Summer Lake with Mari

I spent a marvelous time in Summer Lake, OR on a five day sketching trip. Our leader was Mari Le Glatin Keis, who is just great! She takes care of the lodging, food and plans for the daily outings. I have linked her web site here on my blog. Check her out, she also does trips to Spain, France and Mexico and she has a book coming out in July.




The wildlife in the refuge was amazing. There are 254 species of birds in the area. Sometimes it was like they were posing for us and other times we were actually sketching on the fly.










Views of the trails, marshes and around the grounds of the lodge. I really like these little grids and the small memories they can give you.

These are all in my 5" x 7" Robert Bateman sketchbook and are ink and watercolor. Mari had us prep pages each morning before setting out for sketch walks. I had never done this before and was greatly suprised to find that when it came time to sketch, the pages were almost perfect. I did add some extra color on top of the prepped pages.

Little framed windows are also a great way to sketch a postcard of the moment. The plants and foliage were also very beautiful. There were wonderful, large irises around the lodge in great colors.

We stopped at the small local post offices each day and ask for a cancel stamp to date our pages. I also added the population of the area on the page. Fort Rock was a whopping 34! We walked part of the Medicine Man's trail, visited Fort Rock, went in the hot springs, sketched in the wildlife refuge and shared our books and many laughs over wine and snacks every afternoon.

I can't wait for Provence in October!