Paper and Threads

Seemed very fitting to be drawing the back of this $10 bill while thinking about the historic House vote that hopefully will occur today....  Living in New York City, it is easy to see how lack of credit is going to affect the middle class as much as those that work in the financial district.  I'm excited about the possibility of keeping Mayor Bloomberg for 4 more years - to skillfully navigate the decreasing budget available to keep this amazing city afloat.  And I've never been one to endorse Republicans....

Re: the challenge:  This was hard work.  I was going to comment on how well Sandy had drawn both sides of a bill, when I looked at our new member's (Speck) drawing of many paper bills! 

Posted by Shirley at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This is a painting of my travel watercolor set - made by Daler-Rowney - and purchased on sale at Pearl Paints in New York City.  The only other time I saw this set was in a similar drawing in The Creative License - page 57 - by Danny Gregory.  I don't like the color selection as much as my palette of Winsor-Newton paints which I use at home, but I've learned to mix enough colors to make it workable - and it is small, light, and functional. 

Posted by Shirley at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I finally had to skip the peanut challenge and move on.  We don't have peanuts in our house and I haven't seen any around during the last few weeks.  But we do have multiple packs of disposable razors - yellow for me and blue for my husband.  I enjoy doing sketches from multiple angles so this razor was fun for me to draw. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Domenic left this message for me on the EDM message board and that led to our agreement to each sketch more figures and specifically faces by September 13th.

It was helpful for me to have the challenge because this was my usual fall back behavior when practicing figures.

I started the challenge immediately by sketching one figure with a face from a magazine photo, and then a face from an old master art book that I have.

But a real challenge for me was to sketch from the photo of a dancer, and actually feel confident enough to add a face.

Yesterday, while at the FIT Museum looking at the Gothic Fashion exhibit, I decided to even sketch the face of the mannequin when sketching a fabulous silk evening coat.  Her eyes are wonky, but I could have resorted to my "blank face" and didn't.  I love Margaret's frames that she puts around her journal pages - and quickly discovered that I'm not patient enough to do those fabulous frames, not even her dots!

This was a good mini-challenge for me.  I definitely need to have a specific goal to keep me stretching my daily sketches.  Hopefully Domenic hasn't forgotten and we'll get to see his figures from our challenge before long.

Posted by Shirley at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

We have two ceiling fans in our apartment, but I sketched part of one for a previous challenge.  This journal page shows multiple views of a battery-operated personal fan - and I have no idea where it came from.  However, it was perfect on that very hot night in August 2003 when New York City and much of the East Coast had their last blackout.  That was the very last time it was used, and I almost didn't remember I had it because it is so small (3 3/4 inches high) and inconspicuous sitting on a corner of my book shelves.  The image on the bottom right is a frontal view when the fan is on.  It goes so fast that I couldn't see the soft black "blades" at all.

Posted by Shirley at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)