We had a couple of days off this past week so my wife and I packed picnic lunches and sketched at two different locations in Lancaster County. On Thursday we went to the Tanger Arboretum where I sketched in the dwarf conifer garden using my 12.9” iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and the Procreate app. Brenda decided to sketch in the beautiful Beech Grove area of the arboretum. I made a color palette to paint from by snapping a photo with my iPad and using the create swatch palette from photo feature in Procreate. I used the standard Procreate flat painting brush.

On Friday, we packed a picnic for the Columbia Crossing Visitor Center in Columbia, PA which is beside the Susquehanna river. The massive concrete arch bridge is a feature of the area that’s hard not to include in an outdoor sketch. I decided to sketch with a fountain pen in a sketchbook while we sat by the river. Brenda was not into sketching that day so she read out loud some historical facts about the bridge and other bridges that were in that location over the years.

It was great to be outdoors (though I think we’ve both picked up mild allergies over the years).

Week 29 - Kodak Baby Brownie Special that I've had for many years, not sure where I purchased this camera. A bakelite 127 roll film camera made from the late 1930's to the mid 1950's, it has an optical viewfinder, an improvement over the original Kodak Baby Brownie.

I used a roll of Triple Print film from a lot of expired 127 and 620 roll films purchased from ebay. Triple Print film was only to be processed by the Triple Print lab in Philadelphia, PA and as the name implies, triple prints would be returned to the customer. I took the Baby Brownie Special along on a Sunday drive through Lancaster County, PA, where we went on portion of the covered bridge driving tour.

After finishing the roll, I went on an online search for the best way to process the film. After reading the sparse information that was available, I decided to use Kodak D-76 with the same development time as with the Kodacolor X that I've used before. I found that the July 1970 expired film did pretty well in very bright sun, and I'm pleased with how those photos came out, especially the one of the Lititz fountain.

Negatives were scanned on Epson V500 Photo with a 127 film adapter purchased from ebay.