Paper and Threads

We are at the beach for a short vacation, and one of our favorite parts of this vacation is our 2 miles walks on the beach early in the morning. 

My sketching is based very much on what shells I find on the beach during our walks and I make a new watercolor sketchbook for the beach each summer.  I recycled a $2 used book for this year and the square format, 1/2" spine, and theme were perfect.  But most of the "Adventures" were not ocean and beach related, so I only included a few of the original folios and then altered the pages.

One of the original pages - which was fun for my beach journal.

 I used parts of a tourist map and newspaper to collage over other pages from 2 folios, and then covered a few with absorbent ground, so I can draw and paint on them. 

My tutorial for recycling a used book as a watercolor sketchbook is on my blog and here is the link.

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I am again loosely following a 100 Day Project - Drawing from My Imagination - even if it takes me more than 100 days.  Last year when I did this, my character Axel was just "born" and being developed.  This year I hope to increase the number of drawings I do with Axel.  Here are a few of the ones I already completed.

We are going to the beach and may or may not have WiFi for the next few days.  I have a new recycled book to use as my beach sketchbook and can't wait to start using it.  Enjoy the beginning of summer

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Matthew Midgley, a British teacher and illustrator, was the Artist for week 5 in Sketchbook Skool 6.  He is a master at painting his meals, even if it means that he doesn't eat it until cold.  I knew that I couldn't draw and paint, postponing my enjoyment of dinner, so I took photos at our pre-theater dinner last weekend and painted it this weekend.

Italian bread with olive oil, Caesar salad, a Super Tuscan red wine, sausage pizza, and a cappuccino.  Yum!  

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Wednesday is Art Day in Battery Park City from now through October.  This week I went to the morning session in Wagner Park, searching for newly bloomed flowers and painted 3 flowers, all growing from the same stem.  I chose them because I could sit in the shade on the artist stools the Conservancy provides!  But it presented me with the challenge of drawing white flowers on white paper - and kept me happily engaged for an hour.

In the afternoon I arrived in South Cove (2 blocks away) just as one of the big ships was sailing around the tip of Manhattan and heading north up the Hudson River for fleet week.  There were sailors lined up all around the ship looking at the beautiful views of Lower Manhattan.

I love Claudia, who was our model for Figure Al Fresco.  I've sketched her before and have good memories of those sessions.  Here is my work for our two hour session - photographed instead of scanned because of the paper size.  I had a mat at home that I put around my longer pose drawings just for fun!

From 10 One Minute Poses:

Our 4 Five Minute Poses:

My 4 Ten Minute Poses - I only sketched for 10 minutes even with the 20 minute pose: 

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Vin Ganapathy, a teacher in Sketchbook Skool 6, demonstrated portrait drawing and then assigned us homework using his technique.  He likes to do a quick drawing live, then take lots of photos, and use them to finish the drawing later.  He did two people sitting on a couch, but my first opportunity to draw and take photos was when I was sitting next to a grandchild - in profile.

I find it very difficult to capture a likeness of family members, and these 3 are a little better than usual.  Henry was sitting next to me at a concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Sydney was presenting a project to us at school.  And Zachary was sitting next to me at a Young People's concert at Lincoln Center.

The drawings were done with pencil on watercolor postcards that I carried with me.   The technique was helpful, and the photos helped me better draw nose shapes and lips.

The very next week in Sketchbook Skool, Dutch artist Nelleke Verhoef imtroduced "Faces" from photo inspirations.  She maintains envelopes containing eyes, noses, mouths, and hair clipped from magazines - and mixes and matches them to inspire random face drawings.  One of her special additions is red cheeks - which is also the name of her illustration studio.

I got a Vogue magazine from my daughter, clipped apart face components, and made my own reference envelopes for the project.   I quickly sketched this face in ink and painted it with watercolor, and may use this technique for my imaginary drawing project.

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