Paper and Threads

Our Central Park Meetup Group met at the Conservatory Garden again and it was beastly hot.  However, there were enough non-wilted flowers to paint.  They are not labelled and I have little practical knowledge of flowers - but I love drawing individual blooms.

There are two wonderful fountains in the Garden.  One of the fountain areas was the site for a lovely wedding.  The other fountain, the Three Dancing Maidens, was in bright sunlight.  But we discovered that we could dangle our feet into ice cold fountain water until the guards reprimanded us.  I drew this fountain twcie before (see here and here) and this time I decided to just draw one of the maidens.  I had just enough time before the guards came!

Following Meetup, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a special afternoon program on Picasso to go along with their huge current exhibit.  Francois Gilot gave a long and excellent lecture on her encounter with Picasso, She lived with him for 10 years and had two children with him.  Professor Michael Fitggerald presented detailed information about the first private American collectors of Picasso's paintings and the history of the Met vs MoMA and their Picasso acquisitions.  Then there was a wonderful French film (The Mystery of Picasso - 1955) in which Picasso drew on one side of a support and we the audience just saw the lines forming and colored inks being added.  It was mesmerizing. 

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We were at the beach for several days in June and I never uploaded any of the daily drawings that I did.  It was an amazing week for finding shells on the beach - last year we barely found any and this year I only brought home perfect ones. 

My Straw Hat - but it was too breezy to wear it on our morning walks.

A few of my favorite types of shells - the variation in color of the moon snails and bay scallop shells is truly amazing.  I could use one shell for an example of nature's perfect color combinations each time I paint.

I love the seagulls and this was the only one we saw with this coloration.

We took a ride to the end of the South Fork to the Montauk Point Lighthouse for the first time.  It is a wonderful place for drawing and painting.

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 There are two weekly figure drawing sessions at the Society of Illustrators in New York City - and in one of them models are partially or fully clothed.  Last week was the first time that I was there when two models were fully in costume - a Marie Antoinette type costume for one and a pirate costume for the other.  It was the hardest sketching I've done there - a huge challenge.

Here is one of my 2 minute sketches of the woman model - complete with an elaborate wig and full ruffly gown:

Here is one of my 2 minute sketches of the male - in pirate costume, but without all of the braid and other decoration on his jacket, belt, and hat which I just didn't have time to include.

They proceeded to disrobe before the longer poses at the end of the evening.  This is one of the 20 minute poses:

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We took my 6 year old grandson Henry to Lincoln Center for an open rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic.  He takes violin lessons and is very interested in music - and seemed excited when we invited him.  He read some great children's books about composers and I sketched before the rehearsal began.  It was the first time that I sketched live musicians while they played.

Yesterday I went to a panel discussion about creativity and sketchbooks - presented by Rice Freeman-Zachary (whose 2 books I loved), with my friend Melanie Testa, and Wendy Hale Davis.  Rice is such a colorful character that I just had to sketch her while I listened.  And I didn't even put on all the jewelry that she was wearing.

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Although the Meet-up Group usually sketches in Central Park during the non-winter months, this past Saturday we sketched at Bryant Park which is located behind the New York Public Library.  It was a beautiful day and the Park was full.  We sketched in 3 separate areas in the Park and shared our sketchbooks at the end of each.  Here are my 3 watercolor journal pages from the afternoon.  This is the fountain on the west side of the Park.

There are umbrellas, chairs, and lamposts everywhere!

These were the flowers blooming in the big planters that were scattered all around the Park.

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I am uploading the last 2 page spread, acknowledgements, and the back cover of my mixed media journal.  It was a great project and I'm already making another one of these 8 X 10" watercolor paper journals, although I'm not sure how often I will work in it. 

Single Page Plus back of Rear Flap: 

Over the past several years, I celebrated my love of coffee while doing Every Day Matter weekly challenges.  It seemed like the perfect topic to use to finish this play project.  The collages were scanned, printed, and cut out from sketchbook pages that show how many ways we have to make coffee at home.  The square stamp is actually 4 small square stamps of different sizes that can be combined using different stamp inks.

Inside Back Cover and Back Cover Flap:

I wrote myself a long note about the circumstances of this challenge by Melly and Pat, and my process and the fun that I had.  I decided that I definitely needed to acknowledge my muses and used pieces of a photo of the 3 of us on a recent field trip to see Art Quilts at the Morris Museum.

The Back Cover:

I looked up the 3 Graces and the mytholocial muses and decided that this was a perfect image for my back cover.  I previously did the drawing in the Greek and Roman Galleries at the Met, and scanned, printed, and collaged it to this page.

This was a fun project, and an interesting watercolor journal to use.  I made it from Teesha Moore's YouTube video of the 16 page journal (really 12 pages plus flaps which are slightly narrower).

