My Big Surprise!

Hold onto your hat! 

I promised in the last blog that I had a "new exciting (and ongoing!) adventure" coming up.  Now it has "come up" and is definitely "ongoing," and I am finding it absorbing, sometimes scary, eye-opening, work-intensive, and very satisfying.  And that's why this blog is so long in coming.

I hereby introduce (TADA!) Mouse, my 22' new-to-me but middle-aged 1985 Toyota Mini-Motorhome! Here she is in my yard, undergoing some serious loving care ~ cleaning, mending, upgrading, repairing....everything you can imagine from re-upholstering the couch to replacing the propane stove, removing the CB radio, re-laying the floor, rescreening the inner door, redoing the curtains, repairing the outer door....actually, I looked up some synonyms for the word replace and I'll let you take your pick.

The new addition to my sketching adventure

alter, change, displace, fill in, mend, oust, patch, put back, reconstitute, recover, redress, reestablish, regain, reinstate, restore, retrieve, shift, sit in, stand in, substitute, succeed, supplant, supply, swap places, take out, take over....etc.   

You get the idea. 
I bought Mouse on the 1st of March from an ad on Craig's List for $3000, and now that I've put a buncha $$ into the engine, shocks, etc., and  another stack of bills into the upholstering, curtains, knobs, floor, door repair, stove, vent covers, and all the rest of the little things you need to furbish and refurbish a little travel home, she is starting to be in decent condition (I'm still not done, but she's usable ~ and my pockets are pretty flat!).

Why, you ask, did I take on this humongous project?  Because this is My New Traveling Sketching Studio.  My plan is to take Mouse out adventuring with my sketchbook for a week at a time (that's all Jesse-cat can comfortably handle all alone at home without a house-sitter) and make sketchbooks like these.  

Good new floor

Bad old floor

 I just returned last week from my Maiden Voyage in Mouse (she's seen many such voyages with previous owners, but it was a first for me), a 1084 mile trip to Idaho to visit my brother, who helped me figure out and replace the floor, then cover it with vinyl  lino and apply molding. Then he made me a new swing-away desk to work on (see below).  He's a genius. 

The floor replacement was necessary because Mouse received some water damage over previous years. Almost ALL old RVs have water damage, but her particleboard floor had gotten particularly wet, and wet particleboard swells, so the floor had bulges and waves high enough to either trip you or make you seasick. (Well, not quite, but hey....)  So we spent several days cutting, measuring, gluing, nailing (I learned how to use a nailgun), staining molding, etc., and now it is vastly improved. 

My brother has a print shop, and while I was there I had him print up a few copies of my latest sketch journals, the South African Sketching Safari  from last summer and my most recent sketching trip near Tucson, AZ, just last Christmas.  Saguaro Sketch Journal. I won't be selling these as print versions but they're available from my website as downloads if you're interested.

The desk swivels on a metal post.

The desk, swung out of the way.

But back to Mouse, I know that motorhome repair is not quite the subject you expected to see on this blog. I would not have imagined it myself until I got this wild idea and decided to act on it.  Dan'l spotted Mouse online and went with me to check her out. I figured I could fix her up, and amazingly enough, I have gotten her into a livable state.  By the way, I named her Mouse because I intend to be "mousing" around in her, exploring interesting places and things.

My plan for new chair at new desk

Anyway, on my trip to Idaho I went up through the mountains around Crater Lake and across Oregon's High Desert, mostly at 55-65mph, up and down 6% grades ~ that's pretty steep, but we could puff up them at 35mph ~ and we averaged 16.9 mpg during the trip. Wow!

However, I did have two blowouts and subsequent tows to the nearest tire shops. Luckily, both blowouts happened within 15 miles of a tire store, and I have determined that the tires probably popped because they're at least 15-20 years old.   But I was lucky that each blowout was one of two dual tires on each side, so I didn't even feel it (I sure HEARD it though!  BANG!).  

Mouse gets a ride to the tire store.

My insurance covered most of the tow expenses, but I was  lucky the tires didn't blow 100 miles from a tire store, which COULD easily have happened and would have made a serious dent in my joy supply. Central Oregon is wide and sparsely populated, and tire stores are few and far between.

