Paper and Threads

Figure Drawing at the Society of Illustrators - New York

2010-07-29T19:22:50Z

I started going to figure drawing sessions in September 2009, and averaged one session per month over the whole year. There is now a summer break until after Labor Day and that seems a long time away. I think I'm making progress, and more frequently sketch faces during the longer poses. Here are the two 10 minute poses and two 20 minute poses done this week.

Grandparent Visual Journal Pages

2010-07-26T12:18:18Z

My daughter's 3 children (ages 7,5,3) spent 3 days with us while their parents celebrated their anniversary at the Beach. They are really energetic and fun children, so I dedicated my daily journal pages to them. The two youngest ones actually "colored" in their sketchbooks during the weekend and had me draw some of their favorite images for them to color. New York City was soooo hot, that we started each day at the newly renovated Central Park playground that is next to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They wore their bathing suits to take full advantage of the water play for several early morning hours.

Sydney and Callum have Christmas birthdays and for the second year in a row Syd and I celebrated her birthday in July with a trip to the art supply store. This year we went to Dick Blick and she selected a wonderful assortment of art supplies and activity kits. She used the last few dollars to buy cute little flash card notebooks for herself and two brothers, so I sketched all of them.

Callum really, really loves dinosaurs and dragons and brought a big box of them to play with during the weekend. He was showing me his squishy dragon when I decided that this was the perfect image for the day.

Yesterday afternoon, my son dropped off their youngest (11 month old Zach) while they went to a baseball game to celebrate their other son Robbie's 5th birthday. Zach stands alone, crawls really, really fast, and would love to be walking-running. We spent some time with him in our long hallway, pushing the baby carriage that we bought for Syd for her 1st birthday (but now lives with us to share with the babies). Here is Zach squealing with delight as Syd and my husband try to slow him down a little.

After Henry, Sydney, and Callum went home and Zach fell asleep, I took a few minutes to paint Zach's really cute little sandal.

Matisse Exhibit at Museum of Modern Art

2010-07-21T20:00:59Z

A new Matisse exhibit opened at MoMA on Sunday - entitled Radical Invention, 1913-1917. The paintings were somber in color and he was definitely experimenting with the human form, culminating in his painting The Bathers. I sketched faces from one of his paintings and several of his prints for the Prisoners of Bohain-en-Vermandois.

I then use3d one of the drawings to inspire my "Eyedropper Face" which is Lab 13 from the Carla Sonheim book Drawing Lab. I used a small eye dropper and FW acrylic ink to draw the face, then painted it with watercolor.

I'm really enjoying the "labs" in the Sonheim book - and will continue to work through them even though my art buddies returned home after our evening art sessions at our beach week.

Beach Week - Part 2

2010-07-18T18:39:55Z

These are my morning journal pages from the second half of our beach week. Each morning we would all go for an 8AM 2+ mile walk on the beach and the 3 wives collected things that we wanted to draw/paint while walking at the surfline. These were our beach treasures. The shells were not very plentiful this week, in comparison to just one week ago when we we there for July 4th holiday.

Morning 4: We found one small dead fish, one children's plastic toy fish (blue) and one toy rubber flounder covered in sand in addition to several other types of tresures. I sketched and painted these on one journal page as we set at the Cooper's Beach Snack Shack having coffee.

Morning 5: I found a real assortment of things and put them all together as a still life with my empty coffee cup.

Morning 6: I found a few shells and a beautiful long gull feather from one of the brown spotted gulls. All week we used "google" to see if we could confirm that these large gulls were actually the young ones. Anyone know?

Departure: We kept a vase of fresh hydrangeas from the garden, in the kitchen, all week, and I finally decided that I needed to end my beach sketchbook pages with a painting of them.

Beach Week - Part 1

2010-07-14T19:44:09Z

We are at the beach this week with friends - who we met in the 1960s. There are early morning beach walks, afternoon pool swimming, and lovely dinners on the house patio. Three of us sketch together, so we are creating visual journal pages and having great fun doing "labs" from Carla Sonheim's new book entitled Drawing Lab.

These are the visual journal pages from Mon-Wed. Mon and Tues we went to the beach. This morning we had a huge thunderstorm just as we were leaving and we spent the morning in the sunroom identifying bugs.

I'm taking photos of my journal instead of scanning the pages, so even the white bacground is slightly blue....

The Central Park Sketching and Art Meet up Group

2010-07-10T21:03:36Z

Our group met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, instead of in Central Park, because of the threat of inclement weather. Our first drawing session was a major challenge - the Starn brothers bamboo structure on the Museum rooftop. I decided to really limit my scope and to focus on the method that they used to connect the bamboo and creat a structure which supports many people on internal walkways.

Our next drawing session was in the current exhibit called The American Woman - from the costume institute. I already sketched some of the fashions in the exhibit on a previous visit and this time concentrated on the room called "The Heiress."

Our 3rd and final sketch was in 19th C. European Paintings. I am studying Cezanne's card players over a several year period and this time did a simple line drawing of one of the card players. For more information about this project and my 2007, 2008, 2009 paintings, click here.

New Watercolor Sketchbooks

2010-07-08T18:31:14Z

Moleskine lost a customer forever, when they ignored requests to make their watercolor journals in a portrait format in addition to a landscape format. I now make all of my watercolor journal sketchbooks in a 6 X 8" size using 140 lb Fabriano Artistico soft press paper. Recently I decided to make my own book cloth using fabric that I create with procion MX dyes. Here is a picture of #5 and 6 in the series.

The book cloth on the left was created using the pole-wrapped shibori technique. The book cloth on the right was first dyed with thick procion MX dye - blue to green - and then stamped with one of my newly made fun foam stamps using a darker color dye. The cotton cloth was then fused with 45 gm Thai mulberry paper using Wonder Under.

The covers of this new series of journal sketchbooks are so "busy" that I used solid color Mi Tientes paper for the end papers. There are so many colors available that I can always find one that I like. And the weight of the paper is perfect.

More Bookbinding: Our small Journal Study Group made Tag Books at our meeting in June. I made one previously, based on a Gwen Diehn design, and we used the same method to make these. The books hold many shipping tags which are our "Art Trading Card" equivalent. When we are working together, everyone needs to make enough of the same tags to give to each other.

These are the books we made:

Holiday Weekend at the Beach

2010-07-07T13:52:22Z

We just returned from a Holiday weekend with our children and their children. This is the first photo that we have of all 6 grandchildren this year - and I'm thrilled to have a new one.

I sketched every day in my summer watercolor journal - in which I try to paint something that will help me remember the day. Here are 4 pages.

Blue Mussel Shells: I bought a wonderful laminated shell identification card which Callum calls "the map" and we tried to ID shells that I brought home from our beach walks.

Our 3 and 4 year old grandsons made great progress "swimming" this weekend and spent lots of time going back and forth between their parents and the wall without floaties. This is a pair of goggles that were abandoned on my chaise while I was watching them.

We waited for our car AC to have freon added and I was sitting next to this planter and flag - which looked especially forlorn after the holiday was over.

I take sea gull pictures each time we walk on the beach. These are several drawings of one gull from those photos.

Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup Group

2010-06-29T23:14:51Z

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.

Beach Week Daily Drawings

2010-06-27T12:43:42Z

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.

Figure Drawing at The Society of Illustrators

2010-06-25T00:41:37Z

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:

Recent Journal Pages

2010-06-20T21:49:50Z

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.

Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup Group

2010-06-18T02:23:18Z

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.

The End of my Mixed Media Journal

2010-06-14T11:53:47Z

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).

Continuing with my Mixed Media Journal

2010-06-11T20:00:59Z

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.