Paper and Threads

We were at the beach with our daughter and grandchildren for a week, and I finally found a bench I wanted to sketch.  We had shrimp tacos for dinner at LaFondita in Amagansett, NY and the garden sculpture company behind the restaurant displayed this granite and wood bench on the edge of the pond.  The wood was weathered like the traditional benches along the streets near the beach and the composition and balance between elements was extraordinary.  If only I could have studied and painted the grain on some of the wood.  The brown-pink painted square behind the bench is my painted background for the sketch.

Posted by Shirley at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

The image that I kept returning to for the EDM Challenge "Draw Something Dangerous," was my precious little 3 year old grand daughter Sydney who can now ride her two wheel bike without training wheels!  She rides it on a quiet street in front of their summer house with adults all around her, but she is soooo tiny on it!

My sketch doesn't show the joy on her little face, so here is one of many pictures taken while she whizzed by.

Posted by Shirley at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This is the next entry for my "Our Homes" series of sketches.  I really wish that I had taken more photos of our houses, but this is something that I never considered while we were living there. 

After several years in Chicago we moved to La Jolla, California to finish our training.   I was pregnant with our first child and lived in a little cottage overlooking the ocean during the next 4 years.  The house was small, but we had a fabulous brick patio built into the mountain behind us.  The weather was so nice most of the year that it became the family playroom for our sons.  All 3 of our children were born there (my daughter 14 days before moving day) and then we moved to yet another part of the country - Texas. 

Posted by Shirley at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

We just returned from several days with friends in their family summer home overlooking Silver Lake in NH.  Anyone that knows my blog realizes that I paint very few landscapes, so I forced myself to upload a sketch that I did from their porch overlooking the lake.  This year I'm trying to work on figures and faces, maybe next year I can work on trees in Central Park, NYC.

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

We saw this truck parked along 79th Street in New York City when walking to nursery school last Spring.  My grandson, who loves Superheroes, was fascinated by the truck mascot that was wired onto the front grill - spiderman dressed as a Mets Fan!  Fortunately I had my camera with me so took a picture of him. 

Posted by Shirley at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)