Paper and Threads

The wife of one of my professors wrote this book for her 3 small children in 1978 when she was terminally ill, to share some of her memories from her childhood in Denmark.  Her husband, Sam Refetoff, gave me a copy when my children were very young and I made Rice Mice for them.  In the book every mouse is accompanied by a poem and my children wrote poems to capture their individual mouse's personalities.  

Some time during the ensuing years I made two Christmas Rice Mice and every year they are part of our table decoration.  They are approximately 5 inches high and filled with standard white rice.

I sketched them last year for my journal page on December 24th and then again last evening.  This year's painting is more accurate because I took the time to put in the polka dots!  Since I didn't post the journal page last year, here are both 2007 and 2008.  This year I painted a shiny gold acrylic background around the mice - wish it could be scanned and look that way!

2007:

2008:

Several years ago I made Rice Mice (singular is Rouse Mouse!) for my 3 oldest grandchildren as stocking stuffers, using scraps from quilts that I made for them.

I think it might be time this morning to make one for each of the baby grandchildren for their stockings.  Those for the children have embroidered eyes instead of buttons - which is not nearly as cute, but much safer!

Posted by Shirley at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Tomorrow I'm leaving for the International Quilt Festival in Houston, followed by a business meeting in San Antonio, so I wanted to complete this week's EDM challenge before I leave.  EDM Challenge #94 was Draw a Spoon.  This week it is Draw a Fork.  I posted the two of them together because they are a wonderful pair of salad utensils - shiny silver that I still can't capture. 

Posted by Shirley at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We didn't have any peanuts in our house - and I couldn't find anything to inspire me to do this challenge when it was posted -  until yesterday.  I then decided to learn more about how peanuts grow and looked at information and images on the web.  This is a painting of a plant with its flowers and peanuts.  I really didn't know that peanuts grow underground from shoots that arise from the above ground plants.  Very cool!

Posted by Shirley at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I continue to practice drawing faces and figures from photos - and did these 4 during October.  I selected this photo because of the foreshortened right arm and was happy with the arm drawing.  Not so much with the eyes.

This drawing was done from a runway photo.  I saw and loved a Klimt-inspired gown in the window of Oscar de la Renta's store on Madison Ave.  This is the image of the dress from the runway - but I didn't even try to reproduce the fabric design.

Two faces drawn from magazine advertisement photos.

Posted by Shirley at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The Virtual Sketch Date photo was just perfect when I was deciding what to draw and paint for my daily journal page.  I usually only do the EDM challenges, but this is the second month that the photo for VSD was irresistable.

Posted by Shirley at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I am very busy in Oct, Nov, and Dec - anticipating all of the Christmas sewing and quilting that needs to be done.  So like Santa, I put out a call for reindeer help.

My son Jason had a pet iguana during college and most of medical school.  We all grew to love Pablo as long as he was safely looking at us from his fabulous terrarium that was built by my son.   This photo was an excellent inspiration and challenge for me - especially drawing a figure with a face!

My husband and I worked as volunteers all Saturday morning sorting books for the upcoming Goddard Riverside Book Fair and then spent the afternoon watching our grandchildren enjoy the Halloween Fun Fair that my daughter organized as a fund raising event for their nursery school.  After carving a pumpkin with my grandchildren at dinnertime, we came home and collapsed.  I almost didn't do a journal page for Saturday - and then picked up my sketchbook, a washable graphite pencil, and a photo of Lin's kittens and did a very loose sketch in the few minutes before bed.  I try to sketch daily and rarely, if ever, will give in to being too tired or too busy.  But some days, a 5 minute sketch like this seems like a huge accomplishment.

Posted by Shirley at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

A hard challenge - and I'm not sure how or when I should reveal the full drawing....

I don't think that this should be very hard, based on the portion I chose to include, so I will post the full version as soon as there are a few comments.

Casey immediately saw that this detail was from a train engine - so I'm adding the full drawing today to finish the challenge.  My daughter chaired the Halloween Fun Fair for the nursery school and one of the highlights was a train ride for adults and children in the New York City playground that was used for the event.   

Here are 3 of our grandchildren enjoying the day. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I picked up this leaf and nut from the sidewalk in Capitol Hill, Washington DC, last weekend.  These huge trees lined the street all around the park and there were multiple nuts that looked like acorns until you noticed that the caps were really spiculated - not at all like a traditional oak acorns.  On the left is the inside of an empty cap  and on the right a drawing of a cap with the nut facing up.  The cap actually has the spicules covering it entirely.

The leaves were as long and narrow as I depicted, but the veins were actually symmetric - and I didn't manage to keep them that way when I painted the leaf.  I have no idea how the leaves were placed on the branch or what the bark looked like.  None of the tree identification web sites helped me identify this tree, so I'm hoping someone in EDM can do it.  Lin? 

Posted by Shirley at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

My three year old granddaughter Sydney loves to draw and color.  She was exhausted last Friday evening - after running at least a mile through Central Park climbing the big rocks while we brought her to our apartment from Nursery School.  After dinner she went to bed, and then about 30 minutes later carried out this fabulous lion drawing! 

Yesterday I met a good friend between the New York Public Library lions and quickly sketched one to post with Sydney's lion.  I used a watercolor pencil to do the drawing and then "painted" it to get the shading.

Posted by Shirley at 8:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

My daughter and granddaughter brought me a lovely bouquet last week and I managed to draw and paint two of the 3 types of flowers while it remained fresh.  I have no idea what type of flower this is - it really was almost hot pink and I never quite achieved the correct color.

They mixed in many ornamental cabbages among the roses and the flowers painted above and these were really fun to paint.  I used a watercolor pencil to add the purple veins.

We have flower beds around the trees on the sidewalk in front of our New york City apartment and the summer flowers are overflowing the space.  It is getting cool enough that they won't last much longer and holiday greens will be spread over the area this month.

I love Margaret's doodles and especially how she frames many of her paintings.  So this is an homage to Margaret who inspires me as I take this journey.  I will never be able to share her patience doing fill-in pen work,, but would love to learn her use of color and composition.

Posted by Shirley at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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)

I saw Sherrie and Kathleen's Tree Peonies and just had to try one for my daily sketch today.  I didn't know anything about the Virtual Sketch Date, but now have it bookmarked to see what photos are posted in the future.  I need lots of practice sketching and painting reflections on glass, so this was a good challenge for me while I was trying to listen to the important news broadcast while painting.

Posted by Shirley at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

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)

Although my sketchbook is in part a visual journal of my daily life, it is also the place that I practice drawing and painting.  This year, one of my goals was to practice figures and especially faces, and I found that I could instantly make a toddler look like a teenage as soon as I sketched in a face.  Yuck!  I couldn't stand the page I did Friday so I tried again in pencil the following morning.  So this shows my "old" child's face and a slightly more youthful child face in pencil along side.

Yesterday I went to the preview of the new Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night).  I like to draw from the Masters, and like to do at least one sketch at art exhibits,  Yesterday I chose an 1878 shaded pencil drawing that was in a glass case.  It is such an early drawing of Van Gogh's that it isn't even included in the huge VanGogh gallery of drawings on the web.

He shaded in pencil, but I used gray watercolor to try to achieve the same tones.  In a note included with the drawing, Van Gogh said that he loved buildings lit from within during the evenings when workers were at rest.  I also love to walk by homes lit from within during the evening hours - canal houses in Amsterdam and brownstones here in New York City - so this drawing really resonated with me. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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)

 I lived in a 3rd floor garret apartment in a private home (1965-1969) when I was a poor medical student in Philadelphia.  The neighborhood was delightful, the house was on a bus route connecting to school, and the price was right.  I made this sketch from an artist's pen sketch on a notecard, so I'm not sure about the details.  The floor plan comes from my memory.  Oh how I wish I had taken more photos when I moved from place to place!  I lived here between college and Chicago - so it is out of sequence in the "My Homes" category on my blog.

