Paper and Threads

We moved to San Antonio Texas from LaJolla California and while my husband worked at the Army Institute for Surgical Research, I joined the faculty at the University of Texas Health Science Center.  We initially intended to move on at the end of 3 years, but instead my husband joined me on the faculty and we raised all 3 children there before returning to New York City.  We had a Texas ranch house built in the 1950s, with wonderful shade trees and lots of space for our family.  This sketch was made from a photo taken during the winter - and our live oak tree still has leaves.  When we moved to Texas I learned for the first time that live oak trees drop their leaves in the spring instead of the fall.  We lived in this house for 18 happy years. 

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I still try to draw figures regularly, while regularly avoiding my 2008 Goal to draw more faces.  Here is a quick soluble graphite drawing that I did this week.  I was attracted to this magazine photo by the opportunity to also draw a horse.

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My son and his wife in Washington DC have two cats - his and hers from before they were married.  So this sketch was made from a photo of Sammy meeting baby Annabelle and her stuffed Jellycat Bella shortly after she was born.   

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I loved searching for shells on the empty beach on our morning walk.  We usually arrived about one hour after high tide and on our walk one morning we found 3 very clean parts of a fish skeleton at the water line - a head, one large vertebra, and one small vertebra.  My daughter and grandchildren were equally interested in examining the backbone and asked us to look for more for a collection.  But none were found.

Another morning a Monarch butterfly accompanied us on our entire walk.  Just before we left, I was able to take a photo while the butterfly landed briefly on the sand.

We loved having morning coffee after our beach walk on the back deck under the umbrella.  My sketch is missing the bottoms of the 3 chairs across the table - it just got too complicated for me spatially.

Our final day - my masking fluid and tool for putting the mask on the paper, a beach rose, one of the seagulls immediately before flight, and my youngest grandson's sippy cup which was sitting in front of me while I was sketching.

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We spent almost one week with our daughter and grandchildren at a summer rental in the Hamptons and I was able to complete my recycled book that I dedicated to summer vacation travel.  Selected pages will be uploaded over the next few days.

I loved the "Creative Matrix" idea in Dory Kanter's book Art Escapes and then decided to try it when Martha of Trumpetvine Travel posted hers as a calendar from her recent vacation in the woods.  Here is the first page of mine.

The house lawns were mowed the first afternoon we arrived, and I was shocked to see fully formed mushrooms, that were twice as tall as the grass, appear the very next day.  They were very delicate and disappeared completely by the following day.  I'd love to know the type of mushroom - research must be done.

My husband and I walked two miles on the beach early each morning and collected shells and other "treasures."  The road to the beach is on a narrow strip of land between the bay and the ocean and I loved a deserted, weathered, wood shell of a house that was up on stilts at the edge of the bay.  It was possible to look right through the windows and doors that were not boarded up.

We occasionally met someone on the beach walking their dogs, but except for them we shared the beach with the seagulls.  I read that there are 80 varieties of gulls and wondered about the three patterns of coloration of the gulls we saw.  Here is one of the gulls and the shadow that he cast on the sand in the bright sunlight.

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