Paper and Threads

Wednesday is Art Day in Battery Park City from now through October.  This week I went to the morning session in Wagner Park, searching for newly bloomed flowers and painted 3 flowers, all growing from the same stem.  I chose them because I could sit in the shade on the artist stools the Conservancy provides!  But it presented me with the challenge of drawing white flowers on white paper - and kept me happily engaged for an hour.

In the afternoon I arrived in South Cove (2 blocks away) just as one of the big ships was sailing around the tip of Manhattan and heading north up the Hudson River for fleet week.  There were sailors lined up all around the ship looking at the beautiful views of Lower Manhattan.

I love Claudia, who was our model for Figure Al Fresco.  I've sketched her before and have good memories of those sessions.  Here is my work for our two hour session - photographed instead of scanned because of the paper size.  I had a mat at home that I put around my longer pose drawings just for fun!

From 10 One Minute Poses:

Our 4 Five Minute Poses:

My 4 Ten Minute Poses - I only sketched for 10 minutes even with the 20 minute pose: 

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Several years ago I worked my way through Carla Sonheim's book  Drawing Lab.  For Exercise 16 we were asked to draw 100 Faces, and I sketched most of the Faces on public transportation, and painted them with watercolor later.  Since then I always have blank 3X5" index cards and a ball point pen with me - even when I'm carrying the smallest purse. 

Week 3 of the online class Sketchbook Skool - Polishing is Brooklyn Artist Vin Ganapathy, and he showed us his sketchbook portrait illustrations and did a wonderful demo.  He had willing subjects sitting next to each other, and he did a fast live sketch of them on the couch to keep the drawing fresh (15 minutes).   He ended the session by taking some photos, and then later added some finishing details - darkening lines, adding shadows, and adding color with markers.  He stressed the importance of the fast sketch done live for freshness and details added later to improve the drawings.

My drawings are live, but I try to draw my subjects surreptitiously on buses and subways, so I don't have photos.  And because my subjects may leave at the next stop, all are very fast sketches.  My most recent ones are below.

I will keep drawing my subway/bus people until I can beg my friends, maybe on vacation in June, to let me draw them and take photos so I can practice Vin's technique. 

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The Battery Park Conservancy outdoor free drop-in art sessions will begin again the first Wednesday in May, and that always inspires me to work on my hand drawings.  I attend on Wednesdays, weather permitting.  In the morning the group and artist administrators are in Wagner Park from 11-1 and the gardens, NY Harbor, and the Lower Manhattan skyline are all wonderful subjects.  In the afternoon they reassemble in the South Cove for clothed figure drawing. 

These 3 drawings were done with a watercolor pencil, without water, using hands from magazine advertisements. 

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I love figure drawing and I'd love to be able to capture the hand positions of the models.  If I succeed at all, it is only in the 20 minute poses.  These hands were all drawn from photos I collect from fashion catalogues or the New York Times Magazine sections.  My drawing was done with a watercolor pencil, without adding water.  I love how easily it erases and can convert it to paint at any time with a watercolor brush. 

I found a great watch advertisement with 4 hand photos and was inspired to keep drawing this week.  Here are the two that I finished.  

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This was the last of our 9 Art Sessions at Battery Park City until the drop-in program begins in the South Cove from May - Oct.  Our model was Claudia, and there were many challenging poses this week.  

Two Minute Poses:  Three chosen from 10 drawn.  I'm beginning to feel as if these are easier for me.  I draw with a 4B graphite pencil on Newsprint.

Five Minute Poses: Three of four that I sketched with General Sketch and Wash pencil and shaded with a NiJi waterbrush.

Ten (Left) and Twenty (Right) Minute Poses:  The watercolor was added during the 10 minutes pose time, and the soluble graphite was spread with a waterbrush during the 20 minute pose. 

Twenty Minute Pose:  I shuddered as our Art Instructor kept rotating the head of the table away from me and my view had increasing foreshortening.  It is hard to remember to draw only what you see in this instance, but I did it and now feel more confident about these challenging poses.

Today I went to Neue Gallerie with friends and saw so many inspiring figure drawings/paintings by Munch and the other Expressionists.  After lunch we went to Galerie St. Etienne and saw "quick" Ludwig Kirchner figure sketches.  I recommend both exhibits, but especially Neue.   

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