 So.... Is Mousie serving her avowed purpose? Well, judge for yourself.  I camped overnight, both coming and going to Idaho, at Chickahominy Reservoir out in the desert near Burns, Oregon. It was only $4/night with my Golden Age Pass.  Here are some notes out of my journal, and a little sketch I made at my campsite while eating my dinner cooked in Mouse's little kitchen:  

• "...As I sat, enjoying the desert breeze and watching the stripe-winged night-hawks dip and soar overhead, my eye caught a flicker of movement in the rocks directly in front of me. Out from behind a boulder popped a Long-tailed Weasel (hey, weasels really DO pop!) which skittered, snaky-long, between, around, under and over the rocks, hunting for whatever it is that weasels desire for dinner. One scarcely EVER sees a weasel, and I got to watch it hunting for three or four  minutes before a pair of red-winged blackbirds began diving and harassing it until it flicked off over the edge."

Chickahominy Reservoir in central Oregon

Just offhand, I would say my sketching venture got off to a good start. With all the things I saw (pelicans, killdeers, ducks and grebes, muskrats, chipmunks and ground squirrels night-hawks, cottontails, jackrabbits, (I heard sandhill cranes), and lovely desert wildflowers even in July, I could have stayed a week or more just sketching.  

Not a pretty sight ~ this tear is 5" long.

But everything good must end, and while returning home I experienced my second tire blowout. Now, in a car, this would have been scary. But Mouse has dual tires in the rear ~ two on each side ~ and when one blows the other one takes up the slack and you don't feel a thing.  

Sunset at Chickahominy Reservoir

So I pulled over and called a tow truck using the cellphone Dan'l had loaned me (yes, this Luddite actually used a cell phone, and I guess I'm going to have to get over my prejudice and get my own if I'm going to be out and about on sketching trips. I would have sat waiting a l.o.n.g time for help, twice, without that phone).  

I've learned a lot on this trip, and I am totally enthusiastic about my new wheely-home. Later on I plan to head for either the mountains near Crater Lake or over to the Pacific coast for a week of sketching and journaling. Or maybe just being lazy.  But I need to replace the front tires first. If a front tire blew, it possibly could run me off the road.  I don't need that!

Jesse on Mouse's couch.

P.S.  Jesse has adopted Mouse as his new vacation home (but only when she's in the driveway since he hates moving vehicles). Here he is inspecting his new couch upholstery.
I'd love it if he could come with me, but he's a scaredy-cat and freaks out when he sees scenery galloping past the windows.  Alas....

So, until next time ~ and I'll try to not bore you with RV stories when you're expecting sketch-journaling words.

Saguaro Sketch Journal is uploaded at LAST!

Here is is April, and I have just, today, uploaded my sketch journal adventures-plus-tutorial for the sketching trip I took LAST DECEMBER!  Good grief!

My new sketch journal!

It isn't that I'm such a goof-off (although there's some of that, too, I admit). The main reason is that instead of making one e-book I created two, and both of them ended up being around 64 pages long. 

An original ballpoint pen page.

That's a humongous lot of work, and it took me awhile to get them written, tweaked, proofed, and the webpages and links on my website created and, well, have a life at the same time.

It happened like this.....When I was camping out and sketching in the Saguaro forest near Tucson in December, it was so cold at night (in the low twenties!) that I couldn't do as usual and watercolor-pencil-paint my sketches in the evenings in warm and cozy lodgings. 

So my sketchbook arrived back home in a black-and-white state, and after scanning all of the sketches into my desktop publishing program, I had to decide what to do about the situation.

My original bighorn sheep sketch in ballpoint pen ....

It's a lot more fun to paint your sketches on the spot, and I really wasn't in the mood to do it in January when I got home, but everyone I showed it to said it needed color, so I sat down with my watercolor pencils and waterbrush, resigned, to do the deed.
But it was more fun than I expected.

...and painted with watercolor pencils.

