Paper and Threads

I started to keep a regular Sketchbook Journal and Blog in 2003.  I was partially retired and thinking about how many of my part time creative activities I could enjoy full time.  Until the pandemic I had annual "progress reports" on my blog and a separate entry for my plans for the next year.  I loved drawing and watercolor painting in sketchbooks that I made in order to have a specific size and watercolor paper in the books.  I spent many days with artist friends sketching NYC with the Central Park Meet-up Group and Urban Sketchers when they were developed - and always made a separate sketchbook for summer vacations and our annual Fall visits to Europe.  

Shortly after the pandemic began I was invited to give a lecture on Covid-19 to STEM women students at the Douglass Residential College of Rutgers University, my alma mater.  Reviewing the science made me realize that I also missed my career in Internal Medicine and Hematology, and I began to write about Covid-19, drawing one or more avatars as illustrations.  I followed the pandemic carefully and posted at least two sketchbook entries a week until several months ago. I tried to cover the important science advances during each week and watched every full day of FDA and CDC Vaccine Meetings in order to detail the progress being made.  I was able to add links from my blog to Facebook Groups - NYC Urban Sketchers, and  EveryDay Matters (my first online art group that was started by Danny Gregory).  I wrote 195 illustrated blog entries. with links to the Facebook groups mentioned above, and finally decided that it was time to return to direct observation drawings/paintings and urban sketching.  But I'd love to have a few projects that I can do at home until I'm ready to rejoin my friends in the art groups, including live figure drawing. 

My husband and I are fully vaccinated and boosted including the new bivalent covid vaccine.  Masks in New York City have been dropped from public transportation and are not required in theaters, museums etc. But there is still a significant risk of infection for people over 65.  Our age group has the highest mortality rate in the US, and I will carefully re-engage with my local world - one step at a time.  I am surrounded by wonderful museums and should be able to wear N95 masks - searching out quiet sections of the museums.   

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Drawings from 2 more days of my wanderings during my early morning walks.  The cow is almost full size and is in a carpet store window.  His "wife" is seated next to him, and I always intend to draw her too, and haven't.  I hope there is not horrible news re: Covid that I need to read about while we are relaxing, but Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist from Minnesota said that there are still 100 million people in the US that have not been vaccinated or infected with Covid, and the virus will eventually find all of them.   

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Anna Denise Floor has beautiful watercolor journals of her family life.  Early in her project she started to develop layouts for her pages and showed us the five major 2 page spreads she uses as guidance.  She draws from her imagination, capturing special moments of life, and I really enjoyed her sketchbook tour in our Whimsical Class.  Our homework was to use her "storyboard layout" and show 5 things about us.  We were supposed to limit our pages to two colors, and I really didn't want to do that.  So here is my full homework spread - photographed whole because it is too big for my scanner - and two "half" pages which I scanned with overlaps. 

Left Side of Page:  I illustrated and wrote about 1. my MD degree and my career, 2. Bookbinding to make watercolor sketchbooks that are the size and paper I like,  My life as a 3. Quilter and 4. Seamstress. 

Right Side of Spread: Repeat of 3. Quilter and 4. Seamstress, and 5. Drawing and Painting in watercolor sketchbooks.  I included my imaginary characters Axel and Alice because they first appeared in my imagination and homework for Fabio Consoli's homework in the Sketchbook Skool class IMAGINING. 

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Before I knew how many projects I was going to have this winter, I signed up for a year-long series of prompts called Documented Life.  I'm keeping track of the prompts, and will eventually catch up.  I actually did week 7 this week (they are on week 10) - in which I was supposed to look at Pinterest for inspiration for a journal page.

Full participants used Moleskine planners to make their journals.  I made folios of sketchbook paper and will fill them as signatures and then bind them into one book at the end of the year http://www.paperandthreads.com/2014/01/beginning_of_a_new_year.php.

I wanted to document my continual attendance at ballet class - 28 weeks since I restarted dance during the summer!  And I found a lovely photograph by Philip Rood that inspired my watercolor. 

This photo "pin" was attributed to Philip Rood on Flickr.  The quote was on another pin with no attribution. 

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I am celebrating my 20th weekly ballet class after my return to my favorite form of exercise.  I always loved dance - of all kinds - and took ballet classes once or twice a week during many years of my adult life.  But I "lapsed" when I retired and during the summer decided that I had to return - at least for the entire barre part of the class.   

My friend Teri, a mixed-media artist, told me about two online Art Journal groups she joined for 2014.  I looked carefully at both of them and decided on a "Documented Life" project. 

https://arttothe5th.squarespace.com/ 

I love memoirs and have many ways that I document my life and those in my family - including all of my ancestors back for several hundred years. 

Each week there is a prompt posted, and members create a journal page in a modified Moleskine Weekly Planner.  I love the idea of a weekly prompt, and for years did the weekly Everyday Matters challenge.  But I wanted to draw/paint in ink with watercolor on my favorite watercolor paper.  I tore a sheet of Fabriano Artistica  140 lb extra-white Soft Press paper into folios, made signatures with two folios per signature (i.e. 8 pages), and started the prompts on the first signature.  I have the pages in the signature numbered so I can bind the book, in order, at the end of the year. 

Week 1:  Front Door

I live in a New York City apartment building and sketched and painted the small hall off the elevator and my front door.

Week 2:  A Selfie

I debated about drawing a self-portrait, but recently did that for my FIT Figure Drawing class.  So instead I sketched and painted "The Selfie of My Dreams."

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