steph-inks.com

Hi, I’m Steph! I’m an urban sketcher on the weekends, a data engineer by day, and a clumsy Japanese-English translator in the meantime. 宜しくお願いします〜


Blog

  • Mechanicsburg Art & Wine Walk 2025

    Hiding from the rain (that never came) at the Mechanicsburg Art & Wine Walk, I painted this indoor scene of Revolutionary Hot Sauce while enjoying lots of great conversation. I love how artistically curious people are in this town! Great day; can’t wait for next year! Materials: Himi jelly gouache on Arches hot pressed watercolor…

    Mechanicsburg Art & Wine Walk 2025
  • Half-dome

    An ink illustration of Yosemite’s Half-Dome, completed for my sister on her birthday. I’m having lots of fun with grayscale ink-washes lately. This sketch of a local bookstore was almost a practice run for inking Half-Dome. Returning to my ink pot and dip pens was also a refreshing change of pace after many recent outings…

    Half-dome
  • Urban sketching in Midtown

    This was a very enjoyable morning, sketching the outside of the bookstore in Midtown, chatting with my fellow urban sketching enthusiasts. The abundance of lines, parallels and overlaps had me feeling a bit overwhelmed as I got deeper into this sketch. But in the end I somehow managed to keep all those lines in order!…

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    Urban sketching in Midtown
  • View from an afternoon hike

    Every time I walk this trail, I’m enamored by the sudden appearance of the blue ridge in the distance when the trail breaks onto this field. And every time I’m disappointed by the inability of a phone camera to capture anywhere near the beauty of the scene. This time I tried to capture it with…

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    View from an afternoon hike
  • Art museum clock

    Our urban sketching meetup was held in the local art museum on this rainy day. This clock caught my eye with its sculptural ornament and soft green highlights. Lines: Lamy Safari fountain pen with F nib and Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink Colors: Prismacolor colored pencils; ink wash with Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink in Pentel Aquash…

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    Art museum clock
  • Riverside garden

    This ridgeline over the river is one of my favorite sketching subjects.

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    Riverside garden
  • Ren Faire market

    A doodle while waiting for some friends to arrive at the Renaissance Faire. It was challenging and fun to capture the moving crowd.

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    Ren Faire market
  • Hand with gold ring and peach

    For a friend’s birthday. Painted in jelly gouache on Arches hot-pressed watercolor paper while watching a long-play of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This took longer (6-ish hours) than most of my gouache paintings of the same size, because it took many iterations to nail the proportions of the hand.

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    Hand with gold ring and peach