Last week my girlfriend and I hiked a healthy portion of the Appalachian Trail within the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. We took advantage of the High Mountain Hut System the AMC runs up there. Our hike was incredible. After an initially dreary hike-in day, we enjoyed “the best weather of season” according to the locals. In total we spent 3 nights in the huts, 4 days on the trail.
I’ve created a web gallery of our pics. Several of you IM contributors will recognize the sites: still beautiful, awesome and amazing. (And the huts only make ’em better!)
As the sheer number of pictures will attest, Corrie and I took our time getting from hut to hut. That left very little free-time for stationary sketching. Fortunately I did fit in some painting on the shores of Squam Lake prior and did draw the kitchen accoutrements with the Madison Hut, as seen below.

While in Maine this past week, my brothers Stephen, Jamie and I each did mutliple drawings/paintings of a piece of driftwood. The drawing above came from the sketchbook. The images below are from some of the photography/video sessions we managed between swimming, hiking, canoeing and exploring the woods w nephew Finn.

This isn’t technically MY post, but the first by none other than Our Man in Japan, George Guida. George and I went to high school togteher and shared countless hours speculating on who would play Wolverine if they ever made an X-Men film, and discussing the finer points of Nicholas Hammond’s acting in the live action Spiderman TV show from the 70’s. We also made an ambitious film of our own (more on that later).

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These are some quick gouache studies I did in my sketchbook this summer while driving cross-country back from California. The upper right nad one is from Lake Tahoe, the rest are from Grand Teton National Park in the Great State of Wyoming.