This past Saturday, I caught up with my sketching group at Italian Lake Park in Harrisburg, PA. I hadn’t been sketching with the group for a few months due to a nagging medical condition which I won’t share here. I was the first to arrive and chose a bench beside the lake with a view of the historic water fountain, titled Dance of the Eternal Spring. A Google search found that the fountain was sculpted by Guiseppe Donato in 1909 for Milton S. Hershey’s estate lawn. Hershey refused the artwork and after going through several locations, it was ultimately installed at Italian Lake Park in 1971.
I chose not to sketch the fountain at first, settling on a home with a large tree on the other side of the lake. I had decided to keep my sketching kit small and easy for the day. I brought along my small crossbody bag with assorted pens with two small sketchbooks inside. One of the sketchbooks was an Uglybooks pocket sketchbook with bright yellow paper, which I chose to sketch with that day. I used two of my favorite sketching pens, a Uniball Vision Micro and a Pentel Pocket Brush pen. I was able to create the four small sketches shown below. Nothing fancy, just putting in the old pencil miles as they say.
On Sunday, my wife and I decided to get out of the house for an early afternoon treat at a local coffee shop that was new to us. I really just wanted to do some cafe sketching while sipping some coffee and eating a sweet snack. Brenda had a chocolate banana peanut butter smoothie. I had half of an enormous chocolate chocolate chip muffin and a hot coffee with half and half. I didn’t bring anything extra to sketch with, I just used the field notes signature sketchbook that I’ve been carrying around in my bag for months. I also pulled out my Blackwing red pencil to sketch with. The sketches are below, again nothing fancy, just putting in the old pencil miles.
