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I saw Sherrie and Kathleen's Tree Peonies and just had to try one for my daily sketch today. I didn't know anything about the Virtual Sketch Date, but now have it bookmarked to see what photos are posted in the future. I need lots of practice sketching and painting reflections on glass, so this was a good challenge for me while I was trying to listen to the important news broadcast while painting.
This is a painting of my travel watercolor set - made by Daler-Rowney - and purchased on sale at Pearl Paints in New York City. The only other time I saw this set was in a similar drawing in The Creative License - page 57 - by Danny Gregory. I don't like the color selection as much as my palette of Winsor-Newton paints which I use at home, but I've learned to mix enough colors to make it workable - and it is small, light, and functional.
Although my sketchbook is in part a visual journal of my daily life, it is also the place that I practice drawing and painting. This year, one of my goals was to practice figures and especially faces, and I found that I could instantly make a toddler look like a teenage as soon as I sketched in a face. Yuck! I couldn't stand the page I did Friday so I tried again in pencil the following morning. So this shows my "old" child's face and a slightly more youthful child face in pencil along side.
Yesterday I went to the preview of the new Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night). I like to draw from the Masters, and like to do at least one sketch at art exhibits, Yesterday I chose an 1878 shaded pencil drawing that was in a glass case. It is such an early drawing of Van Gogh's that it isn't even included in the huge VanGogh gallery of drawings on the web.
He shaded in pencil, but I used gray watercolor to try to achieve the same tones. In a note included with the drawing, Van Gogh said that he loved buildings lit from within during the evenings when workers were at rest. I also love to walk by homes lit from within during the evening hours - canal houses in Amsterdam and brownstones here in New York City - so this drawing really resonated with me.
I finally had to skip the peanut challenge and move on. We don't have peanuts in our house and I haven't seen any around during the last few weeks. But we do have multiple packs of disposable razors - yellow for me and blue for my husband. I enjoy doing sketches from multiple angles so this razor was fun for me to draw.
I lived in a 3rd floor garret apartment in a private home (1965-1969) when I was a poor medical student in Philadelphia. The neighborhood was delightful, the house was on a bus route connecting to school, and the price was right. I made this sketch from an artist's pen sketch on a notecard, so I'm not sure about the details. The floor plan comes from my memory. Oh how I wish I had taken more photos when I moved from place to place! I lived here between college and Chicago - so it is out of sequence in the "My Homes" category on my blog.
Domenic left this message for me on the EDM message board and that led to our agreement to each sketch more figures and specifically faces by September 13th.
It was helpful for me to have the challenge because this was my usual fall back behavior when practicing figures.
I started the challenge immediately by sketching one figure with a face from a magazine photo, and then a face from an old master art book that I have.
But a real challenge for me was to sketch from the photo of a dancer, and actually feel confident enough to add a face.
Yesterday, while at the FIT Museum looking at the Gothic Fashion exhibit, I decided to even sketch the face of the mannequin when sketching a fabulous silk evening coat. Her eyes are wonky, but I could have resorted to my "blank face" and didn't. I love Margaret's frames that she puts around her journal pages - and quickly discovered that I'm not patient enough to do those fabulous frames, not even her dots!
This was a good mini-challenge for me. I definitely need to have a specific goal to keep me stretching my daily sketches. Hopefully Domenic hasn't forgotten and we'll get to see his figures from our challenge before long.
I spent a fabulous day with Casey and her husband - who are visiting New York City as part of their trip to the US. Casey and I did some sketching in the morning, then had lunch with her husband, and walked down through Central Park to the Museum of Modern Art to see the Kirchner exhibit and the permanent collection.
Casey and I have very different styles and I love to watch her work. Although she won't be back in France for several weeks, I hope that she posts her two drawings that were done of the same subject as mine. If I could work side by side more than once each year, my sketches might get a little looser and my watercolors more brilliant!
We went to the Central Park reservoir and sketched the skyline on Central Park West. Here is my journal page of the ElDorado.
Then we walked to the Delacorte Theater and sketched the Romeo and Juliette sculpture in from of the theater which is used for Shakespeare in the Park during the summer.
Lunch at the Central Park Boathouse Restaurant was as lovely as usual and here are two photos from our time there. Casey did a lovely panaoramic painting from her seat looking out over the water towards Bethesda Fountain.
While they enjoyed their first visit to MoMa since the big renovation, I sketched several more Kirchner women from his sketches that are in the exhibit - some in his sketchbooks.
We had such a fantastic day with them, that my husband and I both look forward to future visits.
I totally forgot to upload this journal page from our visit to the Central Park Zoo with Henry (5), Sydney (3), and Robbie (3) - our 3 oldest grandchildren. The Zoo worker in the Penguin House asked the children "why don't polar bears eat penguins?"
The drawings were made from photos that I took during our visit. I love sketching animals and someday intend to spend a some quiet time at the wonderful Bronx Zoo.
We have two ceiling fans in our apartment, but I sketched part of one for a previous challenge. This journal page shows multiple views of a battery-operated personal fan - and I have no idea where it came from. However, it was perfect on that very hot night in August 2003 when New York City and much of the East Coast had their last blackout. That was the very last time it was used, and I almost didn't remember I had it because it is so small (3 3/4 inches high) and inconspicuous sitting on a corner of my book shelves. The image on the bottom right is a frontal view when the fan is on. It goes so fast that I couldn't see the soft black "blades" at all.
This was a very difficult challenge because I immediately thought about "stuff." But the "stuff" I always wanted a decade, or a year, or a week ago, I either got or no longer want. I am extremely fortunate that I did get the big things I wanted. I have a fabulous husband , 3 grown children with wonderful spouses, and 5 grandchildren ages 5 months to 5 years. I have a medical career AND I am a wife and mother - something considered impossible/improbable when I was developing my dream. I saw many parts of the US and had an opportunity to live in several regions that partially shaped me: The Northeast, the Midwest, Southern California, and Texas - and now I live exactly where I want to be for this time in my life - New York City. And I have always had creative passions and the ability to move among them in cycles to keep me happy and to make things for those I love. So after a full week contemplating this challenge, and because I am surrounded by many people who have to learn to live with ill-health, I chose to paint my stethoscope and continue to hope that I have "good health."
There are fewer EDM members posting this challenge than most - so I think others must be struggling with it.
I enjoy recycling old books as watercolor journals, but took a workshop in June so I could also make cased-in journals of a standard size. The journal we made in the workshop is bigger than the ones I like for my daily sketchbook. I currently use a large Moleskine watercolor book, but really don't like the landscape format. However, I like the size and wanted to see if I could make a similar size journal in a portrait format.
I used 140 lb Fabriano Artistico extra-bright soft press watercolor paper. Each book contains 6 signatures - 2 folios per signature. The finished books are 5.5 inches by 7.5 inches. Here are photos of the covers, the end papers of one of the books, and the watercolor paper.
I never much cared for Seurat, the pointillist, but fell madly in love with Seurat drawings last year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I did some research on the paper he used and found a modern equivalent at NY Central Art Supply. It was then possible to play with pencils and some of his images to see how they were done. I already posted my "Seurat-like" drawings here and here (scroll down). Then I began to wonder if I could make a drawing from my life and try to use similar techniques on the same paper and here is my first effort. It is from a photo taken of my son-in-law as he walks along a busy street holding hands with his two oldest children. Although I was happy playing with the technique, I immediately understood exactly what I need to do when repeating the experiment.
