Paper and Threads

I would never have thought of photos of yoga classes/instruction books for my figure drawing practice during 2007.  But Christeen http://christeensblog.blogspot.com/ on the EDM group has some great yoga sketches that she did and I found a perfect second hand book to use for photo images.  I won't stop sketching ballet dancers, although I don't upload many of them because I'm copying sketches by Donald Hamilton Fraser that I bought at the Royal Academy of Art.  I love his style and wanted to try to learn from him through studying his dancers - all of whom are caught during moments between practice or performance sessions.  Here are a few of the first sketches of yoga poses.

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Last weekend (3/16-17) we had freezing rain and snow - precluding even walking because of the winds.  This weekend was much warmer and New Yorkers ran a marathon in Central Park and filled the playgrounds on Sunday morning.  We met our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson in Hippo Playground in Riverside Park.  He loves the slides - and I was warm enough to sketch the hippo sculptures.  There are buds on the trees and the early spring flowers have stems about 4" above the ground.  This is as close as we have gotten to "fresh"  - wonderful fresh air to cure winter cabin fever.

There are two groups of hippo sculptures - that children climb on and adults sit on.  Here are two pictures that I took of the "animals."

Very few New Yorkers even pay attention when I'm sketching, and while I was sketching the hippo head with open mouth, a woman kept talking to her friend and actually put her foot right up into the mouth obscuring my view.  And I was standing not more than 4 feet from her! 

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In 2003 I purchased Winsor-Newton watercolors in primary colors and Anne Elsworth's book entitled Watercolor Skills Workbook - 10 easy lessons.  However, it wasn't until July 2005 that I partially retired and in September joined EDM.  I'm finally starting to slowly go through the 10 lessons - and doing a few of the exercises and projects.   

Lesson one recommends a basic palette and then outlines exercises to mix secondary and complementary colors.  I mixed Winsor lemon and French ultramarine to make green and then added varying amounts of cad red to mix complemetaries.  These were used to paint houses from a painting by Camille Pisarro (The Hermitage at Pointoise - posted March 13th).

 I'm now posting 2 projects from lesson 2: 

Project 1. Drawing a still life on mirror tiles: I took several items from my china closet and sketched them on a round mirror.  It was fun, but I'm not sure I would know this "busy painting" is because of reflections in a mirror if I didn't know it.

Project 2.  Painting the silhouette of buildings:  This is a painting of the Tower of London rooflines from a photo that I took during our October visit.  I loved doing this project and will probably paint more photos from the series of photos that I took that day!

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We had spectacular onion soup at the original Au Pied du Couchon in the old Les Halles area of Paris in November 1970.  The soup was delicious and the thick, melted layer of cheese extraordinary.  My husband and I perfected Julia Child's recipe from Volume I: Mastering the Art of French Cooking and bought these soup bowls  to use for the last minute cheese melting step and serving. 

After the Les Halles market moved out of central Paris and Au Pied du Couchon underwent a significant face-lift, the soup was the same, but the ambience of the old place was gone.  The marzipan pig was saved from my dessert plate from one of our later visits.  Somehow it survived the trip home and is now rock hard from years in the china cabinet.

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I adore candles and all varieties of candle holders, but now limit myself to using only closed varieties, i.e. globes of some kind, because of fire hazards.  My painting of the flame needs lots more work - I should have made it bigger and just concentrated on the wonderful colors that I saw.  However, I love this Dutch brass candle holder that we bought on the Rokin in Amsterdam in 1989.  The antique brass shop had/has been in the family for well over 100 years and was then managed by a father and son named Hart  This piece is estimated to be from ca 1770 and sits in a prominent position in our apartment for my constant enjoyment.

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We visited the Guggenheim Sunday afternoon to see the El Greco to Picasso exhibit before it closes on March 24th.  What huge crowds!  The lighting was wonderful - a combination of light from the skylight in the rotunda and the lights over each painting.  I was captivated by the view across the open center and stood along the balcony to sketch the scene.  I had to reduce the number of people in my sketch in order to really see the paintings.  The half circle in the center of the sketch is an open area overlooking a small adjoining gallery below.

I then quickly visited a few of my favorites in the permanent collection and sketched this small portion of Camille Pissaro's painting Hermitage at La Pointoise.  I love rooftop scenes and ! was looking for something to paint using a single color triad: cadmium red, Winsor blue, and Winsor lemon. 

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My husband and I love sitting in the front seat, on the upper deck, of a #11 bus as it winds it's way between King's Road Chelsea and Trafalgar Square/Strand, London.  We are on vacation when we are in London and have lots of time to really look at all of the buildings - which all look so cool from our aerial position.  I "examined" this clock on the front of the west entrance to Westminster Abbey during every busride, thinking about how much I would love to sketch it.  I had practically memorized all of the details - and therefore sketching from one of my photos was easier and more pleasurable.  I used my W-N gold gouache again for the gold on the clock.  Since I sketched it in my WC Moleskine, I had to simplify the center section of the clock because of space and it is not accurate!

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We thoroughly enjoyed the Hogarth exhibit at Tate Britain during our recent family visit to London.  Until I watched Danny's videoclip, I totally forgot about upside down drawing of people's faces - and just had to try it.  One of my favorite Hogarth paintings was one which had multiple faces of his family servants, so I sketched one of them quickly upside down.  While it is not a perfect representation, it does look like a face.  For small things I am grateful.

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Thirty-seven years ago, on our first visit to London, we visited the Royal College of Surgery Hunterian Museum.  It recently underwent a 3 year renovation and reopened in 2005.  The history of William and John Hunter and how the specimen collection was obtained is fascinating and they did a wonderful job presenting lots of relevant information about the times in addition to the many specimens.  One of John Hunter's prized possessions was his sketon of the "Irish giant" and I collaged a photo from the brochure on this page with the Royal College of Surgeons logo (in my own colors). 

I met Katherine Tyrrell <http://makingamark.blogspot.com/ > again to spend another "art day" during our visit to London.  This was my first visit to Bankside Gallery where they currently have the Royal Watercolor Society's 21st Century Watercolor exhibit.  I loved seeing the exhibit, the gallery, and the book store.  If the exchange rate weren't so dreadful for Americans visiting England, I'm afraid I would have purchased several new art books!  We then had lunch in the Member's Cafe at Tate Modern (which is adjacent to the Bankside Gallery) and sketched as we looked across the Thames.   Katherine sketched the area around "the Gerkin" and I faced the other direction and sketched Puddle Dock and the Blackfriars train station.  I love glancing through her sketchbooks when we meet.  She has wonderful pen sketches and many more detailed pages using colored pencil. 

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I usually have a problem doing the EDM weekly challenge when we are in London.   However, the light bulb from the lighted globe that we bought for our 3 year old grandson Henry for  Christmas burned out last night and I sketched it before taking it out to shop for a new one.  I'm having fun playing with a Winsor-Newton gold gouache and used it for the brass bottom on the bulb.  Although the photograph doesn't show it, it actually glitters on the page.

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