Good Days

The last two days here in Chicago have been better. I "finished" my Bargue drawing in class, and I'm trying to get myself ready to copy a master drawing this week.

Thursday, I spent a good part of the day with my neighbor, Tom. He very kindly showed me around the neighborhood--places to buy groceries, the local park, etc. He even showed me where he went to junior college. Mayfair Junior College is now the Irish American Center, but it's a beautiful old building and Tom obviously has good memories of the place. Tom worked in an office supply company warehouse for 40 years before retiring a few years ago. He is spending retirement doing all the things he didn't have time for earlier in his life. He's an active participant at the local VA hospital events and classes. He took swimming classes for the first time. He's done ballroom dancing, and he's signed up for yoga in July. He quit smoking, joined a weight loss group and regularly meets with a dietician. Since retiring he's lost 70 lbs and walks around 10 miles a day. Tom also joined the local library's book club and invited me to the next meeting.

Friday after class, I met up with Mary, a Sketchbook Skool classmate I met on Facebook. She's awesome. I think she knows everyone in Chicago. You can't go anywhere with her and not have her bump into someone she knows. She drove around, pointing out areas of interest. We had lunch, then headed over to Evanston where we hit up the local Blick Art supplies store. After that we walked over to the lake on Northwestern U's campus to sketch. We had such a good time that we decided to catch a movie and grab dinner together.

Saturday, Mary picked me up and we headed to Chinatown to sketch and check out the plein air painters. Mary belongs to several plein air groups, so she knows a good number of the painters. Chinatown has great architecture to sketch. It seems that every building is ornamented with scroll work, or mosaic details. We sketched on the street for an hour or so. The great thing about Mary is how welcoming she is. A mother and two small children stopped to watch her paint and she had the kids sketching in her book within minutes.

We had lunch with a couple of the plein air painters there, Steve Puttrich and his wife,  Bobbie, before heading over to the Randolph Street Market. If I'd had my car with me, I would've loaded it up with mid-century modern furniture. There is a ton of it being sold there. As I said, Mary knows everyone. She stopped to talk with former neighbors before bumping into a colleague and her husband. Turns out the husband is Mike Waraksa. He's a collage artist who contributes illustrations to the NYTimes.

Now it's Sunday and I'm trying to gear myself up for class tomorrow. I'm feeling better and trying not to put so much pressure on myself. Hope I can make it the full six weeks.