Paper and Threads

I'm working with a very enthusiastic and talented bookbinding student each month, and our projects for August were:

1. Make lots of sheets of paste paper.

2. Use the paste paper to cover binders board while constructing a 10 X 14 inch portfolio.  

This is another sheet of paste paper that I made with a 10 X 10" Lego base plate and corn starch paste with black acrylic paint. 

Inside:  These paste papers were made with an adhesive spreader as a comb.

I made one portfolio previously using the instructions in Alisa Golden's book Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures, and Forms.   The instructions were easy to follow again, 6 years later!

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Last month I spent several hours with a friend, looking at the Exhibit in the Drawing Gallery, and surveying one gallery of small terracotta sculptures from 600 BC Cypress. 

Rembrandt Van Rijn:  There was one wall of Rembrant drawings and etchings in the 2nd floor Gallery of Drawings.  These were two among many figures in an etching entitled The Hundred Guilder Print.

Cypress Sculptures:  We walked through this section and loved the many cases of small terracotta sculptures from ancient Cypress.  These were several that I really liked.  Visiting the Met and sketching from the many permanent exhibits is my very favorite way to practice drawing.  The paint was added later, although the guards never seem to comment if I use watercolor pencils and a waterbrush.

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I sketched and photographed these flowers at Wagner Park more than a week ago.   They weren't painted until we were at the beach again last week. 

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I love watching seagulls.  As I have written here before, watching them unfold their big wings, and run down the sand for take-off, makes me see how engineers could figure out flight.  Even to the point where their leg "landing wheels" get pulled up.   I don't know the various types of gulls, but these were all a little different.  I can only draw and paint them from photos, and even those are hard to obtain.  The gull next to the ketchup bottle was picking through a bowl of shells left behind on an outdoor table. 

More Gulls:  This whole two page collection of gulls were from beaches in the Hamptons, and Martha's Vineyard. 

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