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Our Journal Study Group is going to the Central Park Zoo to sketch on Wednesday, so I decided to play with my Neocolors II crayons and previous drawings of the Zoo penguins to get ready! They have Gentoo and Chinstrap varieites which are drawn here. I had to use white and black acrylic paint, not my usual transparent watercolors, to paint these little guys over the crayon. We'll miss you Melly and Susan.
Only one more day in May to post a daily sketchbook page!
Yesterday my husband and I went to the Museum of Modern Art early to see the current Henri Cartier Bresson photography show and the Picasso print exhibit. This is the 3rd HCB exhibit I've seen and it was by far the largest - and included photos from many of his photojournalist articles in major publications. I really like his photographs, probably because they are such quick snapshots in the lives of people around the world.
The Picasso exhibit has a few of the same prints that are in the big Picasso exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art - but I never get tired of seeing his drawings, prints, and linocuts. I remain fascinated with his ability to capture so much in so few lines and sketched his drawing of Francoise Gilot - I think hoping that I will achieve his skill through repitition! I still have to draw quickly in pencil before using the dreaded Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. My added color is from a Neocolor II crayon.
The Whitney Museum was open around the clock for 3 days as their Biennial Exhibit draws to a close. It is usually very conceptual and not very interesting, but my friend Istar convinced me that this year there was art that would inspire both of us. So we went early yesterday morning and I really enjoyed seeing some of the work and I brought home a few ideas about things I'd like to try. This is the journal page on which I took some notes.
There was one large room filled with only large ink paintings by Charles Ray. Each one was of flowers - that were very similar - but with variations on the compositions from painting to painting. There were many, many flowers in each painting- arranged beautifully. The colors were brilliant - and the flowers with the long petals, each a different bright color, flip-floping back and forth over each other, were my favorites. My journal flower sketches were each done in less than a minute - just enough for me to remember a few of the variations in his flowers.
I used an image that I did several weeks ago at the Conservatory Garden in Central Park to make this design for a card.
Hand Drawing Practice:
I try to regularly draw hands because I'm so bad at them. Last September I decided to also draw the American Sign Language alphabet from photos on an ASL website. I use a watercolor pencil to sketch and then add water to get shading. This is something that I do when I have nothing else to record visually from my life that day - so I'm only half way through the alphabet. It isn't obvious to me that I'm getting any better with faced with hands during live figure drawing. Maybe I need to sketch 10,000 to achieve competency.
I was using this dip pen and FW acrylic ink for another project and decided that I love it! Not great for shading because the line is too wide. This ink bottle is for sure one of the "uglies" for the month - but the pen and nib drawing is OK. This is a Speedball 5 1/2 nib.
I was just about to start my daily journal page last night when I found a 4-part video on Teesha Moore's blog about making quilted books. In Part 1 she showed many quilted covers, some of which contained paper, and two of them started me thinking about another project. These two books had a cover that opened in the center and either two faces - one on each front half - or one face - in the center back. I don't know how the faces were made - transfers from photos or painted - probably the former.
She makes little "quilt pillows" and then stitches them together to make her covers. I would adapt my regular quilt-making techniques and just borrow the ideas about a center front opening and faces. I'd like to put hats or paint hair on the heads and add arms, instead of wings. If I made these books for family, I would make the face theirs.
So, in order not to forget the idea, my sketchbook page became drawings and notes for the project. The colors and way of coloring the book are mine.
Our cousin (see last post) also has a wonderful sculpture collection, and while having my morning coffee, I chose this mother-and-child piece by Ruth Bloch to draw. There were other mother and child sculptures, by different artists in his collection, but I remember being with him one time at Art Expo in New York City when he bought a piece from Ruth Bloch - so I felt a tiny connection with her. The legs of this sculpted chair are as long as the mother - so it is a beautiful freestanding piece of art.
I guess I'm not done yet with my current focus on motherhood.
