Drawing Day was June 5. I was excited to join in on the fun, but there was one problem: June 5 I was spending half the day on a plane ride to Denver, where’d I’d be spending the rest of the week at a conference.

Still, a plane ride is a long time sitting still with few distractions, so I whipped out my sketchbook and was faced with the usual performance anxiety when faced with “draw something!” and no other parameters.

The result, a rather imperious cat and some happy little griffins. You can take a look at them in my RedBubble gallery, where there are some much nicer and far more finished works from other participants on display. What do you think? Do they deserve the full treatment and real finished drawing?

Later this week: something that’s not just a pencil sketch, I promise!

Denver kicked my butt last week. And all I can say is “thank you.”

I had an awesome time attending the InHowse Designer Conference in Denver, and it has left me visually and conceptually recharged. Overcharged, in some ways, since I’m still mulling over things I saw and heard. I attended some excellent speakers on various topics about design process and developed a minor hand cramp from taking notes. I’ll be typing up my notes soon so I’ll be able to comprehend them later. While there, I was able to meet up with some old friends and make some new friends, and had a wonderful time hanging out with all of you at InHowse and across the street at the How Conference. The photo above is me being slightly menaced by the giant blue bear outside the convention center, but it turned out he was just the curious type.

Outside of the conference, I walked. A lot. Denver was a great town to explore, and I’d like to visit again, even if it doesn’t include the massive HOWie pub crawl next time. The day I arrived I was able to swing by the Chalk Art Festival and People’s Fair, which were a nice surprise. Later I stopped by the Denver Art Museum and spent a few hours over at Red Rocks Park before my flight left on Thursday. And I took a ton of photos with my dinky little point-and-shoot camera, most of which are still dumped into a big heap on my hard drive. But here’s a taste of Red Rocks:

I’m back home brimming with ideas and inspirations, and more than a little worn out. This week I’ll be trying to assemble all the little bits and pieces floating around in my head and form them into concrete plans for the future. Meanwhile… time for a nap!

… is that weird? Oh well!

Last weekend I went to see Toad the Wet Sprocket at a very nice venue in Annapolis, MD, Ram’s Head Live. We had a table right in front of the stage. Between the good view, the nice convenient table, relatively good lighting, and the readily-available paper (namely, the daily specials menus) I just couldn’t help myself. 🙂

I’ve been trying to do more sketching from life instead of photos, but it’s hard with subjects out “in the wild” and moving around. I’m a bit rusty at that, I confess, most of my life drawing practice has been from still, posed models but it’s hard to capture gesture that way. The band was relatively easy since they’re moving but pretty much staying in the same place.  Even so, it was hard to get faces down; the dim lighting and the Strongbow probably didn’t help much either, although there was only minor damage done to my paper, lol. I drew some random pedestrians from a trip to DC last week that came out pretty well too, I’ll post them when I find them. Practice, practice, practice!

I DO have more flower trading cards to post, they’ve been sitting on my drawing board waiting to be scanned for at least two weeks. I’ll try to get some of them posted this week, but odds are slim: I’m heading out to Denver on Saturday for the InHowse Designers Conference, a part of the How Design Conference that’s targeted for in-house design groups like the one I work for. I’ve been trying to get things done at work AND put together a few things of my own to share while I’m there. (Oh, and try to bring a little bit of order to the house, so my husband doesn’t have to spend the better part of a week alone in a pig sty…) I have a feeling my to-do list is longer than my actual available time… isn’t that always the way?