Tucson!!!) We passed the NETA test. Ask for it at your local PBS station. They are very likely to run it because of the NETA approval. Thanks for all your support, both personal and financial. Incidentally, you who have financially supported Season Two will be forever in the credits. Sort of fun to tell your friends to look for your names. We couldn’t have done it without you! My next little job (no experience whatsoever), is fundraising for Season Three. If you know of a company that would like to support the visual arts, please let me know. They will be seen as supporting PBS and the arts. I need to raise $30,000 in different sized donations. (What is an artist doing learning to fund raise!!? We are so good at wearing different hats.) The sketches are from Dillman’s Resort in Wisconsin or the Franciscan Life Process Center in Lowell, Michigan (both totally relaxing retreats worthy of your next vacation or art workshop). We hope to go back to both places as guests. I’m delighted with the little tree. I tried it the year before and it had no vitality. The statue was drawn with dilute watercolor from the lid of the paint box, a form of drawing used by John Singer Sargent. This technique is included in PBS Season Three. Next newsletter will have a few more sketches from the summer trips. Happy Sketching! Kath |
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July 2024
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