Living the Sketchy Life in Mexico

Recently the Mexico Daily News featured an article on my urban sketching adventures in Mexico.  Although I don't entirely agree with many of the ways the writer interpreted my ideas on urban sketching it was nice to get a bit of publicity. Here are a few out takes:

Artist and teacher Susan Dorf has been drawing daily life in Mexico for a decade....For Dorf, sketching is a way to both be part of the action of a scene and yet keep a kind of journalist’s distance, allowing sketchers to be both participant and archivist. And if you think that after years of teaching and creating, sketching would lose this transformative force, Dorf insists that the experience is always fresh, no matter what the scene. And here is link to the article.

  

Vistas de San Miguel Book Flip Through

Here is a flip through of my bilingual book, Vistas de San Miguel, a Sketchbook.

10 years of sketching places and events in the streets of San Miguel de Allende,

now available on amazon.

Artesanos de Michoacán

Michoacán is well know for its master artisans. 

Here are a few sketches of some of the ones I have visited over the past few years.

Jaime Horta from Tocuaro carves delightful animals from wood and the reeds of lake Patzcuaro.

Felipe Horta is a master award winning mask carver from Tocuaro

At Taller Ahuanda in Santa Fe de la Laguna Nicolas Fabián and his wife Rosario
produce beautiful hand carved ceramics

Juan Valencia Villalobos produces intricately carved Maque
on wood and gourds painted with hand made pigments

The village of Ihuatzio is famous for baskets, animals, and furniture
made from the local reeds called Chuspata.

Sketching the Pandemic

               Some Sketches from the past few years during Covid-19 Pandemic

Cubrebocas

Ice Cream Break

Lining up for Las Vacunas

Social Distancing at the Mercado

Tree Removal Protests in San Miguel

Sketches from the passionate protests against the removal of 41 trees from Avenida Guadalupe
in San Miguel de Allende by the local municipal government.

Many children actively participating in the protest

The crowd urging the driver to step down.

Trees being lifted out of the ground

Machinery, police and protesters at a temporary standstill

People have been told the 22 year old trees will be transplanted, but no one believes it

                 

Today I went to say goodbye to the trees.

There were only a few left standing, adorned with ribbons and signs.

It was strange not to see anyone else there.

No protesters, no children.

Only the police and the workers with their machines,

and the people in the market passing by.

Hoy fui a despedirme de los árboles.

Solo quedaban unos pocos en pie, adornados con cintas y letreros.

Era extraño no ver a nadie más allí.

Sin manifestantes, sin niños.

Solo la policia y los trabajadores con sus maquinas

y la gente del mercado pasando.

The Art of Conversation

I love sketching people, and especially enjoy capturing the interactions between people in conversation. For one thing, they are usually holding still, and there is also the challenge of capturing the nuances of body language and gesture. The tilt of a head or position of the hands can often say more than words about the relationships between people.

Nothing like meeting up with a good friend at a local café in San Miguel and catch up over drinks.

At the beach in Oaxaca these hipsters were conversing long and hard about deep and meaningful topics. 

Our local urban sketching group meeting up at a rooftop restaurant to sketch and chat.

At the bus station this couple argue over maps and schedules while the daughter looks on.

This couple sat down across from me at a coffeehouse.  They don’t seem to be conversing, but the woman is actually issuing a loud running commentary on the news she is reading from her phone. The husband is obviously used to tuning her out. I think my dislike for them came out in the way I sketched them.

Choice and Chance- Sketching over Collage

I have always loved making mixed media collages and have been wondering how to incorporate them into my sketches. I decided to just randomly glue down pieces of different papers I have been collecting over the years onto my sketchbook pages and see where it would lead.

Some of the collage papers I used include various Japanese rice papers, printed papers from India, and photocopies of my own line patterns and text. and torn papers of watercolor washes.

I glued them to the paper with acrylic gel medium.

Part of the joy of this process is the chance way the sketching interacts with the paper background with lost and found edges, layering of lines and shapes, and randomness of how it all comes together in an unexpected way.

In these pages I used ink, white markers, watercolor and watercolor pencils.

This is a great exercise in incorporating choice and chance into a page, 

and a good way to let go and take a few risks.

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