Paper and Threads

EDM Challenge #116: Draw Something Green:  I searched all week for something green that was interesting and exciting enough for me to use for this challenge.  I gathered up my apartment green objects for my Color Project Green month last year, so I was more interested in finding something in another environment.  Today I went over to the new Greek-Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and sketched the south end of the gallery for an hour.  Then as soon as I started to wander around the space, I found wonderful Roman glass from the 1st C. A.D.  This green glass vessel is only 6 inches high, but so beautiful!

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In 2003 I purchased a set of postcards of Leonardo DaVinci's portrait drawings during a visit to Vinci, Italy and his museum there.  One of the drawing exercises from a book I'm working through was to use a grid to reproduce a drawing and I decided to try it with a Leonardo portrait.  It was great fun - and I decided to leave my grid marks in place so I could remember the utility of the exercise and method.

More figure sketches from my Yoga "How-To-Book" - purchased only to use for figure drawing practice.  These are definitely challenging because of the extreme body positions and work very well for my daily sketches when I'm too tired to compose a more complicated daily sketch page in my journals.

This year I hope to draw many more figures to develop some basic skills - but still don't have time for organized life drawing sessions.  I bought John Raynes' book The Figure Drawing Workbook at Green and Stone in London and I'm working through the lessons and exercises slowly.  These are a few of the first sketches completed.  I'm doing them in my recycled book of Michaelangelo sonnets, so you'll see one very yellowed page that I rebound from the original book.  The figure sketched on the sonnet page is actually inspired by Posemaniacs.com - the Japanese site that Cully recommended in one of his EDM messages.  I'm trying to use regular pencils, colored pencils, Conte pencils, and watercolor so I can also explore different media and papers. 

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I named my blog Paper and Threads because I wanted to continue quilting while enjoying sketching and painting on paper.  It seemed like a good time to upload two quilts that I finished this year.  The quilt in the above photos is a very simple 9-patch wedding quilt that was hand pieced by family and friends for my oldest son and his wife.  I then put the top together and quilted it, adding lots of hand quilting in the plain squares.  I love the fabrics that my daughter-in-law picked out and it looks fantastic draped over their sofa which is almost the same warm tan color of the border fabric.

Two years ago, I used the blue fabric from this wedding quilt to piece stars for their first baby's quilt.  The wedding quilt was in progress for several years, but the baby quilt took precedence because I wanted it to be finished in time for the baby's arrival.

This is the second quilt that I finished in 2007.  It was machine pieced and hand quilted for my grandson who was born 6 weeks prematurely in London in December 2006.  The print fabrics are all French Provencal fabrics that I also used to piece a wedding quilt for his parents and two baby quilts for his older brother and sister.  I'm catching up, but I still have one more group wedding quilt to hand quilt for my other son and his wife. 

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I'm slowly working my way through Anne Elsworth's book and Lesson 3 is drawing "negative space."  This concept is never in my mind when I'm sketching and my spacing would be so much better if I could remember to combine positive and negative space. 

For the first exercise I sketched an old kitchen stool by just filling in the negative spaces.  I used a Derwent 4B pencil with a light wash.

For the second exercise, I trimmed a plant and taped the leaves randomly to a piece of paper.  Then I used an Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil to sketch the negatvie spaces.

For the last exercise, I created a kitchen "still life" and then sketched using a combination of positive and negative spaces. 

I hope that this practice will make me remember how useful it is to always look at the negative spaces when sketching.  I know it intellectually, but just don't "see" them when I'm in the midst of a sketch.

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Our general supermarket is one-half block away and I take frequent walks there to pick up a few items at a time.  We also have several specialty shops with produce and prepared foods 1-2 blocks away and a butcher, fish shop, and bakery within the same area.  Each of the stores has shopping baskets for those of us that walk there and only carry home small bags of groceries.  This basket was sketched from a photo that I took early yesterday morning when I was purchasing milk, yogurt and a banana for breakfast because Friday is the day we take care of one of our grandsons. 

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I had a great deal of difficulty selecting something from my everyday life that was ugly, kept for sentimental reasons, and worthy of a sketch.  Our almost 35 year old salad spinner, purchased by our first Nannie for our small kitchen in LaJolla, is now cracked, but still working.  It is really ugly, especially with a crack in the lid.  It is also probably vintage and nearly a first edition!  But I just didn't feel like sketching and painting it.  So I selected my very favorite, brown leather, pocket-sized Filofax - which was purchased new when we moved to New York City in 1993.  The snap on the small piece  which closes the notebook is broken, and the estimate to replace it was $50 approximately 5 years ago.  A new comparable Filofax was only $85 and I just wasn't ready to retire mine.  So I made a small quilted wrap for the notebook and added a long piece of velcro along the end to close it.  It is still my only calendar and general all-purpose  notebook and it travels everywhere with me in my purse.

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Goals for 2007:  I am annotating this list  - after each goal.  So far I think I'm on my own schedule and having lots of fun.

1. Continue to sketch/paint everyday in my large Moleskine watercolor sketchbook.  I have done at least one sketch each day although I upload only EDM challenges and an occasional other sketch each week.

2. Complete each EDM weekly challenge and try to expand my skills by what I choose to paint for the challenge.  I have done and uploaded each of the challenges.