We stayed with our favorite cousin last evening in Philadelphia and really enjoyed seeing his lovely art collection again. I adore Picasso drawings and like to quickly copy them trying to learn how he captures so much in so few lines. Here is a very quick sketch of one of Larry's Picasso drawings.
When I recently asked how people use Neocolors II watersoluble wax pastels, my friend and "stamp mentor" Pat brought me a tag that she made for me using her set. Pat was also the one who started our tag collection, and now all of us in the Journal Study Group need handmade books to keep them in.
I decided to make 2 tags, one with Neocolors II and one with my set of Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils, to compare them to each other and to a journal page I made at the beginning of the month.
Here is the original page - again:
Here is the front of the tags - from left to right: Pat's tag for me, Neocolors II wax pastels, and Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils. I used the Pentel pocket brush pen and a Pigma micron pen.
Here is the back of my tags: left Neocolors IIwax pastels, and right Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils:
Watercolor paints, watercolor pencils, and now watersoluble wax pastels are all fun to use - and provide different levels of precision when painting an image. It was fun to play and compare today and now I have two more tags for my Tag Book.
This is the Tag Book I made last month - now with a magnetic band around it to keep it closed.
These are two of the 4 pocket pages:
Zach has a 9" soft cow made by Gund, that he loves to chew on. Yesterday he crawled around with one of the paws in his mouth - making me want to add it to my collection of drawings of our children's and grandchildren's toys. Henry had the lion from the same collection and wouldn't leave the apartment without it. My daughter had a back-up lion collection because he was forever dropping it out of the stroller. We still have one of Robbie's Gund tigers at our apartment because he needed it for his nap on the fternoons we cared for him.
I finally finished Chapter 3 in the Bert Dodson book Keys to Drawing!!!!
These two pages were done and should have been uploaded yesterday, but I was too tired after a very long (7:15AM-9PM), but wonderful, day with two of my grandsons. Eight month old Zach is crawling really fast and pulling up on anything, even trying to climb, so he requires constant attention. But he is a really happy baby - and it is wonderful watching his development. Four year old Robbie is a master builder of extremely complex multiple level Geotrax train systems and can build for hours when he comes home from pre-school. He has a wonderful design imagination and is extremely fast - and when he finishes another complex track he usually has 5-6 remote controlled trains navigating the system at once.
The first drawing is of a foreshortened head. I did it using a light grid because I knew it was the only way for me to capture even a slight resemblance to my pretty grand daughter Sydney - who was eating a snowcone when I took this photo.
This page show some emphasis of facial characteristics which is the final page (but not a project) in Chapter 3. These were all drawn from faces in my figure drawing group this week.
There are 5 more chapters in the Dodson book - which is a very sophosticated full course in drawing. I was stuck at one place in Chapter 3 for too long and will try to make more continual progress. But I have no deadline and learn so much from the projects.
Last night I went to Figure Drawing at the Society of Illustrators in New York City. I think some of the people that I see there regularly go twice each week. I'd love to go twice each month, but will probably never go more frequently than that. This time I took my 9B woodless pencil and stumper that I played with when I was reading Bill Rankin's Fast Sketching Techniques book and loved using them for the longer poses. Here is one page for 2 min, 5 min, 10 min, and 20 minute poses. My new sketchbook is slightly bigger than my scanner and the person sitting next to me created charcoal dust periodically that drifted onto my page - so I cleaned them up as well as possible.
Two Minute Poses for each Model (2 of 20):
Five Minute Pose (1 of 4):
Ten Minute Pose (1 of 2):
Twenty Minute Pose (1 of 3):
I blocked out three days to make new fabrics to use as book cloth for my watercolor journals. Over the last 20 years I learned many surface design techniques for silks and cottons and love to play with dyes and resists to create textiles. In a Manhattan apartment, I need to "schedule" time to play with dyes because I have to get out so many supplies, tools, etc. And our dining room table is covered in plastic for several days as the fabric cures and dries.
