One of my favorite places in the world is on the Monterey Peninsula. Between the towns of Monterey and Carmel, the Pacific shoreline is home to Asilomar State Park. The ocean crashes into rocky outcrops and small beaches, receding at low tide to reveal crystalline pools lined with barnacles and anenomes, hunted by small fish, tiny crabs, isopods, and the occasional red-orange starfish. Rain or shine, it’s always beautiful, always walkable, with benches here and there placed just right for contemplation of surf and sea birds. If you are lucky, you’ll see a sea otter bobbing just beyond the break of the waves.
I have happy memories of being abandoned here by my husband, who went on to urban places inland to attend conferences that lasted two or three days. Without a car, I would stay in one of the small motels a block or two inland. Each morning, I would dress warmly (there’s always wind) and stroll down to the oceanfront. If I got there early enough, I could claim a seat in my favorite spot, a little pavilion set between two small coves. From my backpack I would pull pencil, sketchbook, eraser, and for hours I would sit and draw and design. At that time, I was a glass fuser and jeweler, so I would design jewelry set with my multi-layered, cut and polished dichroic glass pieces.
At the end of the day, I would walk to the end of the boardwalk where I could claim a table at my favorite fish restaurant and enjoy a marvelous meal. I would wander back through quiet streets lined with Torrey pines and Monterey cypresses, smiling at the visitors heading into the fireplace-lit rooms as small deer wandered through front yards, helping themselves to locals’ gardens. All the way, I could hear the ocean….It was heaven.
Above is a photo of the little pavilion with its inside bench, overlooking the surf. To the left is a photo of me taken by my husband upon his return. My wind-burned face is the very picture of deep contentment.
The drawings that I came home with formed the basis for months of work. Every time I leaf through that sketchbook, I smile.
I've also had giant "sketchbooks" (The largest of which was 18 x 24 inches) which held pencil-drawn designs of my glass vessels. (You can see the finished products on my Jude Kai Art website on this page: Jude Kai Fused Glass Art.) I would use permanent marker to trace the sketchbook's pencil designs onto translucent mylar. The mylar was pretty indestructible, so it served as a template to cut and shape the glass pieces before I assembled and fused them.
Now, several years later, I have a new sketchbook to fill, but with totally different designs in a completely different medium. As I write this, I'm sequestered for the pandemic and too far away from the ocean for a quick day trip. But I've set up my drawing table with a view of the mountains in the distance and a bird feeder outside the window with local feathered visitors to keep me company.
For some reason, I was a bit intimidated about what to put in this pretty 8 x 10", spiral-bound, hardcover book with 40 pages of heavy watercolor paper. After all, this is now an artist's sketchbook. For me as a painter, an abstract artist.
It's supposed to contain...WHAT? Experimental designs? Practice life drawings? Collages? Still lifes? Old postcards? Restaurant receipts? Landscape sketches? WHAT? How should it be done--watercolors, colored pencils, graphite, charcoal?? I went online and watched one serious artist who said he carries his sketchbook everywhere and only uses an ink pen to draw...INK PEN!! I'm Ms. Erase That...I'd go nuts if I couldn't change something I put down on paper.
So I ordered a little tray of watercolors (I've never used watercolors) and multicolored sheets of construction paper, pulled out a box of colored pencils, sat down and looked at my sketchbook and said--F-orget this! I'm taping the edges of one sketchbook page to a flat background (so it won't warp when wet), and I'm using my own acrylics, and I'm off! And that's how it started, just a short while ago. I invite you to share this mini-adventure with me in future posts.