Posted by Shirley at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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)

I spent a fabulous day with Casey and her husband - who are visiting New York City as part of their trip to the US.  Casey and I did some sketching in the morning, then had lunch with her husband, and walked down through Central Park to the Museum of Modern Art to see the Kirchner exhibit and the permanent collection.

Casey and I have very different styles and I love to watch her work.  Although she won't be back in France for several weeks, I hope that she posts her two drawings that were done of the same subject as mine.  If I could work side by side more than once each year, my sketches might get a little looser and my watercolors more brilliant!

We went to the Central Park reservoir and sketched the skyline on Central Park West.  Here is my journal page of the ElDorado.

Then we walked to the Delacorte Theater and sketched the Romeo and Juliette sculpture in from of the theater which is used for Shakespeare in the Park during the summer.

Lunch at the Central Park Boathouse Restaurant was as lovely as usual and here are two photos from our time there.  Casey did a lovely panaoramic painting from her seat looking out over the water towards Bethesda Fountain.

While they enjoyed their first visit to MoMa since the big renovation, I sketched several more Kirchner women from his sketches that are in the exhibit - some in his sketchbooks.

We had such a fantastic day with them, that my husband and I both look forward to future visits.

Posted by Shirley at 7:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I totally forgot to upload this journal page from our visit to the Central Park Zoo with Henry (5), Sydney (3), and Robbie (3) - our 3 oldest grandchildren.   The Zoo worker in the Penguin House asked the children "why don't polar bears eat penguins?" 

The drawings were made from photos that I took during our visit.  I love sketching animals and someday intend to spend a some quiet time at the wonderful Bronx Zoo.   

Posted by Shirley at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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)

This was a very difficult challenge because I immediately thought about "stuff."  But the "stuff" I always wanted a decade, or a year, or a week ago, I either got or no longer want.    I am extremely fortunate that I did get the big things I wanted.  I have a fabulous husband , 3 grown children with wonderful spouses, and 5 grandchildren ages 5 months to 5 years.  I have a medical career AND I am a wife and mother - something considered impossible/improbable when I was developing my dream.  I saw many parts of the US and had an opportunity to live in several regions that partially shaped me:  The Northeast, the Midwest, Southern California, and Texas - and now I live exactly where I want to be for this time in my life - New York City.  And I have always had creative passions and the ability to move among them in cycles to keep me happy and to make things for those I love.  So after a full week contemplating this challenge, and because I am surrounded by many people who have to learn to live with ill-health, I chose to paint my stethoscope and continue to hope that I have "good health."

There are fewer EDM members posting this challenge than most - so I think others must be struggling with it. 

Posted by Shirley at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

My son and his wife in Washington DC have two cats - his and hers from before they were married.  So this sketch was made from a photo of Sammy meeting baby Annabelle and her stuffed Jellycat Bella shortly after she was born.   

Posted by Shirley at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

The image that I kept returning to for the EDM Challenge "Draw Something Dangerous," was my precious little 3 year old grand daughter Sydney who can now ride her two wheel bike without training wheels!  She rides it on a quiet street in front of their summer house with adults all around her, but she is soooo tiny on it!

My sketch doesn't show the joy on her little face, so here is one of many pictures taken while she whizzed by.

Posted by Shirley at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This is the next entry for my "Our Homes" series of sketches.  I really wish that I had taken more photos of our houses, but this is something that I never considered while we were living there. 

After several years in Chicago we moved to La Jolla, California to finish our training.   I was pregnant with our first child and lived in a little cottage overlooking the ocean during the next 4 years.  The house was small, but we had a fabulous brick patio built into the mountain behind us.  The weather was so nice most of the year that it became the family playroom for our sons.  All 3 of our children were born there (my daughter 14 days before moving day) and then we moved to yet another part of the country - Texas. 

Posted by Shirley at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I'm still drawing figures (mostly dancers) from photos to practice sketching their body positions.  I take ballet barre once each week when I can (I hate all other forms of exercise) and then pick up a postcard advertising a dance program and sketch the photo while I have a cold drink.  We pick up my grandson Robbie at nursery school at lunchtime, so I have some time to paint these while I'm still at the dance studio.  I'd love to work live, but ballet dancers are in constant motion.  I've made no progress on adding faces so far this year and their hands are still pretty awful, but I know that constant practice is important.  Here are some of the ones that I sketched in July.

I also copied several more Seurat drawings onto the modern equivalent of the paper he used and here is the last one I did.  I usually don't draw only in pencil, so using his drawings as inspiration and experimenting with the Arches MBM 105 grain paper and some of my pencils is fun.

Posted by Shirley at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

EDM Challenge #180:  I had a really difficult time with Challenge #180 - Draw Something in Your Favorite Color.  I did a Color Project after being inspired by Laura several years ago and you can see both of our many entries by going to the category list on our blogs.  How could I possible select one color when I love them all and don't consider any drawing done until I add watercolor washes.  Then one evening my son sent me a photograph of my newest grandchild Annabelle's delicious pink feet.  It was then that I decided that I had to sketch and paint them for this challenge in honor of both of my grand daughters.  Sydney lives in a pink room with pink comforters and quilts and for years seemed to only want to wear pink clothes. 

EDM Challenge #181 Draw a Trash Can:  I couldn't find any interesting trash cans to draw until I walked around a corner in my office building and saw this behemoth - in a hallway where some room renovation was being done.  I wish the colors were more interesting!

Posted by Shirley at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

My husband and I were married midway through medical school, but lived in Philadelphia and Chicago until we graduated.  Then I joined him for post-grad training at the University of Chicago and we moved into our very first "adult" apartment together.  It was a lovely modern apartment in one of two buildings that sat on a landscaped island in the middle of E 55th Street.  Friends used to call it carbon monoxide island because the two lanes of traffic on E55th Street separated to go around the apartment complex.

 I have only a few photos from our years there - one taken during a snowstorm when the buildings were silhouettes and the other taken of just one corner of the building showing the architecture.  I'm not pleased with my page composition, but know how I will position these images when I work more on this series.

Posted by Shirley at 7:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

I didn't know that I liked J.M.W. Turner until I saw the Tate Britain "Hockney on Turner" exhibit of his watercolors last srping.  Now I'm really enjoying the Turner exhibit at the Met.  This is one of the few blockbuster exhibits at the Met in which sketching is not prohibited, so I try to quickly sketch one watercolor each time I visit and paint it later - trying to stay loose.  There are three complete rooms of watercolors interspersed among galleries full of his large oil paintings.  He has a very precise, very tight style in the early works in the first watercolor gallery. then a looser style in the second, and mere impressions of a burning Parliament in the big series of the fire in the third gallery.  Here are 4 small sketchbook paintings I did over the last few weeks.

St. Florent - le - Vieil on the River Loire: 1832

Inspired by The Burning Houses of Parliament: 1834  I originally painted this for the cover of my big Reference Photo DVD, but decided to collage it into my sketch book.

Lori and I sketched several Turner watercolors on our sketchcrawl on Saturday - and I just painted mine.

Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute, 1835

Castle Conway: 1798-1800

Posted by Shirley at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

My husband and I were walking to our grandson's school in London to pick him up when I saw this wonderful row of 4 phone booths.  Usually they were single or in pairs in neighborhoods we visited - so I had to get this photo to later play with perspective.  And I never did!  That is my husband in the red baseball cap - waiting for me to catch up!  It was a nice challenge for me to draw this and I listened to Danny's recent Podcast while I sketched and painted it.  A good quiet Sunday afternoon.

Posted by Shirley at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I'm always happy when I can post an EDM Challenge before the next one is announced.  These exercises are great for me to do and I try to stretch my skills a little with each one. 

We were on vacation when the "Sparkle Challenge" was posted and I really wanted to try to capture the light of a gem stone.  I'm not very good painting reflections and I kept looking for a big stone.  I even took a photo of the Hope diamond when we were in DC.  But then I decided to just draw a Bulgari bracelet from an advertisement and move on.

I also took photos of cute little Capitol Hill houses with flags blowing in the breeze on our trip to DC because I knew that ! couldn't draw a moving flag.  Then, at the end of my taxi ride to Union Station following my meetings, I looked up and saw the facade of the station.  I grabbed my camera, took several photos and headed inside for my train back to New York. 

I loved the Seurat Drawings Exhibit at MoMA NY and was especially fascinated with the paper (click on the Conservation button).  This is especially interesting because I don't even sketch with Conte or charcoal.  I looked up the Michallet paper and learned that the modern day equivalent is available at NY Central Art Supplies.  I bought a sheet while I was there on Saturday just to experiment with it.  I ripped it into smaller pieces and now will play with it, using Seurat's drawings as my inspiration.  Here is #1 - done with a 1/8th sheet and a Derwent Drawing pencil. 

Posted by Shirley at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Here are 3 more faceless figures from the month of June:  three Parisiennes from a 19th C photo, a sculpture of Marilyn Monroe in a Washington DC hotel, and a sax player from the Tin Pan Blues Band that I sketched in Central Park while my husband watched our grandson Robbie feed the ducks.  If you "google" the name of the sculpture and sculptor, you can see what Marilyn's face looked like. 

Posted by Shirley at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

A basket of cloth napkins that we keep on a shelf under our side table in the dining room. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I was able to photograph and sketch a small foot bridge in Central Park, New York City.  Landscapes aren't "my thing" so I need to be forced to consider trees and bushes. 

I missed several EDM Challenges when I was on vacation in Quebec.  This sketch of an inuit piece of jewelry was finished this week from memory.  The background pink color was my addition - the Inuit pin was just the ice cubes, figure, and base.

Posted by Shirley at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

May 20th:  Another Matisse contour drawing from my book of Suerat to Matisse French Drawings.  Matisse did the contour drawing self-portrait, and I copied it line by line and then added the color.

May 21st:  Long day at work and we're getting ready for vacation this evening.  I removed the sharps from my carry-on bag and did my fastest sketch ever.  One more day of work and then a relaxing trip to Montreal and Quebec City where I hope to fill a specially prepared recycled sketchbook.

Posted by Shirley at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

A quick sketch tonight for EDM Challenge #171: Draw Ice Cream

I love ice cream and had this photograph mounted as part of a storyboard collage that I did for a project about me. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We met our son and grandson at the Toy Boat Pond this morning in Central Park and I had time to sketch and paint this lamp post while waiting for them to arrive.  I actually sketched one of the Park lamp posts once before, but didn't have a bench perfectly positioned to see a symmetrical globe and cover.   There was sun when we arrived but the clouds rolled in over the next hour and it is again raining!

Posted by Shirley at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Today my husband and I went to the Peter Blum Gallery in Soho to see 80 prints by Goya from his Disasters of War collection.  These are amazingly powerful and I sketched a detail from two of the prints ( "With or Without Reason" and "Dead Bodies").  Afterward we had a glass of wine in a wine bar on West Broadway in Tribeca where I filled a second journal page.  The logo of the wine bar is a medieval woodcut that the owner found in an old text.  I sketched only the top half and reversed the colors. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 15th:  Last week I bought a book entitled Seurat to Matisse: Drawing in France at the Strand book store in Manhattan.  It was an exhibit book published by MoMA in 1974 and part of a big batch of unsold books that now were for sale and just being shelved.  It was $3.95 in 1974 and $0.48 for me! I love sketching from Master drawings and just did my first one from this book.  Matisse did a very simple line drawing - I added watercolor washes.

Here is another recent drawing that I did from Egon Schiele's painting of his sister Gertie.  The styles are so very different and yet I had fun doing both of them.

May 16th:  Another ballet class and another in my series of dancers.  After class I pick up post-card advertisements for upcoming performances from the ballet studio for my inspiration and quickly sketch the dancers while I have a Diet Snapple Tea and kill some time before I need to pick up my grandson at nursery school.

Posted by Shirley at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

 There is a new Superheroes Exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art - part original movie costumes and part fashion from the major designers inspired by the Superheroes.  My grand daughter Sydney and I saw it Saturday morning when we went to play with the Museum computers in the Education Center and she loved Clark Kent who morphed into Superman - and then back to Clark Kent, so we had to go back with brother Henry the next morning.  They were so cute - such little people in that big Museum.  All of my grandchildren learned how to walk better in the Temple of Dendur and regularly throw pennies into the pools there and the fountain in the new Greek and Roman Galleries.  This is one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to spend time with them when they are staying with us during really cold or awful weather in the city. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I moved from my second childhood home to a college dormitory.  This is the 3rd in my "My Homes" series.  I lived in this specific dormitory for two years, an adjacent identical dorm in the same quad for one year, and then up on the hill in a modern dorm for my 4th year.  We had to live in the dorms or at home and had very stringent curfews.   No boys were allowed beyond the living room.  When my children went to college both sexes shared bathrooms and had rooms on the same floor - quite a change.

I drew the bottom of the dormitory facade before I realized that I didn't leave any room for hedges - or the tree  - and my transparent watercolors couldn't possibly fix my error.  Only the first floor had an interesting floor plan and I lived on the second and then third floors, so I stopped here. 

Posted by Shirley at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

EDM Challenge #169 Draw a Piece of Cake: This loose interpretation of the challenge was done the last day of April and never posted because of the Every Day in May Challenge which started the next day.  So I uploaded it now with EDM Challenge #170.

EDM Challenge #170  Draw a Zipper:  This is a still unused Swarovski crystal zipper.  Each zipper tooth has a rhinestone set into it creating a single line of rhinestones when the zipper is closed.  I wish I could have captured the sparkle in paint, but that is totally beyond my skills!

Posted by Shirley at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We had a weekend filled with grandchildren - all 4 who live in NYC on Friday and my daughter's 3 children for the whole weekend.  When the two oldest are here overnight (ages 4 and 3), we try to have at least one movie night to allow them to stay up late and see a favorite classic movie from our children's childhood.  This Saturday night it was Pete's Dragon - released in 1977.  Elliott, a flying dragon, helps children in trouble.   In the movie he protects the orphaned Pete and helps him find a new family - tranforming the town of Passamaquoddie in the process.

Posted by Shirley at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yesterday was so busy that I made two really quick drawings on small pieces of watercolor paper I keep for "emergencies" in my purse notebook, painted them at home this AM, and collaged them into my sketchbook.  The fish was one of a line of small, wall-mounted, fountains in a restaurant and the chandelier was one of several in the lobby of the theater.  Since I sketch every day but usually only post several sketches per week, you're now seeing all of my journal pages - the good, the bad, and the ugly - in order to participate in Every Day in May.

