Paper and Threads

In May 2002, my husband and I rented an apartment in Venice for our 35th anniversary and invited our family to join us for the week.  My daughter and her husband, my two sons, and their girlfriends (who are now my wonderful daughters-in-law) joined us for a very memorable vacation.  I love Venetian paper and immediately considered drawing this frame for the challenge, but I definitely didn't want to draw more portraits!  Therefore I sketched a photo of our Palazzo in Campo Santa Marina and "put" it in the frame.  The frame is wooden, but the design section is a piece of handmade paper that is set into the frame.  I loved that trip and just thinking about it makes me smile.   Today I decided that I really should put the photo of the apartment in the frame permanently.

Posted by Shirley at 7:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Exploring sketching and watercolor painting was one of my personal goals after I partially retired in July 2005.  I worked through the Challenges after I joined the EDM group in September, and then decided to try to sketch (with or without watercolor wash) every day in 2006.  I'm constantly searching my apartment for things to draw and fill in some days with a monthly color challenge or sketching a small, jointed artist model in various positions.  I have lots of patience for hand quilting - taking months to complete a piece.  But my sketches tend to be very fast, and not very precise.  I'm trying to slow down enough to really see what is in front of me but I need to balance this with the time it takes from each day's schedule.  So far I have at least one daily sketchbook entry since Dec 26th.  It was fun for me to sketch/paint the above wooden toys yesterday.  We bought them 30+ years ago for our first little boy and now they are part of our grandchildrens' toys that wait for them in our apartment. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)