In fact, it was a blast. And I realized, after I had painted a couple, that if I were to scan each step as I did it, alternating working and scanning all the way through each painting, I could create a really neat tutorial with step-by-step instructions for painting individual subjects. 

A page from the workbook.

So, I recorded and made notes as I painted twelve of the sketches, with three to five pages of instruction for each one and scads of scans and tips for anyone wanting to try their hand at it.  

It  is really detailed, from selecting the color of pencil, to planning the color scheme,  to demonstrating the strokes (pencil and brush) needed to get the specific effects I was envisioning, and lots of other stuff besides. I made it into a sort of coloring book, so if you want you can print out the black-and-white original drawings on heavy paper and paint them using the tutorial as a guide, just for the fun and practice.

My new  workbook

When I was finished, working on both books at the same time, I had created my usual sketch-journal-with-tutorial (see at the top of this blog), plus the step-by-step workbook of twelve sketches-to-paintings at left. And [TA-DA!] here they are.

I've just finished the upload so that if you want to see the results all you have to do is go to my website and read about them ~ and if you want, order them.  Here's the location of the sketch journal, Saguaro Sketch Journal and here's the step-by-step painting workbook, The Canyon Country in Watercolor Pencils.

The scene from my first night's campground.

They're both crammed with sketches and paintings and I'm very pleased with them both. I'm especially happy to get a new workbook out, as it's been awhile since I put up a new workbook on my website. This workbook is quite a bit longer and more dense than previous ones, and it will be useful to artists, even if they aren't particularly in love with cactus and coyotes. The techniques for painting with watercolor pencils are the same no matter what the subject.   

* * * * * * * * * 

BTW, I began an new exciting (and ongoing!) adventure on the first of March that I will tell you about in the next blog. It's something totally novel to me, so I'm eager to share it with you!  Stay tuned!

Tucson Camping

My last day at Gilbert Ray campground

I was really sad to leave Gilbert Ray County Park Campground. It is the nicest campground in the area, in my opinion, and I would have stayed there to sketch for the entire time given a choice. 

But since there was no choice, I headed across Tucson to Catalina State Park campground on the east side.  Now, if you don't mind flat and urban, this is a fine campground, and it is right up against the Catalina Mountains, which boast wonderful hiking trails. Additionally, an adjacent nature trail which heads sharply uphill from the trailhead cluster just up the road is an excellent place to sketch and see nature. But the camp itself is a little more populated than I like.   

Eye-level canyon wren nest in a cholla

One of the attractions on that trail is a cholla cactus right beside the trail with a cactus wren nest in it.  That wren must be one of the bravest birds alive, since the nest looks out directly on the trail an arm's length away, at human eye level.  That would alarm ME!

A madrone tree at my house.

The Sonoran Desert has some pretty nifty trees, one of which reminds me of my bare-naked madrone trees at home with their cinnamon-orange skin. Here's a sketch of one madrone's trunk from my last summer Sit Spot sessions.  The desert look-alike is actually green, and its Spanish name, palo verde, reflects that, meaning "green stick."

Palo verde trunk

The skin is a lovely shade of chartreuse, and wrinkles and folds just like human skin, just as the madrone skin does. Other than that, though, they don't have much in common, because the palo verde tree has spike branches and twigs with miniature leaves, some no larger than 1/8" (see image).  

Palo verde twigs

Even though it's winter, many of the palo verdes still retained their tiny leaves. 

My spot at Colossal Cave campground

The next night I tried out the Colossal Caves campground, which is REALLY wild. You have to repeatedly cross washes to get to some of the campsites, but they do have water and restrooms. I was the only one in my campground most of the time. 
The next day while exploring around the campground I discovered two saguaros cuddling other plants ~ a small soaptree like the ones by my chair here, and a little prickly pear cactus. While I was sketching the one with the prickly pear, two mule deer approached within twenty feet of me before one saw me.  

Stalactites at Colossal Cave

Here's a sketch of the doe. She knew SOMEbody was there but couldn't spot me.