I had time after my ballet class this morning to sketch/paint before I picked up Sydney and Robbie at their nursery school.  The ballet studio has many advertisements for dance programs and classes and I usually manage to find one photo that inspires me.  While I type this, Robbie (2 1/2) is taking his nap and Sydney (3 1/2) is watching our videotape of the Mary Martin Peter Pan Broadway show for the umpteenth time.  But when I pulled out my sketchbook to scan the pages, she asked if she could watch Peter Pan AND paint at the same time!  She will be here with us for the next two nights, so I think we'll do lots of painting and coloring. 

Posted by Shirley at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I had a wonderful relaxing day and can add my daily sketchbook page today when it was done rather than waiting to upload it tomorrow.  Today my sketchbook is more a visual journal because I had a leisurely lunch outdoors across from the Jefferson Market Courthouse between ordering a camera at B and H and browsing and buying art books at The Strand.

Posted by Shirley at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had a long day at work, followed by Book Group at my apartment, so this sketch was done in 5-10 minutes while I made morning coffee in my office.  Commiting to a daily sketch since January 1, 2007, I frequently have to do something really quickly in the morning.  Most weekdays I sketch during my quiet time at home in evening.  The brass pig has been with us for more than 20 years - maybe closer to 30, and I can't believe that I've not sketched him yet!

Posted by Shirley at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I did another 2 page journal spread in my House series for my sketches yesterday and today.  My father built this house with the help of my mother's brothers and some friends - in a rural community approximately 20 miles from New York City.  We moved in one week after I finished 3rd grade and I lived there until I graduated from high school - plus 4 college summers.  As I was writing this I realized that I have lived in my NYC apartment longer than I lived in my childhood home - a surprising realization. 

I left out the trees on the front lawn because it wasn't possible to see the house.  Maybe next winter I'll resketch this house from a winter photo and add the bare trees.  Snow and trees are still challenges for me!

Next I plan to sketch the college dorm where I lived for 2 of my 4 years.

Posted by Shirley at 8:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Martha, of Trumpetvine Travels, spent the day with my husband and me in New York.  Christies and Sothebys, the big auction houses, are previewing the art for the Impressionism and Modern art auctions next week and there is fabulous art to be seen at both places.  Martha and I wandered all of the galleries sketching small pieces of paintings and sculptures - just creating journal pages to reflect our experience.  Over lunch we shared our most recent sketchbooks and then returned to my apartment for wine and a little watercolor painting.

The only picture of us, as we set off on the subway, is blurred because I had the flash off in preparation for the galleries - but it is better than nothing:

I'm constantly amazed how people from all over the US - and the world - are meeting to sketch because of the EDM community.  These are the four journal pages that I filled while walking through all of the galleries - the first two at Christies and the second two at Sotheby's.  Martha said that she would post her sketches when she returns to California.

Posted by Shirley at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

This large tin rooster is one of many sold at the Eastern Market  Weekend Flea Market in Washington DC.  The vendor says that they sell as soon as he gets another one from the artist in Mexico.  I saw it early in the morning when walking through several weeks ago, but it was sold by the time I went back to sketch it.  The following week my son emailed me a photo of the rooster proudly guarding a home on the lawn on 12th Street.  They have so much character - rusted tin and all!

Posted by Shirley at 8:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When linking to my previous "Museum Visits" posting  I realized that I never uploaded my painted version of the  Card Players.  I will plan a return visit to the Met to sketch it again in January 2009 (paints not allowed).

Posted by Shirley at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I periodically love to walk and sketch random things - in ink - building up a sketchbook page.  Last week I did several pages like this - just for quick fun and memories. 

The first page was done while I wandered through many bead stores in the Garment District with a friend.  I loved some of the designs.

We picked Robbie and Sydney up at Nursey School on Friday and took them to the Central Park Toy Boat Pond to play.  There were many remote control sailboats on the pond so I sketched one as it passed by.  Sydney found a one inch rubber charm of a summer "flip-flop" and she played with it for part of the afternoon.

Posted by Shirley at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I couldn't do a serious sketch of our newspaper, because I never read it.  The New York Times is delivered to our apartment by 6:30 each day and I dutifully bring it inside for my husband.  However, I have many things to do that are higher on my personal priority list and I get my news from the WNBC Early Morning Show, WNYC NPR radio during the day in my office, and the Lehrer news hour in the evening.  So with this challenge, I bring you a charming paper hat made from the front page of yesterday's newspaper!

Posted by Shirley at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

My husband gave me this antique gold Elgin ladies' pendant watch as a wedding present.  When very pregnant with our first child, I sat down for a cup of coffee and the watch, which was hanging down over my big belly, plunged into the cup.  Ever since then watchmakers have been puzzled by the rust on the movements and no repair has lasted very long.  I still wear it to work and use it to attach my required ID - not to tell time.  It has a wonderful patina and still has great sentimental value.

Posted by Shirley at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

In the mid-60s my husband sent me a series of 12" by 16" animal cards and we matted them (couldn't afford framing) for the baby's room when our first child was born.  They remained in the boys' bedroom for the 4 years we lived in LaJolla, California and then they were put away with some other prints for safe-keeping.  Last weekend, and two homes later, I found them and decided to sketch and paint all 5 animals - the first 3 across a double page spread in my Moleskine watercolor journal and the last 2 on separate pages and subsequent days.  These were from a commercial card company and the back half of the cards with the publisher's trademark are long gone.

Posted by Shirley at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This is one fish from an entire row of fish (face to face and back to back) in a stone wall that forms the entrance to the main door of the Ukrainian Institute at 5th Ave and 79th Street in New York City.  It was much more difficult to sketch than I thought because I kept getting lost in the flourishes.  I also wasn't able to show the 3-dimensionality of it as much as I wanted because I needed to keep the stone lighter in color than the background.   I decided to post it anyway and then sketched and painted 3 of my favorite fish designs just to be colorful and playful.  This image was taking from a small area of the background on a Tibetan painting at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. 

Posted by Shirley at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Finding something to sketch every evening is sometimes hard.  I feel like Danny Gregory when he said that he sketched everything in his apartment.  Sometimes I work on faces and figures.  This week I also painted animal faces from my reference photos.  Here are my giraffe and rhino!  I specifically wanted to work on watercolor glazing, although I'm really impatient and don't always allow layers to dry properly!

Posted by Shirley at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

I still practice sketching a few faces and figures each month - and try different pencils, pen, and watercolor washes as one of my goals for 2008.  Although I am still doing one sketch/journal page per day, my sketchbooks are really eclectic and I only have a few pages like this to upload each month.

The next two figures were sketched using photos in Mark Edward Smith's book The Nude Figure: A Visual Reference for the Artist.

These 3 sketches were made from photos in a small Yoga book I bought just for this purpose - to make quick, loose sketches/paintings in many different positions.

Posted by Shirley at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

My two oldest grandchildren started to show an interest in my point-and-shoot digital camera just as they turned 3 (because I take so many pictures of them)!  I taught them how to hold it carefully, focus until the green light came on, then shoot.  They LOVED taking pictures and when unsure what we could get them for their birthday, we bought each the Fisher-Price children's digital camera.  It is very simple, but can actually take reasonable photos.  We recently took our cameras around the neighborhood, and my granddaughter took one photo - straight ahead- for every 10-12 steps she took!  I had to delete a few from the card so she could capture the building at the end of our walk, the external facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I uploaded their JPEGs to their own folders on my computer and each got to select one for a 5 X 7" print to take home.  The only down-side of these cameras for them is battery use! 

Posted by Shirley at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

My daughter brought me tulips on the 18th to celebrate Spring.  I tried to be really loose sketching and painting them.