I purchased 3 new primary color dyes in February and made up new stock solutions. Then when I was "playing" I decided to see if the stamp process I used recently for paper worked equally well with fabric. Here are my stock solutions, the secondary colors I mixed and my new stamp. I used it to stamp a dark blue design over an entire piece of dyed blue-green cotton that will be book cloth.
I made these 3 bears for my children when they were babies and they are well worn. I forgot that I had them until this weekend when I was looking for a dress I made for my daughter to see if her daughter could wear it (Sydney is too tall) and found the bears. I gave Sydney the one from her Mom and will deliver the boys' bears to them so their children can play with them.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a new fashion exhibit called the American Woman. It was crowded, and I sketched two garments quickly and then painted them at home - mostly from memory. The whitish stripe down the center of the page is from Photoshop removal of the gutter between the two pages.
Melly, Pat, and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Picasso exhibit and the new fashion exhibit called "The American Woman." I can't get enough of the series of small paintings of artist colleagues that Picasso did as a very young man in Barcelona. Here is the second one in the series that I sketched. The exhibit was extremely crowded so this was drawn very quickly with colored pencils.
I finally finished the book inspired by Gwen Diehn's book on Darwin. Hers was really small. The ones that our Journal Study Group made are 3" X 5".
Here is the cover of mine.
This book has two concertinas, one that makes up the spine and end papers of the book and a second one that makes the pages. The concertinas are stitched together with a 3 hole pamphlet stitch. The spine of the book is then held closed with one stick which goes through 3 tabs - two on the front cover and one on the back.
These are the pages that I created using stamps I made from figures I sketched at the Society of Illustrators figure drawing sessions this spring.
End paper on the left and page 1:
Pages 2 and 3:
Pages 4 and 5:
Pages 6 and 7:
Page 8 and End Paper:
When the stick is removed, the spine can be opened to reveal a hidden image. This is a stamp that I made from my painting of mother and child - inspired by a Henry Moore sculpture.
Another Stamp of the Pregnant Model:
I made yet another stamp from one of my drawings of the pregnant model at the Society of Illustrators Figure Drawing Sessions. I was wondering whether I could paint the page with watercolor and then have the stamp ink completely cover the paint.
Here is more of my new art supplies - a Schmincke watercolor triad to try. For the last 5 years I've been using a palette of Winsor-Newton paints, but at Christmas and now I used gift money to buy two triads of Schmincke paint to see if I like them. These little tubes of paint are expensive - but fortunately they last awhile when I am just painting in my journals. These are 3 primaries plus neutral tint - I just don't like mixing complementaries every time I want a light gray.
Yesterday I went shopping with a very nice Mother's Day gift card. I replenished some supplies, extended colors in some watercolor paints, and bought one new toy. Since I have a lovely set of Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils that I bought from open stock over several years, I'm not sure how I will use these - but it is fun to play. And I'm sure my grand daughter Sydney will help me. I'd love to hear how others, who use both watercolor paint and pencils, use the crayons....
I had a leisurely Mother's Day yesterday and then joined my NYC children and their spouses for dinner! It was wonderful relaxing in my PJs all day. When we returned from dinner, I decided to draw my art mannequin in pencil (look closely) and then dress her in my PJs to remember this lovely day.
Yesterday was our monthly Saturday Meet-up Central Park Drawing and Art Group - and we met at Columbus Circle. It was a beautiful day but very windy. My eye immediately went to these purple flowers. I'll add several photos so I can get help identifying them. The entire circle was surrounded by these long stem beauties.
We then moved into Central Park to the area around the childrens' playground and the big climbing rock. It was much less windy and more pleasant for 30 minutes of sketching. I chose to do a painting of the top of the GM building over the park trees.
Finally we moved further into Central Park and climbed to the Chess and Checker House. There were only a few people playing, I was sitting too close to this couple, so I have a semi-caricature because I couldn't really stare at them long enough to sketch anything accurately.
