Marie WheelerI’m back!
We had an amazing trip to Yosemite and San Francisco and after 11 days of awesome, I returned to work with spectacular jet lag. I seriously don’t remember it being that bad when I flew to Seattle, but that was over a decade ago and I’m sure feeling hung over was normal at that time. Enough about that. It was awesome and I’m so grateful for the opportunity!
Since this trip, and to be fair, all trips are based around photography and I don’t take more than documentary photos for the crew, I decided to build myself an ‘art kit’ for the trip. The kit consisted of the 24 pack of Derwent’s Inktense Pencils, a spiral bound watercolor notebook with 140 lb paper and a water pen tucked neatly into a glamorous gallon size Ziploc bag. At each stop, I would ask if the group would be there at least 20 minutes and if I got a yes, I would find a ‘comfortable’ rock and get to work.
Art Kit Redo: Seat pad: rocks are not comfortable; I’m considering making a combo seat pad/kit carrier. Really considering dropping the cash for the 72 pack of Inktense as lighter grays and tans would be super -useful. Eraser: the outliner pencil was useful, but unable to be modified.
The Inktense Pencils are incredible and easy to use. People kept commenting what a great artist I was and I still struggle to determine if it is me or the pencils. I will say that through the course of 11 days using them, I did significantly improve as I learned how to do detail work and blend colors more effectively. A.D. also helped me figure out composition, so by the end of the trip I wasn’t painting the subject in the dead center of the page.
The most incredible part of this experience with the Inktense art kit was the reactions of others. It was typically young children crowding around, figuring out what I was doing and at one point I had a piece that I had made a giant boo-boo on and offered to let a 3 or 4-year-old boy paint. He was ecstatic, his parents terrified.
On the plane ride home, a young girl and her family sat in our row and she was enthralled with the process as well. I later learned that she and her family watched me for nearly the full duration of the trip, around 5 hours. During that time, I was vaguely oblivious, and even when the mother asked me when I might put the work up for auction, I didn’t get it. I just told them what and where to buy the pencils and to go to YouTube for tutorials. Thanks, sleep deprivation.
If I had half a wit about me, I would have invited the young girl to switch seats with her grandmother and sit with me and do art. I would have then given her my work that she loved. I didn’t do either of these things and regret it terribly. This was the opportunity lost.
So, if you are the sweet, awesome family that sat next to me on the plane from San Francisco to Philly, contact me, I have something for you 🙂