Last Friday my daughter brought Callum to stay with us for 5 days - I love having my grandchildren here alone with us.  After he had his bath and went to bed, I sketched his really cute little shoes.  Without sketching and painting them, I'm not sure that I would have ever really noticed they are blue gray and lime green.  These 7wide little feet have certainly grown beautifully since he was born 6 weeks early in London one year ago.

When Callum's cousin Annabelle was born on Saturday, I decided to sketch and paint the bear that I made to celebrate her birth.  Tomorrow we will go to meet her and visit my son and daughter-in-law for the weekend and the bear will take her first train ride.  I love watching my children become parents - they are all so much in love with these little guys!

Posted by Shirley at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Annabelle Miriam was born today at 3:54 PM to our son Jason and his wife Shannon.  Mommy and baby are wonderful and Dad - a Pediatrician - says she's just perfect.  I sketched and painted the waiting nursery when I visited several weeks ago - and took her the new babyquilt and matching musical pillow.  This week I made her a really soft pink bear and will take it for our visit next weekend.

                              There is a music box in this shadow applique pillow.

                                           This bear is so soft - I hope she loves it! 

Posted by Shirley at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

We don't play cards - and the only deck that I could find in the apartment came from a Benefit Dinner for a Health Care non-profit organization that we attended.  Loved the joker - so that was good for sketching.  The individual cards each had a single Medicare fact printed on the face side.  Wish I had something more exciting! 

Posted by Shirley at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I got behind last week when I was working on my blog entry re: recylcled books.  Here finally are the last two challenges:  Body lotions that smell good and my Breakfast.

Posted by Shirley at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

I still try to practice faces and figures as much as possible since this is one of my goals for 2008.  Here are a few that I haven't posted previously.

 This was a traditional photo that I tried to stylize in the sketch.

A watercolor sketch from another magazine advertisement.  I tried to minimize the amount of ink in the drawing and to work on mixing watercolor skin tones. 

When I was shopping for more watercolor pencils at Pearl Paint, I found the eye, nose, and mouth sketch on the left on the "test pad" hanging on the cabinet containing the pencils.  I had to rip it off to test my pencils and since there was no longer anyone around, I brought it home for my own practice.  I'm in awe of someone who could quickly dash these off - and tried to do the same.

This was a bad experiment!  I wanted to try the Mars Lumograph black pencil and my Cretacolor white pencil on a scrap of brown sketching paper.  The brown color is just too dark to really see the sketch, so I'll go back and buy a lighter tan for more experimentation.

Posted by Shirley at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Gill at Journal Craft Inspiration has several "Floor Plan" drawings on her blog for inspiration and I thought I would give it a try.  My first home, from birth through 3rd grade, was a second floor apartment in this house in Clifton, New Jersey.  I had no problem remembering the floor plan and had fun making the memory page.  I am an only child and had my bed on the living room couch.  When I was sick, my blanket and pillow remained there during the day giving rise to the concept of a "sick bed" which I always created for my children on the family room couch when they were home from school.  Now my daughter and oldest son do it for their children. 

Posted by Shirley at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

This barely qualifies as an award, but I couldn't find the quilt ribbons I received many years ago, and I've been thinking of sketching it anyway. 

In July 2005 I reconfigured my job description and gave up clinical medicine and training of young physicians - retaining my role in the medical school  3 days per week.  I wanted to have more time to spend with my grandchildren and just have fun.  My hospital colleagues presented me with this lovely clock which now sits on a shelf in our apartment library.  I tell everyone that it is the wristwatch commonly given to men at retirement!

Saturday I received the Kind Heart Award from Mellanie - and the award is so pretty that I wanted to post it here and thank her. 

I don't know where the award originated, but appreciate the kind sentiment.  EDM is a wonderful community of fellow artists - all working hard to improve their skills, and support and inspire others.  I am grateful for the advice so freely given on our message board and the comments left on my blog that spur me on.  I'm hoping that everyone who sees this on the EDM Superblog will realize that it is a really big thank you from me to the active members of EDM. 

L  

Posted by Shirley at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

There are many, many museums in the city and I love to visit the art museums to see the exhibits and sketch from the Masters.  We saw a Leon Kossoff drawing exhibit at the National Gallery in London and I was impressed with his return visits to sketch the same few works by Masters many times during his career.  I thought it might be fun to try this, in part to see how my art skills evolve and how my familiarity with the painting may change my drawing over time.  The Galleries for 19th- and Early 20th-Century European Paintings reopened on December 4th after renovation - so on my first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008, I sat in front of Cezanne's Card Players and sketched it.  I am concentrating on sketching figures again in 2008 - with faces - so this seemed like a good painting to revisit again and again.  Please don't let them move the bench from in front of the painting!  Pen and paints aren't permitted in the Met, so I took a photo and plan to paint it soon.

We visited the Museum of Modern Art with out of town house guests several weeks ago and while my husband toured the 5th floor Painting and Sculpture I exhibit with them, I spent 25 minutes sketching.  I love the view from a window in the Picasso room on the 5th floor of MoMA of the top floors of a townhouse across W54th Street - and have many photos of it that I took during previous visits.  This time I spent 15 minutes sketching it - again in pencil because of museum rules.  Yesterday I found a full charcoal drawing of the same house in Drawing magazine (Winter 2008).  Artist Anthony Mitri wrote that his drawing of the house and surrounding buildings took 6 months!  I will redraw this house soon and try to do it justice. 

After sketching from the window, I did a quick sketch of Cezanne's painting "Turning Road at Montgeroult."  I love views of rooftops and always was attracted to this painting in the permanent exhibit.  I painted it at home in several sessions trying a yellow underpainting and mixed complementaries for the color of the houses and roofs.  Watercolor and oil paints give very different results, but I had fun with this and I think learned a lot from copying his composition.

This week I made a quick visit to the Morgan Library and Museum to see their current exhibit entitled Michaelangelo, Vasari, and their Contemporaries: Drawings from the Uffizi.  I chose a simple drawing by Baccio Bandinelli to copy and except for the tilt of the head managed to capture the rest of the lines and the type of shading used.  This drawing was a study for his Hercules sculpture that is opposite Michaelangelo's David in front of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.  There were many other wonderful drawings, but it was crowded and I had to select one that I might copy quickly enough while standing and trying to manage sketchbook, pencil, bag etc.

Posted by Shirley at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I have two favorite kitchen tools.  My 36 year old Kitchenaid was posted on this blog in 2006 when I was doing my color project during yellow month.  So this time I sketched my 30 year old Cuisinart!  They are very reliable machines and have been used regularly for many years.   We don't cook as often anymore, but the Kitchenaid was used twice recently when Sydney, Henry, and I baked cookies.

Posted by Shirley at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

This was a really, really hard challenge for me.  I'm not sure that any piece of my popcorn has "volume" and due to the lighting in my favorite painting place, I also don't have shadows.  At least the popcorn-eating was enjoyable.

Posted by Shirley at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

While I was sketching Uno's photo from his win as Best of Breed on Tuesday night, he was winning Best of Show at the Westminstrer Kennel Club annual show in Manhattan. It was the first time in the 100+ year history of the show that a beagle ever won Best of Show.  In film clips on the news he was the perkiest, cutest thing - and I'm not especially a pet person!

Posted by Shirley at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This sketch was inspired by a photo of my grand daughter after a bath.  The blue and white puppy towel probably belongs to one of her brothers, but on this night it was hers.  Unfortunately I am not good enough to make the sketch look like her.  Maybe next year!  For now I can just be happy that I am putting faces on my figures - a huge accomplishment for 2008.

