I spent my last day in San Diego painting with the Sketch Crawlers in Balboa Park. This is a splinter group from the main Urban Sketchers who meet once a month in Spanish Village, partly to sketch, but I think mostly to talk. It turned out to be a typical San Diego "winter" day - warm if the sun was out, but cool if it wasn't, so I'd put my coat on one minute and take it off the next.
A few weeks ago, I saw a video of an accordion-fold journal, so I decided to try one of my own. Basically, it's a wide piece of paper that's folded up accordion-style to make a book. And each time you go out, you just pick a clean spot on the paper to make a sketch.
It was fun making a collage of all the different places I visited while I was here, though a bit stressful. The first sketch I did turned out really well, so that put the pressure on not to mess up the rest of the sketches.
The one thing I didn't do until I was all finished was do the journaling. I think I like writing about where I was on the exact day that I do the sketch, because it's easier to remember details. This turned out to be a great way to document a month-long visit. As slow as I paint, I wouldn't be able to fill even one side if I were going some place just for the weekend. But it sure made a nice souvenir of this snowbird adventure.
