Festival Memories in Watercolor

Once in a while memories show up preserved in our sketchbooks. Not long ago I posted a travelogue
that showed a few of the dozens of watercolor postcards I've mailed to friends while traveling--good memories. And that watercolor travelogue of Rome from a few weeks before that came out an old trip journal that I had forgotten. The memories came back fresh and clear. This post isn't about travel, though.

Today I found some sketches from several different arts festivals I've participated in around the Midwest. Manning a booth all day at a festival can be boring, exciting, frustrating, and even exhilarating, but there is a lot of time to fill. Because of that these events provide lots of opportunities for sketching.

In 2015 I was an exhibitor at the Uptown Art Fair, an enormous multidisciplinary festival held in the Uptown district in Minneapolis. Just across from us was a food vendor called Chef Shack. Sitting as I was in front of my booth facing the truck, I had all day to work on this 3.5x10 painting. As a bonus, because we let them store a generator in our tent overnight, they gave me fresh donuts free for two entire days. An excellent trade!

There were quite a few food trucks not far from us at the Uptown show, and like Chef Shack they made for interesting sketching. These two were down the way, one a frozen yogurt concession and the other a general food truck. Both of them did brisk business.

That same year I showed work at the Omaha Summer Arts Festival, a big show traditionally held along Farnham Street in downtown Omaha. The parkland alongside was cooling and inviting, compared to the hot city street, and I made a few  watercolors of the trees and booths from the cool shade of the park. The show had to move to a new location this year.

In 2016 we returned to the Twin Cities for the Edina Fall into the Arts Festival, another big show in the Minneapolis area. Across the way from us was a sculptor who worked in steel. His display of a three-foot-tall steel seahorse caught my eye so I did this watercolor of the critter. The contrast of the dull warm metal against the blue background was very satisfying.

One of the shows we've done consistently is ArtFest Midwest which is a very large indoor exhibition every June during the Des Moines Arts Week. Unlike the other show downtown, this is indoors and doesn't suffer from heat, rain, wind or other issues. In 2017 I sketched a fellow in a shirt with remarkably colorful and puffy sleeves, topped off with a vest and high hat. He was across from my booth, meandering through the show. I extended the sketch and made it gradually less and less focused to show distance.

Sketching isn't just practice, and it's not just studying for bigger works. Sometimes it's a way make memories.