Posted by Shirley at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

This is my Italian hero sandwich, purchased at a local market for lunch last week.  My favorite sandwich is a prosciutto and mozzarella panini - but I don't have a good local source!  The cherry tomatoes were added at home for color - and challenge - when sketching and painting my sandwich.

Posted by Shirley at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Today I had an hour to go back to the Eternal Ancestry exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to sketch the wonderful faces on these Reliquaries.  They are 1-2 feet in height - some are full figures, but most are just heads on a standard base.  They are mostly earthcolors with some gold, bronze, silver, and even feathers. 

I walked through with my Moleskine watercolor notebook and walnut brown Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil and just sketched pieces that I really liked.  The digital photo image below shows all of the faces across a double page spread in the Moleskine.  I originally intended to add water, but then started using the pencil for small details meaning these strokes would be lost if I painted over the pencil. 

Here is the first page in more detail  (scanned):

      Here is the second page in more detail (scanned):

I wasn't at all sure what would happen if I sprayed these pages with Fixative, so I sketched another page with another mask and tried it.  There was no running or smearing of the color - and in fact I couldn't get the pencil to rewet so I could add color. 

The exhibit doesn't close until March 2nd, so I hope to have time to sketch more of these beautiful 19th and 20th C. sculptures from Central Africa.

Posted by Shirley at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Two journal pages from my Figure and Face practice.  The nude is the on the last page of my Michaelangelo sonnet recycled book.  The Beefeater is sketched from a London photo and was done in my recycled Elizabeth I book. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

On Fridays when I take ballet class, I have time to have coffee and sketch before going to pick up my grandson at nursery school.  I try to use this time to practice figure drawing of dancers from photos in ads in magazines.

Here is my painting from today.

Posted by Shirley at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

EDM Challenge #154: Draw a Lemon

I wanted to try to capture the moist cut surface of the lemon and used Masking Fluid to create the appearance of membranes.  I need to learn to use even a thinner application tool !  I love lemon flavor and wish I had time to make lemon squares with this lemon before bed! 

Posted by Shirley at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)

More face sketching practice from magazine advertisement photos.  Unfortunately there is a piece of dust on the scanner and visible on two of the faces, but I'm too tired to go back and rescan them! 

The scan really shows a difference in the pupils that is not as apparent on the sketch.  I will definitely need to work on these.

Posted by Shirley at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Four lemon-scented soaps in a clear plastic bag, purchased during our October 2005 visit to Sorrento, Italy: 

I need to spend time working with reflections - more now than ever!  It took me several days to find something to sketch and paint - and then I could see the reflections on the plastic, but just couldn't make them sparkle.  I know that these areas should be bright white, and the next time I try this I will mask the areas and try that. 

Posted by Shirley at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

We keep salted white pistachio nuts in a hand blown glass bowl on our coffee table (when the grandchildren aren't there) or on the fireplace mantle (when they are).  There is no relationship between the size of the nuts on the napkin and those in the bowl - I just wanted to sketch some bigger. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

One of my Goals for 2008 is to learn how to draw faces.  In preparation, I purchased two complementary books which I read and now will use as references as I work myself through a series of photos to understand the basics.

Carrie Stuart Parks.  Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces: The is portrait drawing as taught by a forensic artist and she covers every part of the face individually.

John Raynes.  Drawing and Painting People: This is a more complex book, covering drawing and painting faces, facial expressions, and poses.

Here are a few of my first practice pieces.  I really do need to learn how to sketch with pencil without smudging it all over the page!  I wanted to have a reasonable number of baseline sketches so I can redo them at the end of 2008 to see if my concentrated effort will improve my skills. 

I came down with a head cold at work on Thursday and in the evening this photo for a spa advertisement looked very tempting and soothing.  So I sketched it.

Posted by Shirley at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

I am enjoying documenting my annual handmade ornaments - and still have lots more to sketch.  My plan is to continue sketching the collection in the week before Christmas again next year when I sit down after busy and joyful days to do a daily sketchpage.  Over the years each has been photographed individually and on the Christmas tree, but never painted.   

EDM Challenge #150: Draw a Candle

I love candles of all shapes and sizes.  But we only burn candles that are in globes of some type in the apartment to prevent fires.  I have two of the above Simon Pearce handblown glass candle globes that are always on my dining room table and they are used constantly.  It was very difficult for me to capture the sparkle of the flickering flame against the beautiful clear glass - but I just knew that I wanted to try.

Posted by Shirley at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Progress Report for 2007: 

I copied my Goals from the 2006-2007 Progress/Goals entry on this blog and recorded 2007 PROGRESS after each Goal.  I am currently reflecting on where I am and where I want to be at the end of 2008, so my 2008 GOALS will be posted this weekend.

1. Continue to sketch/paint everyday in my large Moleskine watercolor sketchbook.

 I did do a daily sketch - and sometimes 2-3.  On a few days when I was too busy to even open my sketchbook, I did my daily sketch the next morning and then another one at my usual time in the evening.  The majority of my sketches are pen with watercolor washes.  Most of the time I used the large Moleskine watercolor journal (I'm halfway through the 5th for the year), but I also added sketches to my London sketchbooks and all 3 recycled books that I made. 

2. Complete each EDM weekly challenge and try to expand my skills by what I choose to paint for the challenge.

For the second year, I did all of the EDM Challenges in the 3-10 days after they were posted and tried to stretch my skills slightly by what I chose to sketch.  I posted all of them on my blog, as one of my planned 2 entries per week.

3. Make plans for how I will use my new Eliz. I recycled book.  I'm currently considering using it for more London sketches -  from photos that I have taken during our visits.  I have another Cachet journal for my London Travel Sketchbook Volume 3 and decided that I want to continue to use the same journal type for all of my London travel. 

I completed 3 full Cachet Linen Watercolor sketchbooks during our London travels.  There are approximately 150 pages in total from our 6 visits to London - my goals certainly were exceeded and I will always treasure these books.  One sketch that I never posted was added as the final page to honor the birth of our grandson last Christmas in London.  This sketch was made using colored pencil from a postcard I purchased at the Guercino drawing exhibit we saw at the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House.

My Eliz. I recycled book has been used for playful sketches of Big Ben and most recently the Tower of London from photos that I took - using different techniques, even collage.  If you look closely you can see I used the Holbein Henry VIII painting from the Tate Britain exhibit for the collage.

4.  Recycle another book since I have more paper from my previous purchase.  This time I will look for an old New York book that I can use for special days out and about my own city.

I recycled two additional books - one for New York and one Michaelangelo Sonnet bookfor some of my figure drawings.   

5.  Spend more time sketching human faces and figures.  I'm not sure yet whether I want to take any life drawing classes because I love the challenge of learning on my own.  I collected some copies of Holbein's portraits and Rodin's figure drawings from our museum visits this week.  And I now own two Hockney drawing/portrait books.  I will recreate some of these pieces from the 16th C, 19th C, and 20th C for fun and then immerse myself in my city and draw people to try to develop my own style. 

I was very productive sketching figures - or body parts - and almost filled my recycled Michaelangelo Sonnet book for some of the sketches and my Moleskine for the rest.  I alternated among Derwent light wash pencils, Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils, Zig Millenium pen with watercolor wash, and 2B pencils for the sketches. 

My references included:  Greek and Roman sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, photos of dancers, photos of nude figures from an artist book  I purchased just for these exercises (The Nude Figure by Mark Smith), and occasionally even real people!  But very few of my figures have faces - a goal for 2008!

