another urban sketch that wasn’t

Over the years that we drove from Kansas to Houston visiting our kids, we often passed the Swamp Shack on HWY 290 in Waller, TX. Every time I saw the 25-foot long crawfish, ridden by a mannequin dressed as a cowboy, I wanted to pull over and sketch it on-site. But never did.

After moving to Brenham, TX we still passed it driving to Houston. The restaurant was no longer in operation and the building was turned into a temporary fireworks stand (Fireworks are BIG in Texas: New Year’s, Texas Independence, Cinco de Mayo, Fourth of July . . .). I still wanted to stop to sketch it, but my husband is not a sketcher and we were always on our way to somewhere.

Then this past December, the crawfish was gone. There seems to be some work going on to the building but probably for a totally different use. So I sketched it from a photo just to remember it by.

I found this photo online taken in May 2019 — the cowboy’s hat was mostly gone and the whole thing was badly weathered but it still made me smile.