SKETCHBOOK: "Nelson and the Lake"

This weekend has been full of sketching.  Today, I went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art with several artists from the "Urban Sketchers Midwest" group. This was the largest turnout I've been to so far...about 20 or more folks showed up.  It was great to pass around sketchbooks in the cafe area afterwards, and see what everyone drew.

Since the security guards will only allow pencils to be used inside the museum (no ink pens or liquids), it forced me to break out the 3B.  But I rather enjoyed using the pencil and intend do it more. The sketch above is of an Egyptian bronze of "Horus of Buto".  The terra cotta portrait below is of "Jean-Francois Ducis", sculpted by Augustine Pajou in 1779.

I arrived early to do the sketch below of the sculpture of multiple commuters. It is outside the museum, so I could use ink and washes. The time ran out to go meet up with everyone before I could put details on all of the figures...but I think I like it with just the contour lines for the non-rendered ones.

These other sketches are from an outing to Shawnee Mission Lake yesterday (I took a vacation day to start the weekend early).  I rented a canoe, paddled to a quiet cove, tied up to a branch, and just enjoyed the breeze. I was a bit frustrated because my new sketch pen was clogging on me, and the ink blurred the colors of the watercolor washes. But it was fun, and I'll try this again sometime. I've posted these on Facebook, so apologies if you've seen them already.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I decided to try a self-portrait based on the "selfie" photo I took at the lake.  I haven't done a sketch of myself in a long time, but for some reason, this felt like I was drawing some other character besides me.