6.  Read some of the new art books on my shelf - starting with Betty Edward's book on color.

I continue to read art technique books, but never opened Betty Edward's book.  This year I did 5 lessons from a Watercolor Skills book by Linda Elsworth.  There are 5 more lessons to do, but I was temporarily derailed by a lesson on landscapes, my least favorite type of sketching/painting. 

In May 2007 I decided to finally start an Eric Maisel book entitled The Creativity Book - a year's worth of inspiration and guidance (it has been on my shelf for several years).   There are 2 exercises to complete per week and I am now on Week 31!  I have done some sketching and painting, but mostly writing, as I explore creativity in general and my creative dreams in particular. 

7.  Make a "larger-than-journal size" watercolor painting of the house my daughter and son-in-law rented this year in London so we have a personal visual memory of this wonderful year when they return to New York mid-year.

I did this painting and included it as part of a big "London" Christmas gift that I gave to my daughter and son-in-law.  The gift also included a DVD of all of the photos (1000s) that I took of their family and London and a Guest Book that our family kept everytime we visited them.  I printed some of my sketches for the book and even included an essay re: my reflections on our visits.  I was also able to make a photo collage of them at the moment when they were leaving New York in May 2006 and then leaving London in June 2007.  The children grew lots during the year and and another grandson was born there mid-year.

8.  Be a visitor in my own city and keep a Manhattan "travel" journal.  I now have scattered journal pages throughout my daily sketchbooks. 

I did continue to sketch in NYC throughout the year - and even started a series of sketches entitled "10 blocks from Home."  My New York City sketches, however, are scattered through my New York recycled book and my regular Moleskine sketchbook.  This occurred because I used whatever book I had with me when I decided to sketch.  Since I use both sides of a page in my Moleskine, I can't easily move these sketches - and I just have to be OK about this level of disorganization!

Posted by Shirley at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

All of my sewing is done, the apartment and tree were decorated with help from my 3 little elves (Callum is still too young), the gift bags are packed, and dinner preparation for tonight is underway.  In addition to Christmas preparations this week, two of my grandchildren had birthdays - with more preparation and birthday parties.  I managed to continue to sketch daily and followed the lead of Sandy and others and stayed with a Christmas theme - one ornament that I made in the past was sketched per day.  My handmade Santa collection is already on my blog and a photo of this year's pigs also appeared.  Here are more from my animal menagerie!

Posted by Shirley at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We have a short broom to sweep the fireplace hearth - and I'm not sure that we use it as much as our grandchildren.  Normally it is kept in a copper pot with kindling, but I like to sketch at night in our library, so here it is resting on my leather ottoman.  I found that drawing bristles is hard!

I just remembered that I sketched the fireplace almost two years ago when this blog was less than one month old.  Here is a copy of that drawing with the copper pot - but no broom.

Posted by Shirley at 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I just returned from 6 days in Atlanta, where I was attending an annual meeting of my medical society.  It comes each year at such a horrible time - but the cities I visited during the last 30+ years are all gorgeously decorated for Christmas.  When I arrived last Thursday, I did a sketchwalk (as discussed by Mari Le Glatin Kreis in her recent book) and filled the whole 2 page spread of my Moleskine watercolor journal. 

From left to right across the two pages:  The American Airlines logo from the airplane, the antique Celtic pin complete with a sharp dagger on the bottom which was in my carry-on (by mistake) and picked up by TSA (they let me keep it!), one of the many Poinsettia plants in all areas of the Georgia World Congress Center, the top of the Westin hotel which was visible from the Congress Center, and a view of the entrance to Olympic Centennial Park as seen from my hotel - the Omni at the CNN Center.

On the second day, to get a head start on my Art Goals for 2008, I sketched one of my friends who was giving a 30 minute lecture.  My son, who is also a member of the society, thought there was a likeness, so I was pleased.

On the final day of the meetings I sat in the Omni Hotel, listened to Christmas music which was playing in the lobby areas, and sketched 3 beautiful Christmas ornaments.  The gold and silver gouache doesn't show up in the scans, but the beautiful metallic reflections attracted me to these 3.

Posted by Shirley at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

EDM Challenge #146:  My two favorite foods are good bread and ice cream and I could have both for supper and call it a wonderful meal!  This is a Skinny Cow mint and chocolate fudge ice cream cone that I sketched and painted really quickly before I ate it.

EDM Challenge #147:  Draw Something Wood

This small wooden box has inlaid black marble squares and one brass square on the top. 

EDM Challenge #148:  Draw Something Soothing

This Christmas Door Doll, that is 20 + years old, is wearing a Tara Aromatherapy Neck Wrap that was given to me by my daughter last weekend as an early Christmas present.  It gets heated in the microwave for 2 minutes and then provides at least an hour of moist heat to your neck muscles - relieving all computer strain.

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One of my Art Goals for 2007 was to sketch more figures.  These are my journal pages for November.

Gesture Drawings:  Passenger in airport terminal, an actor in a one woman play about Elizabeth Blackwell, and a ballet class member warming up.  I find it really difficult to sketch almost constantly moving figures!

Dancers:  Only one dancer sketch from a photo this month - done in the Cafe after ballet class.

Nude Figures:  from my Artists' Visual Reference photo book:

Several Faces as a prelude to ART GOALS 2008:  The first is from the front of my edition of Madame Bovary - my Book Groups' November book for discussion.  The second are two faces I did from my Cezanne Basel Sketchbooks.

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While my husband and I were preparing dinner for our 15th Annual NYC Family Thanksgiving holiday, cousins were balloon handlers for the giant Snoopy balloon in the Macy's parade.  This sketch was taken from a photo on the front page of the New York Times yesterday - showing the Kermit balloon floating down the Avenue.  We learned that it is really hard work!

Yesterday my 88 year old mother and I took the 5th Avenue bus down to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas decorations and the annual tree.  Although it won't be lit until Wednesday night, the lights are already on the tree and the entire area around the skating rink is beautifully decorated and full of visitors.  This sketch was made from a photo that I took of one of the 3 soldiers on the north border of the rink.  It was really cold and outdoor sketching just wasn't going to happen!

I love the Christmas decorations in New York City - and even don't mind the crowds.  My, mother, who hasn't been in NYC for the holidays for many years, had a wonderful time.  She's amazing and kept up beautifully!

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I'd rather sketch 10 buildings - or many figures in motion rather than sketch and paint a tree.  So this was definitely a stretch for me!  I love the gold-orange-red trees of autumn so I take many photographs on my walks.  This tree was on the sidewalk across the street from my son's house in Capitol Hill in Washington DC.  I had no time to sit outside this week and paint, so I was happy to have my recent photo.

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It was difficult for me to find something square in my apartment.  I have a kitchen timer and a square alarm clock, but I kept looking for something else.  Then I found an old 3 1/2" computer disk and disk holder - near my stash of transparent tape which is in a square red package.   In this age of CDs, DVDs, and flash drives, I haven't carried computer files on a diskette in more than 2 years, so I sketched the diskette as a ghost. 

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I still take occasional ballet classes at Steps on the Upper Westside of Manhattan.  Then I have coffee in the Barre Cafe at Steps until it is time to pick up my grandson at Nursery School .  While there I sketch and paint dancers from magazine photos for my daily sketch and for more figure drawing practice.  I could never sketch dancers in class and photography isn't permitted in the studios.

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I had a few minutes on Tuesday after my meeting at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington DC ended and walked up Connecticut Avenue to the National Zoo to see and sketch the Giant Pandas.  More than 20 years ago, I sat with my young daughter and sketched a Panda eating bamboo - and it didn't move for 20-30 minutes.  The Panda Habitat has been recently renovated and there is a baby that was born in July 2007.  I was able to see Mom, Dad, and Baby (who appears fully grown) and they were all in perpetual motion!