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I have many sketches of ballet dancers in my journals - all from photos since I can't draw fast enough to catch them in action.  This is a single page spread: the dancers on the top right and bottom left are collages of pages that were scanned, printed, and cut out.  The dancer in the center was drawn on the top layer.  This is another new stamp that I made.

Next:  A 3 page spread of Central Park Zoo animals with many, many penguins.  All of the animals were collages made from prior journal pages made at the Central Park Zoo, except the penguins that appear right above the words "Lots of Penguins."  Those were drawn on a top layer.  I used pieces of a zoo map for the first layer of collage, Neocolor II watercolor crayons, gesso, acrylic paints, and stamps.

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I posted this page several weeks ago - it is actually the first flap in the Teesha Moore 16 page watercolor journal - and when opened it leads to my full "Les Fleurs" page.  The flower image was scanned from my sketchbook, printed in color, cut out and added as a collage.  The stamp is one of the new ones I created when making this journal.

This is a two page spread in the journal - the back of the flap and the next page.  Each of the flowers except the iris were collages taken from sketchbooks.  The iris was drawn onto the top layer when I was finishing the page.  This is a photo because the page was too big for my scanner.

I think I'm finally figuring out how I want to use my journals/sketchbooks.  From the time I began this adventure and joined Every Day Matters, I've considered my sketchbooks as visual journals - sometimes used for practice, as when I did exercises from art books, or copied drawings of the masters, but most times used as a daily visual journal.  I don't want to change that.  But making the mixed media journal allowed me to see that I can print previous sketchbook pages, and use others as inspiration for redrawing images, to be used in mixed media journal book pages or artwork that is separate.  However, image resizing with Photoshop, a scanner, and a color photo printer are necessary and my dining room table was full of paints, brushes, gel medium, gesso, stamps, stamp pads, calligraphy pens, acrylic inks, Pitt pens, scissors, rulers, and exacto knives. If I'm drawing at home, I do my evening journal pages with my sketchbook, pencil case, waterbrushes, and travel watercolor kit on the couch - a much simpler process!  

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I looked through my sketchbooks and decided that I had several drawings of my grand daughter Sydney that I would like to combine on a double page spread.  I scanned and printed 3 images -two from her life in London as a 2 year old.  The drawing on the top left was Sydney and her brother Henry (age 3) in Hyde Park when she insisted that he hold her hand.  Right below it is a similar painting from Central Park, NYC from this year.  On the far right is Sydney wearing a "dress-up" hat at the Victoria and Albert's Children's Museum in London.  As you can tell, I'm most comfortable drawing my grandchildren from the back.

The monkey drawing was done right on this page, to celebrate her "lovey" who still goes places with her.  You can probably see him in the drawing of her in Hyde Park as well.  And the drawing of Sydney was also done right on this page - from a drawing I did in May as a Bert Dodson Exercise on drawing foreshortened heads. 

This page has lots of layers, including collaged text papers under my cut-out drawings, paint, gesso, stamps, waterproof ink calligraphy ink, Pitt pens, and more paint.

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My art buddies brought their sketchbooks to the Met when we went to see the Picasso exhibit and I told them how much I loved their mixed media pages.  Melly said - try it, put more than one thing on a page.  Pat said add layers, many layers.  I had an 8 X 10" journal that I made from Teesha Moore's 16 Page Journal You Tube video several weeks ago so I decided to use it and to accept their challenges.  However, I wanted to make collages from my own sketchbook pages and add at least one new drawing to each page.  

I pulled out all of my random art supplies and played for one week - just letting the pages evolve from printed sketchbook pages.  Here is the front cover, and the first 2 pages.  The collage painting on the cover was from the Poiret Fashion Exhibit at the Met and she reminded me of a muse.  The Picasso page has several of his Barcelona artist caricatures collaged in one of the layers and a Picasso inspired drawing on top.  My Maternite page has several of my pregnant model stamp images which I cut out and added as collages and the drawing of mother and child on top.  Both drawings were done with acrylic ink and a dip pen.

 The next page is a double spread and will need to be photographed, not scanned, so I will probably add it within the next few days.

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I spent the day yesterday, with my art buddies Pat and Benedicte, at the Central Park Zoo.  It was a beautiful, but hot day, and every school class in the City was there for a field trip!  I love sketching at the zoo - it is a real test of how fast you can achieve an image of some type.  I sketch in pencil and then take a photo so I know how to paint the animal when I get home.  These are the first 4 pages (out of 6) that I painted.

Gentoo and Chinstrap Penguins

King Penguin - These are new penguins in the exhibit and they are bigger than the others.

Three Scarlet Ibis:

Tortoise and Hornbill

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