Paper and Threads

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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Last Friday I picked Sydney up at school for our 4th annual Birthday-Christmas trip to Rockefeller Center to have lunch, and Bryant Park to see the Christmas Village, watch the skaters, and eat dessert.   The end of our walk is always Beads World - her favorite store in the Garment District.  While we were eating lunch in 30 Rock, she took photos of the Santa skating on the ice skating rink and later that day I sketched and painted from the photo.

I took Sydney to see the New York City Ballet Nutcracker 4 years in a row.  Twenty five years ago we took her mother and her brothers to see Phantom of the Opera right after it opened on Broadway and suggested that we see it this year instead of the ballet.  It is the longest running Broadway show in history and it is still full for every performance.  We both loved it!

This is my quilted Christmas tree, made in 1992, and hung in my studio at Christmas each year since then.  There are small wood ornaments and strings of colored lights that I added after quilting it.  As I make Christmas presents for my grandchildren each year in my studio, I thoroughly enjoy my little tree!  I hope that it continues to grow old with my grandchildren. 

On Sunday I spent one more day in my studio for this year and made Sydney a Teal Blue minky elephant  like I made for Charlie and posted a week ago.  Shhhh!  It is a surprise!  All she wanted this year as a gift from us was money toward custom made sneakers - and with a Birthday last week and now Christmas, I wanted a little surprise for her.

Last night, as I made a list of my last minute tasks before Christmas Eve dinner in our apartment, I was inspired to paint a Christmas tree ball in my sketchbook.  The idea came from a watercolor artist I follow (Suzanne Smith if I remember correctly) and I  wanted to try to create a reflection using a wet in wet technique.

Now signing off until after the Holiday.... 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM OUR FAMILY TO YOURS!

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Our Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup Group met at the Museum of the City of New York for indoor sketching on Sunday.  (http://www.mcny.org/)

Our first gallery contained enormous paintings of Central Park by Janet Ruttenberg.  She works on huge strips of paper that are torn from a role, placed on the grass, and painted with brushes on long sticks while standing.  Reading about her process was more interesting to me than the actual paintings, so I sketched from a photo of her taken during a painting session. 

Next we went to an exhibit sponsored by Tiffany - 100 works from New York at the end of the 19th Century, including clothes, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects.  I loved one one of the evening dresses by House of Wirth in Paris and sketched  and painted it.  It was made of silk, satin, bobbin lace, and ostrich feathers.

My final drawing was done in an exhibit about the theater and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes.  I loved this watercolor painting of one of his costume designs for a 1924 play named The Miracle.

I guess I am not surprised that each of my drawings represented a figure!   

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I am having trouble coordinating my schedule due to a big Thanksgiving celebration and my Santa Workshop activities as I prepare for Christmas.  I looked back in my sketchbook and discovered I missed these when I visited the two exhibits with my friends in late October.

Readers of this blog know that I like to copy paintings by the Masters - always hopeful that I will learn something from their styles and compositions. 

The Frick Collection exhibit has 15 paintings from the Mauritshuis Museum in the Netherlands, including those by Vermeer and Rembrandt.  The highlight is Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring and it is hung alone in a lovely gallery.  The Frick displayed their 3 Vermeers and 3 Rembrandts in an adjoining gallery, so it was a real treat. 

http://www.frick.org//exhibitions/mauritshuis 

There is an amazing Chagall exhibit at the Jewish Museum.  It is titled "Love, War, and Exile" and includes paintings from late in his life. 

http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/chagall-love-war-exile 

I loved the shape of this figure and the composition from the moment I saw it and needed to circle back to draw it at the end.

Monday is my last Figure Drawing class at FIT - and hopefully I will then have more motivation to find non-figure subjects for drawing and painting.   

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Last night we had a choice of medium to use for our final graded drawing.  I'm so thrilled that my professor recommended a General's Charcoal Pencil - #557-6B ex. soft - that I decided to use it for my 4 five minute warmup drawings and the long pose.  I finally have a form of charcoal that I enjoy using.  It doesn't scratch on the paper - and is buttery soft.

 I put all of my 5 minute drawings on the same 18 x 24" paper.

The long pose was probably an hour.  I draw quickly, shade, and then want to be finished!  Otherwise I start making tiny, unimportant changes and get even more bored.  This photo was taken with my cell phone before I handed it in.

One more class this semester - and we were told that we can "do anything we want."  I now love the brush and India ink, the Conte Sanguine crayon, and the charcoal pencil.  I think I'll take all of them and decide when I arrive.

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