Saturday was sketch national crawl day

isnt this a charming house and they really work at keeping their yard perfect....a little gem

So early yesterday morning Margaret W. and i met downtown at New Moon for a little breakfast and coffee(she) or tea(me)..scrambled eggs on the best croissant i have ever eaten....but terrible service...guess we go for the food and to sit outside on the main street of town...Broad Street...

after we ate we went to North Augusta to Connies House to pic her up and proceeded to drive around and look at all the charming bungalows and picked one out to draw...and paint...i was trying to paint fast and NOT over do the pictures...so i got two done for their one...before i forget Winsor newton watercolors in my wc moleskine...the big one
Funny this picture looks like i chopped the house in half...which is what i did...looked better thru the view finder...but i do like its looser style...

i also colored this dog sketch i had drawn the day before at my dentist...i find his office irritates me because of the lavish amounts of money spent on its over the top decorations...it looks like a house and this poor dog statue offends me the most...what a colassal waste of money...



after that it was off to look for more bungalows...


they wanted to paint these sumptuous hydrangeas but since i was driving i vetoed standing in the hot sun to draw them...but i took pics so they could if they wanted to do it later...these are some awesome hydrangeas!!

So then we set off for the Seven Gables Inn...a HUGE turn of the 20th century Elizabethan style hunting lodge no doubt built to entice Northerners down for the lovely fall and winter sports season...alot of hotels were built here during the early 20th century...

lately this one has had a checkered life as a restaurant...one owner refused to serve anyone but whites so the federal government forced him to get rid of it...

the next owner got convicted of selling drugs...so the government seized it and auctioned it off...now it mostly stands empty although people were there to give a reception...decorating the outside tables...its really a fantastic place inside but no one seems to know when its open anymore...

i cropped this one...which one do you like best? i cant decide...the pots i drew and planted with my paintbrush..i also pruned a little!:>

I was too lazy to draw the the three front gables so i drew the dried up pots on the brick fence...and planted them with geraniums....the summer has been so dry that everything there they had planted was drying up and blowing away or already dead except for
the big trees and some new bushes

the approach to Seven GABLES...There is also an old 50s style motel behind it that Masters Tournament visitors stay in

this was still too much to draw...we had to be at a meeting by one...