Since I was so close, I visited Colossal Cave. I was quite pleased with the tour. There are miles and miles of tunnels not offered on the regular tour, but the ones you do see have some interesting features.  
It was pretty cold staying down in the creek bottoms, though, so I opted for a nice night in a motel to get warmed up, have a good night's sleep, and a bath.  Since it was so cold at night that I had been sleeping in all my clothes, it was also quite nice to get "refreshed" as well.  

Hohokam mortar,  inset is from above.

Hohokam mortar and side-view

I  stayed overnight at Catalina State Park again so I could sketch on the nature trail some more and I was really glad I did, because I spotted some amazing Hohokam mortars, holes drilled into huge flat boulders where the Native American women once ground seeds, grains, and other foodstuffs.  I sat where they would have sat and sketched a mortar hole which had been worn into a deep V by generations of patient women. It was humbling.  

Javelina diggings at a kangaroo rat mound.

I couldn't identify these.

I saw a lot of neat tracks during my two weeks visit, from dainty ground-squirrel tracks to cougar pug marks (the cougar track was confirmed by a ranger), and I found a great "track tale" written on what had been a kangaroo rat mound by digging javelinas. I devoted a whole page to that in my sketchbook.
 

My catfood can camp stove.

I had been using my little catfood can camp stove nearly every day to make coffee and heat dinners, and Idiscovered that it made a wonderful ice-breaker of the conversation sort. I showed it to a number of other campers who thought its portability and simplicity were pretty cool. I met a lovely lady, Mimi, over that little camp stove.

Monument Wash, Saguaro Nat. Pk.

Saguaro National Park (East) lies adjacent to Catalina State Park, and I spent an afternoon hiking up Monument Wash then returning on the Loma Verde trail, sketching a verdin nest and seedpods along the way.  

I had been keeping track of the weather on the cell phone Dan had lent me. When the weather app forecast snow for my final night, I chickened out and opted for a motel again.  Mimi helped me jam my two extra blankets into my suitcase, and I gave away my camp chair and everything else I couldn't squeeze in, then tidied up the Jeep to remove the traces of my two-week residency. Then it was over: rental car returned, plane caught and flown, my car retrieved at the home airport and driven home.   

Sunset in the saguaros.

In retrospect, I will, in the future, either go to the warm tropics for a winter break, or I will go even further, to bask in summer in the southern hemisphere ~ some place where the days are longer than the nights, anyway.  That is my pledge to myself.  Hope I'm smart enough to remember that! But I'd love to go back to Saguaro country in the spring. It must be absolutely heavenly when the cactus blooms and the ocotillos burst out in red flowers.  [I apologize for the hackneyed sunset picture. But you have to admit, it IS pretty striking, isn't it?]

Tucson Sketching Trip

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

Some people like their Christmas to be decorated with snowmen and conifer boughs weighed down with snow. I prefer to see lots of green, preferably steamy palms and junglish things.   

Christmas Cholla

This year I compromised and opted for a sketching trip with saguaro cactus and Christmas cholla. Contrary to my high hopes, I didn't escape the cold much, it being 25° several nights as I camped out in my rental Jeep SUV in the desert.

Saguaros in the Catalina Mts.

Actually, I had a lovely time during the days, when the temperatures ranged between 50° and 70,° but suffice it to say that spending from 5:30pm (when the sun goes down) till 9am the next morning (when it has finally gotten warm enough to bear getting up) inside an SUV is not ideal.

My "camper"

I had come prepared to camp out, with a little cat food can camp stove which I had made myself from an aluminum cat food can and a paper punch after finding instructions on YouTube given by this tattooed dude. 

The stove is sitting  in the skillet

BTW, you only need about half as many holes as he suggests. I also figured out that if you put the stove in a skillet and shape aluminum foil around it as I show in my photo, it makes a fine windbreak and confines the heat to where you want it. In the skillet, the flame is protected and the skillet and foil also protect your surroundings from wayward heat.

The stove here is out of sight UNDER the flattish pan, which is half full of my coffee water heating up, and the uppermost can is full of ravioli which I was warming up in the hot water.  It's a super stove in terms of being lightweight and taking up NO space, but you should experiment with it before you go camping to figure out how much fuel you'll need.  If you can't find Heet, denatured alcohol will work, but it's much more expensive. 

