My New Year's resolution for 2017 was to try to do something different at least once a month. Even though I continued to do a lot of hiking and traveling in 2017, I consider going to different places qualifying as doing something different. And whenever I go some place, I always take my sketchbook with me. So since I don't have any photos different from the ones I've already posted to my blog, I thought I'd do this review by showing of some of the drawings I made this past year.
I started out New Year's Day at a state park in Fort Payne, Alabama. Alabama is usually a place I'm driving through to get some where else, so I thought it was a great place to start off my New Year's resolution of trying something different. Unfortunately, it rained most of New Year's Day, so while we were able to get in a hike (wearing rain coats), I had to do my sketching from the window of the cabin.
Then it was on down the road to Florida for 2 months. The white sand beaches along the Gulf are some of the prettiest I've ever seen. But even though there are lots of days warm enough to lay out on the beach, there are also days cold enough for the frost to nip the leaves on outdoor plants. Luckily it was warm enough most days to ride my bike along the shore.
Florida hiking trails tend to be a little soggy due to all the low-lying swampy areas, but they still have some pretty state parks. Courtney joined me for a week and we visited a few and did some sketching together. One of the things that I like about Florida is the ability to get good shrimp and grits. Yum!
I took a couple online painting classes this year. It was about mid-year that I decided to try painting little snippets of a scene rather than whole buildings. It's a little quicker and frequently less intimidating than trying to capture a whole scene. Plus if I'm sitting indoors at a Starbucks's (because it's too cold to go outside), I can make something that isn't really all that interesting look better.
Bruce and I went on some local adventures in the spring - Echo Bluff State Park for our anniversary, Arrow Rock State Historic Site on a drive back from Kansas City, and Kimmswick for the
Strawberry Festival.
I worked a couple STEM conferences this year - one in Los Angeles and another in Columbus, OH. Bruce and I drove to Columbus taking the "long" way to get there through Shenandoah National Park. I can officially say I've hiked the Appalachian Trail, though I only covered about 10 miles in 3 days. I don't know how anyone has the stamina to hike all 2,181 miles.
We took another bike trip in August to the Quad Cities, mostly because the mosquitoes are too vicious in the summer to go hiking. Summer is my favorite time to paint, because you can sit outside on a park bench undisturbed (especially early in the morning).
When autumn rolled around we went on a 10-day inn-to-inn hiking trip through the Cotswold's in England. I'll have to say that this was a painter's paradise, especially for a person like me who loves to sketch old buildings. I was able to get in a little sketching on most days, but because of the inn-to-inn nature of the trip, we had to keep walking if we wanted to have a place to sleep at night.
On the way home we took a transatlantic cruise. Our ship made a few stops in Southampton, Lisbon, Belgium, and Bermuda, but there were usually so many tourists, it was hard to find a quiet place to sit. It was even harder to sketch onboard ship, since we were rocking back and forth from hurricanes Irma, Jose, Katia, Lee, and Maria (goodness was it a turbulent year).
So I ended the year falling back into my usual patterns - lunch with friends at Panera's, afternoon walks to Starbucks's, and road trips to Chicago, Kansas City, and the Northwest. And we're celebrating New Year's tonight with dinner at Mia Ranchito (third time this month). What can I say... I'm a creature of habit.
