Moment Catchers sketching workshop: Choosing love and light

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Last month, I had the great honor of teaching a sketching workshop at a conference for architecture students in Washington D.C. I loved sharing photos and reflections from the workshop with you here, most especially about the timely reminder it was for me on the power of looking up and paying attention.

This past weekend, I was just as honored to be teaching about sketching again, this time on the other side of the country — at the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers conference, in sunny Corte Madera, California.

I’m always grateful for any chance to share about my love for sketching with others — especially if it means we get to pull out our sketchbooks and do some sketching together! — but my weekend workshop at Book Passage was even more meaningful for me. I first attended the conference as a participant in 2012, which marked a big turning point in my professional journey, when founder Don George encouraged me to “do more with my sketches” (read more about that here).

I’ve been returning to the conference every year since — for three years as a participant, and another three years as a faculty member — and every year is a welcome chance to take stock of my journey and reflect on where I’m at…and most importantly, to see how I have indeed continued to try and “do more” with my sketches.

While I’ve taught a class on sketching at the conference the past two years, this year marked the first time we actually sketched together — and my friends, it was a seriously fun time.

Because of the conference’s tight schedule, and my opening intro that ran slightly longer than planned, we ended up having just fifteen minutes to create a sketch, leaving a few minutes at the end to come back together and share our sketches with each other.

In search of inspiration, we sprinted off from the classroom in every direction around the bookstore where the conference is held. I pulled up a seat at the same table where Canadian travel writer Carol Patterson was already hard at work, sketching a beautiful mason jar full of red carnations. I first met Carol at Book Passage in 2015; this year, she shared with me that she’d started sketching and now enjoys creating small sketches in her journal, layering them with written observations about where she is at the time.

I not only loved getting to sketch across the table from Carol on Saturday afternoon, but getting a peek inside one of her colorful sketchbooks as well:

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Equally thrilling was meeting Julia from Boston, who took part in our August Moment Catchers sketching challenge. Julia was the first Moment Catcher I’ve gotten to connect with in real life — my dream is to someday meet (and sketch with!) all of you around the world, so sketching with Julia was a small taste of what that will be like.

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And then there was Victoria Musgrave, a lovely writer from Toronto, Canada, who I also first met at the 2015 Book Passage conference. During the classroom portion of our workshop on Saturday, Victoria shared a few interesting facts with us, like how the Art Gallery of Ontario has stools that they’ll lend to anyone wanting to sketch in the museum.

How fun does that sound? I’ll meet you all there!

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Finally, after our oh-too-brief 15-minute sketching session, we returned to the classroom and I ended our workshop the same way I’ve loved ending each of my sketching workshops this year: By encouraging everyone to place their sketchbooks together on the ground and then circling around them, to see what everyone was drawn to create that afternoon and to talk about the experience.

I think I was just as surprised as everyone else in the sketching workshop to realize how much you can capture on the page in a mere fifteen minutes:

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My sketching workshop on Saturday was the highlight of the conference for me — but the day itself was also terribly bittersweet. I woke up to the news that awful, hateful events were happening in the very town I went to college in — the city of Charlottesville, Virginia — things that it is almost impossible to imagine that people could do to and believe about another human being. While our workshop in California was full of light, joy, and connection, across the country Charlottesville was becoming synonymous with movements marked by darkness, bigotry, and hate.

When I posted photos from our workshop to social media on Sunday morning, I couldn’t not acknowledge what had happened in Charlottesville the day before — and I feel compelled to acknowledge it here again, because the weight of such hatred has yet to lift from my heart. I spent much of last night reading articles and essays about the terror that struck Charlottesville on Saturday — especially this powerful piece in The New Yorker, which was even written by a former classmate of mine at the University of Virginia — though I’m still not sure how this will all play out in my home country.

What I do know, however, is that I spent my entire introduction of the workshop talking about how my sketchbook helps me create rich connections with other people when I’m sketching — people from every walk of life, race, religion, and culture.

I know that what I shared resonated with those in the workshop, and that they are excited to now have another tool in their travel writing toolkit for creating connections around the world.

And I know that all of you who are a part of our Moment Catchers community also believe in the power of human connection through art — we believe that we must always choose light over darkness; love over hate; and connection over prejudice.

The events in Charlottesville still weigh heavy on my heart, but I’m grateful for the people in my life, and for all of you in my community around the globe, who believe love must always win.

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PS — Chicago friends, I’m thrilled to be heading your way next week! I’ll share more details soon, but mark your calendars for next Wednesday, August 23rd, at the Old Orchard Mall in Skokie 🙂