Sketching in Action

In mid-August, my husband, sister-in-law, and I travelled to Prince Edward County for the annual Jazz Festival. On the second last day, we travelled south to the Milford Fairgrounds to hear "Paco Luviano and Friends" entertain us for the afternoon (listen to them in the video below).

While the performance was as remarkable as we had expected, even more so was the extraordinary amount of media attention, including high-end photography and several arms raised with smartphones filming every second of it. During intermission, I asked one of the performers why that might have been the case, and he was just as bewildered.

Media frenzy!

High tech camera and a sketch artist recording the performance

Even more extra0rdinary was the attention paid to capture the event by an artist, Tessa Clarke, who popped up the aisle and took a seat at the front near us, then began to unpack items from her backpack: a canvas card, a small jar of water, paper towel, pencil, pens, and travel watercolour kit. My eyes drifted from the band to watch her sketch and paint them in action. Holding the canvas card, she quickly sketched the group, and then began to apply watercolour - wow, she was really doing this! After a short while, she put down her brush, and resumed sketching in ink, adding in some conté and charcoal for shading.

Tessa Clarke sketching Paco Luviano (on bass) and Friends during the Prince Edward County Jazz Festival, August 2025. Volume on!

At intermission, she returned to her regular seat and I dashed after her, asking if I could see what she had done and to get her permission to include photos of her and her work in this post, which she allowed with enthusiasm. I was utterly gobsmacked at what she had been able to accomplish during the performance. In a later email, she confided: "To be honest, the light was so bad in the barn that I could hardly see them, so I “ sketched the music” and not what I saw!"  She also told me that she had made a couple more sketches which she gave to the group as a memento of the event.

About Tessa

Tessa lives in Kingston with her husband, and is retired now, after having been a family doctor for over 40 years. She draws or paints every day. While out painting with "The Bath Artisans", an Art group in Bath, Ontario, she whipped up the beautiful piece below:

Painted in watercolours by Tessa Clarke, September 2025, Bath, Ontario.

If you would like to see more of Tessa's work, you can contact her at: ctaclarke@yahoo.ca