Mexico travel sketches - Queretaro

On Boxing Day Colleen, Gord and I took the bus to spend the day in Queretaro and walked around all the squares in the old city centre. Every corner we turned brought a new view. There were old buildings, statues (sketch below) and a lot of indigenous women selling their homemade wares from big bags on their backs and filled baskets on their arms.

One of the best things we saw on this busy day was a celebration where they filled a "tent-like" shelter with ice shavings and families were building snowmen complete with carrots, buttons and scarves. Another  area was set up for snowball fights complete with face shields. A third area had a ride with tubes down an icy slope. The line ups were long and we could hear the delightful laughter far before we could see what was going on. Our laughter joined theirs!

San Miguel de Allende - parting gift

Something I started years ago, was to leave a painting or card for my hosts that I painted while I was visiting or renting. I sat on the curb down and across from our rental house on San Rafael Norte and painted this water colour. The sidewalks are so narrow, I had to turn my feet sideways to make room to let the cars pass. I was certainly getting interesting looks as it seemed everyone was driving home from work! We packed a mat and metal frame from home but the glass broke in our travels, hopefully the owners can get another one cut.

"San Rafael Norte 6"
Water colour, ink, matted and framed
#20112216

Urban Sketchers of San Miguel de Allende

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 I had the wonderful experience of joining the Urban Sketchers of San Miguel de Allende for an afternoon of sketching on November 8, 2016. Colleen met me there and we sketched from the Azotea roof top terrace restaurant. There was a wonderful group of about 15 artists all sketching and painting the views, the restaurant/bar and each other, what ever struck their fancy. I was so happy to be included for this week's event and look forward to next week. These are the two sketches I did on regular sketch paper. I wish I had done it on water colour paper so I could have enjoyed some of the paint effects but was more than happy with the afternoon. Many thanks to the wonderful group of Urban Sketches for being so inclusive and welcoming!

Sketching people is not something I usually do because they always move. Jane was so absorbed in her own sketching that she ended up being a great model without knowing it.

"Quiet Time" - FCA Richard McDiarmid Workshop

I had the wonderful opportunity of taking a Federation of Canadian Artist, Calgary Chapter "Experimental Techniques in Watermedia" with Richard McDiarmid. I found the techniques we worked with as well as working in acrylics very interesting in my own work and Richard's demo's. After each demo we worked on our pieces with words of advice as Richard walked around the room. This painting is very textural and used a variety of methods taught in the workshop. I love how both my pieces turned out and how different they were! The first piece was "Shared Wisdom".

"Quiet Time"

Acrylic Mixed Media 

11" x 15" on canvas 

Richard McDiarmid's photo reference

#20003416

Rest of Melaque Mexico sketchbooks photos

This is the wonderful homemade sketch book I received from Debbie. I kept it unused as it was to pretty and precious. It was time to enjoy the beautiful 5" x 5 1/2" blank pages of water colour paper on Gord and my Melaque, Mexico holiday...1 page for each day. This is the rest of the sketch paintings in water colour. I have enough unpainted pages left for another holiday!