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My husband and I went to the James Ensor exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art on Saturday. I knew very little about the artist, and enjoyed seeing his paintings. But of course his sketchbook and drawings were the highlight for me. Since the sun was out, and we were so tired of daily rain, we sat in the Sculpture Garden where I sketched Picasso's She Goat and my husband did the Saturday NY Times crossword puzzle.
Today I retired, almost exactly 40 years after I graduated from medical school. During that time I worked at the University of Chicago, The University of California at San Diego, The University of Texas in San Antonio, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In those 40 years, the number of women increased from <10% of each medical school class to slightly more than 50% of each class. There was no day care when my first child was born, and 3 year olds were only "supposed" to be away from their mothers and in nursery school two mornings each week. I loved my career, but my greatest joy was my 3 children and now my grandchildren. I feel fortunate that I have so many active interests that I will never be bored. I sketched my work suit from today to my bathing suit for the beach on Thursday!
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This week my two oldest grandchildren came to spend the night and Sydney brought 6 beautiful peonies. While she was using her new paints, I sat with her at the table and painted the peonies - one of my very favorite flowers.
After dinner and before bed we watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and after they went to bed, I painted Harry and Hedwig. I had book 1 for several years but waited to read it until I had a grandchild old enough to read it at the same time. For the past month my daughter read it with Henry and promised him the movie when they were done. We loved it - although Henry thought the end was really scary. On to the second book in the Harry Potter series over the next month.
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I then wanted a modern counterpart on the facing page and remembered one of the "Grunge designs" in the 1990s Gallery of the exhibit "The Model as Muse." She had the same "flippy" skirt in the modern version.
Both of these pages were done in watercolor pencils.
Peg and Kathleen sketched in the Oceanic Galleries while Jane and I went to the Fashion exhibit and then we met in the Petrie Sculpture Court to talk and exchange sketchbooks. I'm enjoying getting to know these art buddies that I met in Danny Gregory's Visual Journaling class last Fall. Hopefully next month we will get to the Zoo.
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She played wonderfully by herself when all of her cousins weren't surrounding her in a whirlwind. The wooden peg set that we bought in Zurich and that her father loved as a child was the biggest hit. My son took a photo of her squatting, and carefully placing two pegs back into the board!
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This is a drawing of my tote/book bag that I use for work. It is made of a heavy canvas and has one zipper pocket and two mesh side pockets - one of which always contains my umbrella. It is black and I decided to draw it with a Pilot Varsity pen and then brush water over the non-permanent ink. I just felt like playing!
Tuesday was my birthday. I spent the day in New Jersey with my 90 year old mother and then returned to Manhattan to have dinner with my husband and oldest grandchild. Henry graduated from kindergarten last Friday - and came to stay with us -across the Park - for a few days because his siblings were still in pre-school each day. We had a wonderful dinner at Naples 45 and then as we were walking back to the entrance at Grand Central Station, I took a photo of Henry and my husband carrying the left over pizza.
After getting Henry into bed, I only had enough energy to sketch some 90 second pose maniac figures - this time in different colored pencils,
The next evening I sketched from the photo.
I am currently doing a countdown until I retire - 40 years after I started my first full time job! I have only 7 more work days - scattered over the next 2+ weeks!
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As a Grandmother of 5, ages 1-5, sticky to me means lollipops or melting ice pops. This was one just waiting for Callum to want/need it. I'm told that Dylan's Candy Bar in Manhattan is amazing!
My husband is a Do-It-Yourself guy who can fix anything. It was really easy for him to produce screws of almost any type or length for me to draw.
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And the wonderful imprint on the cover:
Here is the original title page. I saved the book pages to read to my graandchildren.
We love walking several miles on the beach in the early morning, then relaxing in the afternoon, and wandering around late afternoon and early evening - usually for a casual dinner.
I loved Martha's Trip Calendars and made one for our days in Southampton for the second year. We originally planned to stay through Thursday, but the reasonable, although very cool, weather was ending and rain was predicted until the weekend.
