Paper and Threads

I periodically love to walk and sketch random things - in ink - building up a sketchbook page.  Last week I did several pages like this - just for quick fun and memories. 

The first page was done while I wandered through many bead stores in the Garment District with a friend.  I loved some of the designs.

We picked Robbie and Sydney up at Nursey School on Friday and took them to the Central Park Toy Boat Pond to play.  There were many remote control sailboats on the pond so I sketched one as it passed by.  Sydney found a one inch rubber charm of a summer "flip-flop" and she played with it for part of the afternoon.

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I couldn't do a serious sketch of our newspaper, because I never read it.  The New York Times is delivered to our apartment by 6:30 each day and I dutifully bring it inside for my husband.  However, I have many things to do that are higher on my personal priority list and I get my news from the WNBC Early Morning Show, WNYC NPR radio during the day in my office, and the Lehrer news hour in the evening.  So with this challenge, I bring you a charming paper hat made from the front page of yesterday's newspaper!

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My husband gave me this antique gold Elgin ladies' pendant watch as a wedding present.  When very pregnant with our first child, I sat down for a cup of coffee and the watch, which was hanging down over my big belly, plunged into the cup.  Ever since then watchmakers have been puzzled by the rust on the movements and no repair has lasted very long.  I still wear it to work and use it to attach my required ID - not to tell time.  It has a wonderful patina and still has great sentimental value.

Posted by Shirley at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

In the mid-60s my husband sent me a series of 12" by 16" animal cards and we matted them (couldn't afford framing) for the baby's room when our first child was born.  They remained in the boys' bedroom for the 4 years we lived in LaJolla, California and then they were put away with some other prints for safe-keeping.  Last weekend, and two homes later, I found them and decided to sketch and paint all 5 animals - the first 3 across a double page spread in my Moleskine watercolor journal and the last 2 on separate pages and subsequent days.  These were from a commercial card company and the back half of the cards with the publisher's trademark are long gone.

Posted by Shirley at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This is one fish from an entire row of fish (face to face and back to back) in a stone wall that forms the entrance to the main door of the Ukrainian Institute at 5th Ave and 79th Street in New York City.  It was much more difficult to sketch than I thought because I kept getting lost in the flourishes.  I also wasn't able to show the 3-dimensionality of it as much as I wanted because I needed to keep the stone lighter in color than the background.   I decided to post it anyway and then sketched and painted 3 of my favorite fish designs just to be colorful and playful.  This image was taking from a small area of the background on a Tibetan painting at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. 

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Finding something to sketch every evening is sometimes hard.  I feel like Danny Gregory when he said that he sketched everything in his apartment.  Sometimes I work on faces and figures.  This week I also painted animal faces from my reference photos.  Here are my giraffe and rhino!  I specifically wanted to work on watercolor glazing, although I'm really impatient and don't always allow layers to dry properly!

Posted by Shirley at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

I still practice sketching a few faces and figures each month - and try different pencils, pen, and watercolor washes as one of my goals for 2008.  Although I am still doing one sketch/journal page per day, my sketchbooks are really eclectic and I only have a few pages like this to upload each month.

The next two figures were sketched using photos in Mark Edward Smith's book The Nude Figure: A Visual Reference for the Artist.

These 3 sketches were made from photos in a small Yoga book I bought just for this purpose - to make quick, loose sketches/paintings in many different positions.

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I found this challenge to be really hard because of the perspective that I chose.  There is much too much detail on the facade of my brick and granite 16 floor New York City apartment building and decisions needed to be made about how detailed I wanted to make the sketch.  I definitely chose not to make the upper section bricks part of my sketch.  I'm in awe of artists who can sketch and paint entire brick facades!! 

I share my house with many other families as I live in a 16 floor New York City apartment building.  In Manhattan parlance, these buildings are either "pre-war" or "post-war," i.e. WWII.  Our building was built in the late 1920s and I was able to locate advertisements for it in the archives of the New York Times.  Our architect, who was doing bathroom renovation, also found a piece of a newspaper that was buried beneath the bathtub in the master bedroom bathroom, so we have proof of the date when it was under construction.  I also located and printed the 1930 census pages for the building and now have several very interesting pages about the occupants at that time.  At the same time I printed out the 1930 census for the building 2 of my 3 children live in - showing Babe Ruth living there with his wife's family.

I will have to try it again from across the street so I can sketch it straight-on and concentrate more on the actual structure.  My stimulus for this might be to make notecards that I can use for the notes that I never get around to writing!  

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We took the train to Washington DC last weekend for our first visit with Annabelle.  I used 3 Cachet Linen Watercolor Journals for our multiple visits to London to visit our other grandchildren when they lived there in 2006-2007.  I had one more just waiting for a special theme - and I decided that it would be my travel sketchbook for Washington DC and my visits to see Annabelle.  When we arrived Friday evening I had just enough energy before bed to sketch a few flowers from the bouquet from her greatgrandfather and the tiniest cutest little pink socks I ever saw..

On Saturday morning I held her on my lap after I finished feeding her, and held my sketchbook up in one hand while sketching her little hands and feet.

The edges of these 7 X 10 pages don't scan very well.

We took her out for fresh air Saturday and visited Eastern Market where I always find something fun to sketch and paint.  The tin rooster I saw in the morning was already sold, but there was a ceramic one that worked just fine!  And I loved the cute lion face on a batik wallhanging made by another vendor.

On Sunday I sketched her new "lovey," a Jellycat stuffed animal called "Miaow Bella Mocha."  This was a gift from her cousin - before anyone knew her name.  Now Annabelle has her cat Bella.  It is customary in our family to take a picture every month with a specific stuffed animal to see changes in my grandchildren's size and development during the first year.  My daughter and other daughter-in-law have been so creative that these are among my favorite pictures of our grandchildren.  Bella will be used for those photos with Annabelle.

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