3. Make plans for how I will use my new Eliz. I recycled book.  I'm currently considering using it for more London sketches -  from photos that I have taken during our visits.  I have another Cachet journal for London Volume 3 and decided that I want to continue to use the same journal type for all of my London travel.  I sketched Big Ben in my new Eliz recycled book, but still need to add watercolor.

4.  Recycle another book since I have more paper from my previous purchase.  This time I will look for an old New York book that I can use for special days out and about my own city.  I have made 2 more recycled books, one for New York and one for figure drawing and have at least one page done in each.

5.  Spend more time sketching human faces and figures.  I'm not sure yet whether I want to take any life drawing classes because I love the challenge of learning on my own.  I collected some copies of Holbein's portraits and Rodin's figure drawings from our museum visits this week.  And I now own two Hockney drawing/portrait books.  I will recreate some of these pieces from the 16th C, 19th C, and 20th C for fun and then immerse myself in my city and draw people to try to develop my own style. I am sketching ballet dancers and yoga positions to practice figure drawing.  I also completed some sketches of hands and faces.

6.  Read some of the new art books on my shelf - starting with Betty Edward's book on color.  I decided to work through Anne Elsworth's Watercolor Skills Workbook and completed 2 chapters, i.e. two full lessons - and posted the exercises to my blog.

7.  Make a "larger-than-journal size" watercolor of the house my daughter and son-in-law rented this year in London so we have a personal visual memory of this wonderful year when they return to New York mid-year.  Not done yet.

8.  Be a visitor in my own city and keep a Manhattan "travel" journal.  I now have scattered journal pages throughout my daily sketchbooks.  I have a new recycled New York book and two sketches done already.

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There are many wonderful, artistic fences in our neighborhood, but New York City is much too cold to wander around and spend time outdoors sketching.  So I opted for a really simple sketch of the fence for our apartment building service entrance.  Most apartment buildings in the city have a main entrance and a service entrance - or multiples of both depending on the building size.  The service entrance is used for deliveries and remains locked much of the day.  What is sometimes surprising to folks who live in other parts of the country, everything, or almost everything, can be ordered and delivered to your apartment.  My personal favorite is our fire wood delivery man and the Christmas tree delivery guys because I love the holidays in the city.  Even all of the very good restaurants deliver right off of their regular menu, although if I'm eating that well, I want to enjoy the restaurant ambience for those prices.

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I haven't found a watercolor journal that I really love - and wanted something similar to the Moleskine sketchbook, but with watercolor paper instead of that waxed cream-colored paper.  Last year I was intrigued with Jan Allsopp's recycled books and decided that I would try to make some for myself.  I searched for very old books that were still in good condition - but unloved - and really cheap.  Here are the 3 that I made from books published in the 1940s and sold in London for 1 pound and 3 pounds or in New York City for $1.00.  Interestingly, it was the 1929 New York State Tax Report book that I found in London on Charring Cross Road for 3 pounds.  I bought 7 different types of watercolor paper to mix in the individual signatures for experimentation and used a coptic stitch for binding, using Martha's excellent instructions. 

Fanfare for Elizabeth:  I wanted to create a travel journal for some London sketches.  I take many reference photos while I'm visiting and only do 1-2 pages in my Cachet London Travel Journals each day (not from photos).  I will probably be able to sketch from photos for many months and wanted to recycle a book that was very English.  During one of my London visits I read Philippa Gregory's book The Other Boleyn Girl so this book was perfect at 1 pound.  I saved the photos that were in the original book and added them to some of my new pages. 

Report of the State Tax Commission 1929 - State of New York:  This was the year of our Stock Market Crash so it seemed like a historically important book for my hometown.  It was a duplicate from a British Library - and probably doomed to remain on that bookshelf until it was completely discarded.  I plan to use it for a travel sketchbook as I play tourist in my own city.  I kept the original title page, complete with the British Library of Political and Economic Science seal for the front of my book and used a subway map for the end papers.

Sonnets of Michael Angelo:  This was my $1.00 book bargain - and scattered throughout the sonnets were Michaelangelo drawings!  I added as many original pages as I could in my signatures and used a map of Italy as the end papers.  The spine wasn't in great shape so I strengthened it with book cloth on the inside and hoped for the best.  I am working on figure drawing this year and will add my sketches/paintings to this journal.

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One of the joys of my visits to the Royal Academy of Arts in London is seeing the prints of Donald Hamilton Fraser's ballet dancers in the Museum Shop.  I purchased a "postcard book"  with 18 of his postcard size prints of dancers during one of my visits and I tried to capture his sketches in ink with watercolor washes as part of my figure drawing exercises.  I love ballet, I love dancers, I love sketches and painting of dancers, and especially his prints which I knew nothing about before visiting the Royal Academy this year.

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One of the watercolor projects from Chapter 1 in Anne Elsworth's book (Watercolor Skills Workbook - 10 easy lessons) is mixing watercolors to match master paintings.  I chose this Picasso piece (which was done in pastels) and used my regular palette of primary watercolors to mix each of the colors that I could see in the print.  This is a fabulous way to train your eye and I hope to do more of these projects as I work through her book.

I am now done with the projects that I want to do from Chapters 1 and 2 - and ready to move on.  I need to plan my way through these exercises and projects slowly if I want to enjoy them.  I think I was previously unable to appreciate the 10 lessons because I was trying to rush through the book.

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