Ready to sketch

I sketched and journaled every day. While most of the time, I simply sat to sketch in the sand or perched on a rock, there were times when fallen cactus spines made this unwise. If my canvas chair was handy (I bought it on arrival for $6.95 at a sporting goods store) I'd set it up and draw in comfort. I sat in front of this cactus for a long time, sketching its demise, an astonishing sight.

Dead saguaro

For the first week, I stayed in Gilbert Ray County Park, a marvelous little campground west of Tucson in Tucson Mountain Park. I could step off my campsite into seemingly untouched saguaro/cholla/mesquite desert, and sketch to my heart's content.  

The people there were super nice ~ both the people who looked after it and the people in RVs and campers whom I met there: Jim, who offered me a heater to use during the cold nights, and made coffee for me in the chilly mornings; the folks who needed an aspirin for a hangover, then invited me for breakfast and admired my sketches...I met a lot of nice people on this trip.

Just across the road from the campground was a series of nature trails with lots more sketching opportunities.

Don't swing your arms whenwalking oast chollas!

This Barrel Cactus was one of many along the trail.  And walking along a trail through the Cholla was an other-worldly experience!

Daniel had lent me a cellphone for this trip, which meant that I could access my email and explain to people trying to order books that I would take care of it after my return in January..


Since I was spending as many as 14-15 hours in the "camper," I had brought along a tablet upon which I could read ebooks. That proved to be a real sanity saver as I could wrap up in my sleeping bag and fleece blankets to keep warm and read through the many long hours of darkness ~ after I finished sketching, of course.   

In the future, I'm determined to choose winter destinations SOUTH of the equator,  where it will be summer and there are more daylight hours than dark hours. Fifteen hours is WAY too long to spend cramped up in a car, and at 25°. there aren't a lot of other options when you're 20 miles from town.  Like I said, the days were lots better than the nights. Ah but the days!!!!

 

Great Horned Owl

Harris's Hawk

Gilbert Ray campground is fewer than ten miles from the famous Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. If you ever get a chance to go there, don't miss it.  One of their features is the raptor free-flight performances at 10 and 2 every day.  

I was able to photograph owls and hawks that you normally would spend months or years (or never) getting this close to.  

 These photos were taken during the birds' performance. They were all flying free in the desert, under no restraints. But if you'll notice, the Great Horned Owl and the Redtail perched on the same branch.

Barn Owl

Red-tailed Hawk

Great Horned Owl

     









There were other marvels at the Museum, as well.  I had a great time sketching the Desert Bighorn Sheep.  I suppose I MIGHT have seen Bighorns if I'd hiked to the top  of the mountains east of Tucson. But not likely.  

Their enclosure is about as real-looking as you're likely to find, and they're apparently contented, the ewe having produced offspring more than once while living there. She's the one with the smaller horns.   
There is other wildlife that chooses to live in the museum, as well, it being such a nice place.  This lovely cardinal apparently lives on the grounds.  
 
Unfortunately, campers are only allowed to stay at Gilbert Ray for seven days, then they shoo you out to make your way in the world.  There are more campgrounds east of Tucson, but before I went I visited Saguaro National Park (West) to see the famous Hohokam Petroglyphs, which perch on a nearby hilltop.

Hohokam petroglyphs

Here are the sketches I managed, peering around others as they came to respectfully examine them. 

I wonder what these petroglyphs were meant to convey.......... 

I ended up with twenty five pages of sketches ~ not bad for about twelve actual sketching days (that doesn't count flying-to-and-fro time or provisioning days spent at the grocery and sporting goods stores). 

In order to do as much sketching as possible, I didn't take the time to color ANY of the sketches. Evenings in the cold car didn't lend themselves to artwork because cold fingers don't easily grasp the ballpoint pen, which was my tool of choice here, or watercolor pencils, which I had intended to use for color.   I have my photographs from which I can add color here at home if I want.  But do I want to?  I may leave this sketchbook black-and-white. 
 
 Uh oh, I've run out of time.   More later!  Any comments about color or no color?