Paper and Threads

While in DC, we went to see Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting at the National Gallery.  This was the Dutch Golden Age of scenes of daily life of refined Dutch Society.  Here is a link to the National Gallery website for the exhibit.  There are many paintings on the website as well as a long video by the curator.

https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2017/vermeer-and-the-masters-of-genre-painting.html 

Johannes Vermeer:  Lady Writing from 1665 

There was a very, very long line, winding around both sides of the main second floor hall, but it moved enough that I couldn't sketch a sculpture and instead did a messy drawing of two people in front of us on the line with an available colored pencil.

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Before leaving for a weekend with our son and his family in DC, I sketched two more Rodin sculptures before the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed.  I walked the corridor that houses the Met's Rodin collection many times every year, and until I go back to the Museum, I won't know whether these two pieces that are owned by the Met will still be on view. 

I loved this marble sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice, it is beautiful from almost every angle.  However, I decided to sit down on a bench in front of it because of the amount of traffic walking through the area to get to the Michelangelo Exhibit, and the view of Eurydice from the bench was not as good as that from either side.

This is a very small sculpture named Despair, one of many that I didn't remember, although it is from The Gates of Hell.  I loved the position of the figure and just had to draw it in case it disappeared.

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I'm away for the long weekend and thought that it might be fun to go back and look at a few of my earliest blog posts, which began in January 2006.

I always loved other people's travel sketchbooks, and I wanted to see if I could make one.  I took a Moleskine sketchbook with me to do quick sketches while touring the Amalfi coast, even though I learned that the SKETCHBOOK paper does not take watercolor well. Here is a drawing I did in Sorrento, looking out from our hotel window.

I had no  idea how to correct the color on the scan of the yellowish paper in the Moleskine sketchbook.  It also doesn't take watercolor well, so I went to a copier store and made A3 copies on drawing paper so I could add a watercolor wash on site, and this is the result. 

Our tour guide and one of the other members of our group spent lots of time watching me draw, and encouraging me, so I gave them each one of the unpainted A3 copies I had made.  

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The NYC Urban Sketchers met on Wednesday this past week in order to draw the Christmas Tree in the Medieval Hall  at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The ornaments were made in Italy and are ceramic and fabric, with lush silks for garments.  We listened to wonderful choral music while we sketched.  Unfortunately you can't get close enough to the tree for detailed drawings of the angels, but can see all of the sculptures around the base of the tree slightly better. 

This sketchbook page is a painting of one angel and a few of the figures around the base. 

Photo of the Tree

Some of the Urban Sketchers at the back of the tree - busy drawing. 

After drawing at the Tree, I went upstairs to the Auguste Rodin exhibit and painted a sculpture by his mistress and muse, Camille Claudel.  There are so many small Rodin scultures in this exhibit, that I hope that I have time to sketch more before it closes on January 15th.

Rodin Exhibit:  "The Implorer" by Camille Claudel  Cast in 1905

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Manhattan is a Christmas Wonderland each year, especially 5th Avenue from 42nd Street (Bryant Park) to 59th Street (Bergdorf Goodman).  Bergdorf's  window decorations are always spectacular, and this year each window represented a cultural institution in NYC. 

The American Museum of Natural History window was my favorite.  This photo has way too many reflections, but you can see that a model is surrounded by jewel encrusted dinosaurs.

Detail:  Every inch of the "sculptures" are "jewel encrusted" on every square millimeter of their body.  It was dazzling!

On one of my walks past all of the Bergdorf windows, I stopped to sketch the NY Philharmonic Window, and painted it at home. It was totally red, with neon musical instruments filling the background. 

This morning we took down our Christmas tree, with an outside temperature of 10 degrees and a wind chill of -12.  The Holiday season is officially over in our apartment as we try to deal with the Artic freeze and almost 8 inches of snow yesterday. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR and may your lives in 2018 be filled with good health and wonderful art. 

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