The azaleas and rhododendron were blooming in the yard, I couldn't resist painting a few blooms. I added watercolor pencil for a few details.
We took our first beach walk in the afternoon of the first day - and searched for interesting shells and skeletons. Last year my grandchildren threw away all of the shells we collected over several trips during the summer, but brought the 3 sleletons back to New York City for their permanent collection. We were shocked to find 2 skeletons on our walk, but had no idea what type of fish they came from - although they were cartilaginous - meaning skate, ray, or shark.
The following morning we found more treasures on our beach walk: a mermaid's purse (egg sac) which was intact, a big natural sponge, and a fish head skeleton. I knew that the black, interesting leather-like structure was a skate or ray egg sac from my web browsing the evening before as we tried to identify the skeleton.
After our morning walks, we love to stop at the Snack Shack on Cooper's Beach for coffee. Most mornings the temperature was between 50 and 60 degrees at 8AM and not much warmer when we finished our walk so the hot coffee was therapeutic. This was my view East from the patio as I drank coffee and sketched some more.
We walked into the Village for an early and casual supper and I sketched my husband. Surprise - you can tell it's him by the clothes and facial hair - not much else.
The above journal pages completed my daily blogging for the Every Day in May challenge. This is my 3rd year during which I uploaded my daily journal pages to my blog - the good, the bad, and the ugly. They certainly are a mixture of things: both daily life and drawing practice. I think that my internal critic gets a little more suppressed each year. During the rest of the year, I'm more selective about my usual twice weekly blog posts.
Here is another drawing of my husband as he drinks his coffee and reads the New Yorker at the Snack Shack after our AM walk. This really does capture him, but mostly because there are no facial features....
We drove East through the Hamptons to Town Line BBQ for dinner - and I tried to capture the event in spite of greasy fingers. Yummmm!
After a heavy rainstorm, I spent some time in the yard in the sun and sketched a rhododenron bud with one flower open. I remembered the bud from the Virtual Sketch Date several months ago and now could watch the entire bush bloom a little more each day. I only realized that the flowers on the azalea and rhododendron were identical as I was sketching - you can tell I'm not a knowledgeable gardener, can't you?
We were very lucky to have sunny mornings for walking on the beach, but we probably had the only interlude between rain and more rain on Wednesday, with more rain forecast until the weekend. We continued to find lots of fish skeleton parts each morning including a total of 7 of those unidentifed large pieces. We both surfed the web looking for some idea of what fish they were and what part of the fish they were from. My husband finally found a suitable anatomical diagram of a skate and we learned that the point is the the most cephalad part (head)of a skate skeleton and my original drawing was of the dorsal side (i.e. back). Unbelievable, but on our final walk we found two dead skates that had just washed up on the beach - one large intact one and one with the belly flesh gone so we could see exactly where the skeleton pieces we found were placed. Our grandchildren asked us to bring all 40+ pieces back with us to the city - and between the bones, the egg sac, and the photos we took of the skates - we have a full biology lesson for them.
Last evening, after unpacking and soaking all of the skeleton pieces in bleach, I finished our mini-vacation pages with drawings of the sea gulls that I photographed as they took flight to avoid us as we walked through their sections of the beach.
Since I have recently told EDM members that it is so nice to see an occasional picture of them, I decided to end this really long blog post with photos of us from yesterday on the beach.
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We are off this morning for a mini beach vacation. When we return, I will post my last two sketchbook pages from Every Day in May, and hopefully lots of travel sketches in my new recycled book.
At the end of a long day, with two hats out next to my bag on the bed, I decided that I was only capable of getting these two hats sketched and painted. The colors really also clash in real life.
Real life schedules got in the way of daily posting again this week, so I have 3 days of journal pages being uploaded this morning.
I made lemon squares for dessert on Tuesday right before bed and was too tired to draw anything except the small, very fine strainer that I used to add the powdered sugar on top of the squares.