This is a preliminary drawing that I did of an apartment building on the Upper Westside of Manhattan. I promised a larger painting and just wanted to play with the angles and perspective in my sketch book.
I'd love some suggestions for mixing a really good dirty brick color.
Some nights I am too tired and can't think of anything that I want to draw. But I still want to make sure I do one quick sketch everyday, so I carefully draw a rubber band. It is great for eye hand coordination and everyone is different!
We spent our usual 12 hours with 2 of our grandchildren yesterday - and our 8 month old is crawling and pulling himself up on all edges. He's adorable, but the day is long. We feel very fortunate to be able to be part of my son and daughter-in-law's childcare arrangements for one day each week and love being with the boys. That is clearly a real benefit of living in the same town.
Three grandchildren came for dinner the other evening and Sydney brought me these flowers. They look like peonies, but are actually double tulips.
Last night I sketched 3 posemaniac.com figures in 5 minutes each using the 9B woodless pencil and stump recommended by Rankin in his Fast Sketching Techniques book. I enjoyed fast sketching and equally fast shading with the stump, but this morning realized that my new figure sketchbook is too big for my scanner! Yikes!
Our Journal Study Group met yesterday and we all made 3" by 5" books using a prototype that Gwen Diehn sent to me after she spent an afternoon with us in March. The stick goes through 3 loops, keeping the accordion spine closed. There are 8 pages of watercolor paper to use inside. I plan to put more of my pregnant model stamps on the pages inside and then have a surprise hidden on the spine. I'll take photos when I'm finished.
I just LOVE cute little books!
Yesterday I went to see the Watercolor Society of America annual show at Salmagundi several hours before it closed. This is the second year that I went to the exhibit and again I was overwhelmed by the talent of the group and their beautiful handling of watercolor. My fish were inspired by fish that I saw on two of the paintings. Following the show, I walked across 12th Street in the Village to Utrecht art to get a 9B pencil to work on David Rankin's Fast Sketching Techniques and saw this beautiful tulip growing in front of a brownstone.
Sydney and Callum came to our apartment yesterday afternoon while big brother Henry went to the Yankee game with our daughter and son-in-law. The afternoon ended with Cal and I playing with the Play-Doh factory!
Elena Nazzaro, French Toast Girl, proposed an "Every Day in May" creative project several years ago and several members of Every Day Matters decided to sketch/draw everyday and upload their work to their blog or the EDM Flickr group. Elena created the above logo for anyone who was participating.
I almost always sketch every day, but only upload some journal pages to my blog twice each week. But each year in May I upload a sketchbook page everyday - the good, the bad, and the ugly. I think it is a great exercise for my internal critic - and shows the randomness of my visual journal pages. In the beginning of the month I think more about it and by the end of the month I'm more relaxed.
So here are my entries for today - 3 sketchbook pages that I did yesterday while my husband and I viewed Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie's and Sotheby's that will be auctioned next week. Each day I will post the sketch(es) that I did the previous day, since I usually do them in the evening.
Picasso: "Toros," inspired by a Picasso Linocut in red, yellow, and black and a Picasso gold pendant for a necklace.
I fell in love with a small Henry Moore sculpture at Christies and had to draw it. I sketched it with a Pilot Varsity pen and then used a waterbrush to "paint" it with the water soluble ink. The auction price estimate is $900,000-1,200,000. I'll have to watch the website and see the sale price after the auction.
After a delicious lunch at Dos Caminos we walked to Sotheby's to see the art in their auction next week. We found a nice bench in the galleries for an after lunch rest and the only interesting thing I saw from my position was a Calder mobile. Drawing it was more challenging than I thought.
We also saw Michael Crichton's Contemporary art collection that is being auctioned at Christie's the following week. I really liked his pieces by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. There were so many pieces in the collection, that I wonder how many are NOT being sold.