Paper and Threads

I continue to sketch figures - from many different types of images - for practice.  Some are inspired by famous artists, others are from photographs in current periodicals.  The only thing that can be said is that I probably am not destined to work in a series anytime soon!  My tastes are too eclectic and I like to try a little of everything.

Picasso One-Liner:  Taken from a small book of his that I covet.

Contour Drawing of a Fashion Photograph as I work on Contour Drawings for exercises in a Charles Reid book [The Natural Way to Paint]:

Yoga Photos:  I'm still working from photos in the very small second-hand yoga book that I bought last year.

Inspired by Donald Hamilton Fraser's series of Dancers that I purchased at the Royal Academy of Art in London:

Fashion Sketch:  Taken from a Bloomingdale's Newspaper Ad to try these techniques and proportions.

Leonardo and Venezia:  Copied from a set of cards that I bought from Palazzo Grassi in Venice.  These were sketched in my Michaelangelo Sonnets recycled book so some of the Michaelangelo sketches are included on the paper that I glued in to cover the gap between signatures.  These were some strange, but interesting faces!

My Feet:  My only drawing from life! 

Roman Statue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

I'm interested to see what October brings.  My choice of subjects on nights when I do my daily sketch is very spontaneous - and fortunately I have collected some images that I keep near my sketchbook so I can play with them.

Posted by Shirley at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This is a child-size, really soft, light blue bear - really gentle and cute in spite of the scarey face I seemed to give him.  Between grandchildren visits to our apartment, he sits in a little car that we gave Henry (now 4) for his first birthday.  When Henry outgrew it, the car came to our apartment for all of our grandchildren to use.  I take them for walks around our busy Manhattan neighborhood when we don't need to have a stroller with us.  It is a perfect toy for an urban baby! 

Posted by Shirley at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There is nothing that I appreciate more than my programmable coffee pot.  The coffee is ready every morning when I wake up and I thoroughly enjoy my first mug of coffee of the day while slowly waking up and planning the day's activity.     

Posted by Shirley at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

We took Henry and Sydney to the Central Park Zoo following the Carousel last week, arriving just in time to see the penguins being fed.  The penguin house is dark - with a climate controlled space for the penguins which means water droplets across the windows.  In addition, they move too quickly for me to draw in the dark - so these were sketched from a few of my favorite photos. 

Every penguin has a numbered tag and the animal feeders have a clipboard with a long list of them. This is to insure that each of them is first fed one "special fish" that is loaded artificially with
their vitamins.

Posted by Shirley at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I try to practice sketching figures whenever possible and love to use my recycled Michaelangelo sonnet book (1948) for inspiration.  These were all done from museum sculptures or photos using a Derwent medium wash pencil (gray) or Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil (walnut brown).   

Posted by Shirley at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)