Click on image to enlarge
Two and a half days after Carpal Tunnel Release surgery, this time on my right wrist/hand, and here I am taking it around the block for a thirty-four minute spin on my iPad in the Sketch Club app. Still transfixed by our trip to Scotland, I felt the urge to recall some of the extraordinarily ordinary chimneys we saw everywhere.
Sketch Club stats:
Scottish Chimney Stats
Great tour and tour guide at the Speyside Cooperage not far from Aberlour, Scotland. Funny thing, there’s one in Jackson, Ohio. Another funny thing, I painted the guide’s portrait and posted this up here at 30,000 on the flight from Edinburgh to Philadelphia.
Our guide at Speyside Cooperage
Let’s just leave it at that.
Outbound ferry leaving Oban at 9:49 am under windy and rainy conditions as seen through the main parlor’s windows, a quick, freehand iPad drawing in Sketch Club app using an Apple Pencil after breakfast.
Outbound Ferry
Click on image to enlarge it.
Yea, thanks to Storm Boelo and that 12-hour power outage it caused during our stay in Portree, Isle of Skye from October 22 – 26, 2026, I had some time to draw on my iPad – an opportunity to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
I’m not quite sure what happened to the pheasant’s long feathers.
Inspired by a drive earlier today through St. Andrews in Scotland.
Fore
Looks like Annyth caught me at the Ferryhill House Hotel Bar in Aberdeen, Scotland drawing “Fore.”
A Plain Buggie
“A Plain Buggie” Sketch Club Stats
Screenshot
Screenshot
Jorma Kaukonen has appeared on this illustroblog multiple times to one degree or another as you can see here. He’s legendary, not only around here in Athens, OH where he lives, but pretty much everywhere else. We’re lucky, we get to see Jorma and John Hurlbut playing around Athens pretty regularly, and what a treat it is! Getting to see Jorma and Jack Casady reunite as Hot Tuna, that doesn’t happen so frequently. Check out this clip of them in 1969. So, Annyth and I, thanks to some good friends who jumped on 3rd-row, Stuart’s-Opera-House tickets for all of us back in February, got to see Jorma and Jack doing what they do best; and they did that and more along with special guest, harmonicist extraordinaire, Ross Garren! I wish I had four ears instead of only two!
When my ears weren’t completely blown away by the music, my eyes would wander off and dwell on Jack’s expressive face. If I had brought a 25 lb. block of clay with me, I would have sculpted it right then and there!
That was Friday, July 17, 2026. The very next day I sat down with Jack, well, a photo I took of him, and spent some time with him and a few of his features.
Jack, rounded up to the nearest 100
Technical: I painted Jack’s “portrait” on my iPad Pro using an Apple Pencil and these apps: Sketch Club, Procreate, and iColorama. It’s pretty orange, isn’t it? Here’s the reference photo I took and used. Because of the lighting, things got pretty orange.
Reference photo… 🍊
Nevertheless, lot of fun!
Power & Formaldehyde
Another quick Sketch Club painting inspired, as it were, by the astonishing and brazen dismantling of the democratic experiment. See other Mitchposts here on portfoliolongo.
