It's June and I'm Going to Disneyland!

Happy June 1!  I know it's not officially the start of summer, but if it's June, it's summer in my book.  So I'm feeling in the mood to travel and have fun. And what's more fun than Disneyland?!

Actually, I'm not going anywhere.  My dog Gemma, sweet aging girl, is having some back problems, and she needs to stay relatively inactive.  When I board her to go somewhere, she's around other dogs and she gets excited and agitated and wants to jump around like a maniac ... which is how she hurt her back in the first place.  So her back issue means no boarding, and until I find a house/dog sitter to stay with her if I go away overnight, I'm home.

So my sister Laura and I hatched a plan.  We decided that instead of going to Disneyland, we'd sketch Disneyland from photos.  We'll avoid the crowds and the expense and the hassle of getting from here to there, and we'll just work from photos and immerse ourselves in looking at Disneyland up close and personal through sketching.

I've been poking around online, and it's amazing the photos you can find.  Google Earth provides more, and of course I've got my own scads of photos from trips from years past.  It has been really fun just hunting up photos of my favorites places and sites, and each time I've come away feeling happy and relaxed, as if I have had a mental mini-vacation.

This idea was inspired, in part, by a wonderful art group called The Virtual Paintout.  Bill, the host of the VP, selects a location somewhere in the world each month, and participating artists agree to use Google Maps to find a scene in the designated location and draw or paint it, then post the original shot and the art on the blog.  I've only participated once -- Detroit -- but I had such a good time exploring a new place via Google Maps that I feel as if I've sat right in front of the Motown Museum and spent time there sketching.

So today, I'm off to Main Street in Disneyland to see what grabs my attention.  My rule for myself for this Disneyland sketching "excursion" is to work with colored pencil.  I've rarely used it (except for fill-in-the-space coloring when I was a kid) so it'll be an adventure and a learning experience. 

I have my virtual E-tickets and hand stamped and I'm on my way.