No time to even consider something more than a 5 minute figure drawing sketch at bedtime. When will I learn how to guage the size of the paper, or scale down my drawing even more? It is really hard to make ballet "turnout" convincing in this position unless you can see the position of the back foot!! Another lesson learned. This was sketched with a watercolor pencil and then "painted" quickly with a waterbrush when my timer rang at 5 minutes.
A full day at work yesterday and then to the theater to see Jeffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon to see "Exit the King." I planned ahead for my daily journal page and doodled during a 90 minute morning meeting. I usually don't leave drawings unpainted, but it was fun to sketch in pen (without a quick pencil sketch) and I wanted to remember my graphite-free page.
My husband and I planned a quiet holiday weekend exploring Central Park. On Saturday we walked uo to the Harlem Meer on the Northeast corner of the park. Today we walked up to the Northwest corner of the Park, called the North Woods. I have never been more surprised. Even the woods that we visit in New Hampshire each summer aren't this dense.
Anyone who has followed my blog over time, knows by now that landscapes definitely do not excite me when I'm looking for something wonderful to draw or paint. But I thought I should at least post photos from the walk today for anyone who has never been northeast of the Central Park reservoir. These specific photos were selected because they show the wildness and density of the trees and foliage. I don't know the person who happens to be standing at the waterfall.
Since I didn't even pull out my sketchbook on our walk, tonight I used the Virtual Sketch Date photo for June as inspiration. I needed some figure drawing practice anyway this week - and note that in 2009, I am brave enough to put faces on my figures.
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This morning we went to the Boat/Duck Pond (officially called the Conservatory Water) in Central Park for coffee. While I sketched, my husband read the NY Times. The refreshment stand is open this year and there are tables, chairs, and umbrellas on the patio. There were owners and dogs at tables adjacent to ours, so I quickly sketched them and then my husband's cap above the newspaper.
Then I discovered the ornamental poppies that were in bloom - and they were so magnificent that I had to draw and paint one bloom and one bud before we came home.
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We love holiday weekends in New York City - because it is relatively quiet - emphasis on the word relatively. It never seemed like fun to join the masses escaping this island on Friday afternoon and trying to get back on the island on Monday evening. This year we decided to explore some of the areas of Central Park that we rarely visit. Today we walked up the Eastside of the Park to the Harlem Meer which is at the Northeast Corner. While my husband did the Saturday NY Times crossword puzzle, I did a sketch of the Dana Discovery Center - an educational center where children can also participate in "Catch and Release Fishing" in the Harlem Meer with rented poles and instruction and bait provided by the Center.
I painted the front entrance to the Center but somehow made it much more squat than it really is.
Did you know that Central Park (843 acres) is the first major public park built in America? A competition for the design was held in 1858 and it took 18 years to build it in accordance with Frederick Olmstead and Calvert Vaux's plan. There are 50 miles of pedestrian paths, so we will never run out of new pathways to explore.
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We picked up my grandson from nursery school, had a picnic in Central Park, and then went into the Met to see the newly reopened American Wing. Before it was closed for renovation, my grandchildren learned about pennies and fountains in that space and we really missed the pool.
There is a newly designed pool in the same place, this time with two fountains. This is a quick sketch of the back of the Frog Fountain - done while my grandson was throwing pennies. There are three frogs spewing water around the base - but I had no time (or space) to sketch them on this visit.
The sketch was done with a watercolor pencil and the water was added later at home.
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I did a 5 minute pose figure drawing (i.e. I set my timer for 5 minutes and sketched a nude figure photo) after my Book Group left late last night. I drew with a medium wash graphite pencil because there were very dark shadows on the model, but it was darker than I expected.
I saw a small oil painting of 2 rows of lipsticks at the Contemporary Art Auction at Christies (Wayne Thiebaud), and wondered how many lipsticks I had in my drawer. Tonight, I found 2 empty lipsticks and 3 "almost gone ' lipsticks to sketch.
