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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