Here are a few quick sketches that I did when they stopped for 30 seconds!

There are 3 cameras in use at all times to track the pandas and volunteers (working in 3 hour shifts)move the cameras around continually to keep the Pandas in view on the screen.  If you Google Panda cam you can see the 2 from the National Zoo and the 3rd that is sponsored at the zoo by Animal Planet. 

I still love watching them - and was thrilled to have the time to walk up to the Zoo.

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I was playing with Photoshop and my scan of the "Hopper" house painting I did one week ago at the National Gallery of Art - and suddenly this appeared!  I have no idea what I did, but it looked alot like a Halloween haunted house.  Happy Halloween to everyone.  I'm off early tomorrow morning to International Quilt Festival in Houston and then a meeting in Washington DC, leaving my husband home to be with our grandchildren for Halloween "trick or treating."  After one week away from my computer, I will have a full week of catch-up to do. 

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EDM Challenge #142:  Draw Something Hot:

When I looked for something "hot" all I had to do was look at the small burns on my fingers.  I toast English muffins and bagels in a toaster oven daily - and as often as I remind myself that all parts of the appliance are HOT, I burn a finger or two! 

EDM Challenge #143:  Draw Spices or Herbs

I love cinnamon, even mixed in with my vanilla ice cream.  And I love anise - and the fascinating shape of star anise.  So it wasn't very difficult for me to quickly find spices for sketching.

Posted by Shirley at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Last weekend we visited our son and daughter-in-law in Washington DC and went to the Edward Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery East Wing.  It is a spectacular exhibit - including etchings, watercolors and oil paintings.  I was incredibly impressed, once again, with the contrasts he achieved between light and shadow and decided to copy the master.  This is taken from an oil painting entitled Captain Upton's House.   The exhibit is excellently captured on the National Gallery website

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We have accumulated many unused Virgin Atlantic travel toothbrushes from our trips between London and New York last year.  They are all in the cabinet in our guest bathroom in case one of our guests forgets a toothbrush.  I love the many colors - and the toothbrush was always accompanied by travel socks and one pen in the same color in the travel pouch. 

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I continue to sketch figures - a few each week.  All of these dancers were drawn from photos.  I still don't draw any faces, but feel more comfortable with dancers bodies than I did at the beginning of 2007.  Wonder when I'll be be brave enough to try a whole person?

Bad planning on my part, so I wasn't able to fit all of the dancer on the page!   

We took our grandchildren Henry and Sydney to their soccer class last week and I sketched these soccer players from photos on their brochure.

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During our year of London Travel, I filled 3 Cachet Linen spiral watercolor sketchbooks.  I love having the envelope in the back of Moleskine notebooks and quickly realized that I needed to find and buy large envelopes to glue on the inside of the back cover of these sketchbooks.  As we traveled around London, I collected a few postcards from Museum exhibits so I could have inspiration for future drawings.  The postcard that I laid across this envelope, on the inner cover of London #2, is from the Royal Academy of Art Rodin exhibit.   

Here is my sketch from the postcard.  The writing on the page from January 7th says "sketched on a 747 somewhere between London and New York." 

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I still try to do occasional sketches of Manhattan, as if I am a tourist in my own town.  While waiting to meet my daughter and grandson one rainy day this month, I sketched the National Academy of Art - which is just north of the Guggenheim Museum on 5th Ave.  I also did my first sketch of the Status of Liberty - from a poster - using a Juniper Green watercolor pencil.  The head and the uplifted arm had to be redrawn.  

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This is a ship lantern that we purchased on Rue Jacob, Paris, in an antique store specialing in nautical objects.   Many times over the last 2 years I almost sketched it just because I like it so much and see it every day.  This challenge made it the perfect choice.  We had it hanging in our home in Texas, but it now just sits on a surface in our dining room in our New York apartment. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I continue to sketch figures - from many different types of images - for practice.  Some are inspired by famous artists, others are from photographs in current periodicals.  The only thing that can be said is that I probably am not destined to work in a series anytime soon!  My tastes are too eclectic and I like to try a little of everything.

Picasso One-Liner:  Taken from a small book of his that I covet.

Contour Drawing of a Fashion Photograph as I work on Contour Drawings for exercises in a Charles Reid book [The Natural Way to Paint]:

Yoga Photos:  I'm still working from photos in the very small second-hand yoga book that I bought last year.

Inspired by Donald Hamilton Fraser's series of Dancers that I purchased at the Royal Academy of Art in London:

Fashion Sketch:  Taken from a Bloomingdale's Newspaper Ad to try these techniques and proportions.

Leonardo and Venezia:  Copied from a set of cards that I bought from Palazzo Grassi in Venice.  These were sketched in my Michaelangelo Sonnets recycled book so some of the Michaelangelo sketches are included on the paper that I glued in to cover the gap between signatures.  These were some strange, but interesting faces!

My Feet:  My only drawing from life! 

Roman Statue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

I'm interested to see what October brings.  My choice of subjects on nights when I do my daily sketch is very spontaneous - and fortunately I have collected some images that I keep near my sketchbook so I can play with them.

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This is a child-size, really soft, light blue bear - really gentle and cute in spite of the scarey face I seemed to give him.  Between grandchildren visits to our apartment, he sits in a little car that we gave Henry (now 4) for his first birthday.  When Henry outgrew it, the car came to our apartment for all of our grandchildren to use.  I take them for walks around our busy Manhattan neighborhood when we don't need to have a stroller with us.  It is a perfect toy for an urban baby! 

Posted by Shirley at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There is nothing that I appreciate more than my programmable coffee pot.  The coffee is ready every morning when I wake up and I thoroughly enjoy my first mug of coffee of the day while slowly waking up and planning the day's activity.     

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We took Henry and Sydney to the Central Park Zoo following the Carousel last week, arriving just in time to see the penguins being fed.  The penguin house is dark - with a climate controlled space for the penguins which means water droplets across the windows.  In addition, they move too quickly for me to draw in the dark - so these were sketched from a few of my favorite photos. 

Every penguin has a numbered tag and the animal feeders have a clipboard with a long list of them. This is to insure that each of them is first fed one "special fish" that is loaded artificially with
their vitamins.

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We took our grandchildren Henry (just 4) and Sydney (2 1/2) to the Central Park Carousel this week.  We arrived just before 10AM so we were able to see it before it started running.  I even took Sydney to see a nice little horse - but there was no way this otherwise adventurous child was going to get on that horse!  So grandma had a ride on a big horse, all alone, hoping to change her mind - but no.  "When I'm bigger" was all she said!  Henry was also very cautious and rode in the cart behind one of the horses with Grandpa. 

Tonight's dinner salad.  I really did have to sketch and paint it before eating.  I wasn't looking forward to this, but like most EDM challenges I'm glad I did it. 

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This is our mahogany library ladder unfolded.  The bottom step folds under the second step and then both together fold under the top step.  It always takes me two attempts to get it open and closed.  It seemed like a great challenge to sketch the perspective in this angled view.

Posted by Shirley at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One of my Art Goals for 2007 is to practice drawing people - real people, photos of people, photos of nude models, and Greek-Roman statues.  Here are a few sketches from August.

This sketch was made from a photo in a pregnancy magazine that is distributed at the medical school.  There are great photos of babies and pregnant women in the advertisements!

These two folks were sitting separately reading at the Cafe at the Toy Boat Pond in Central Park.  I loved her hat and then needed to find a suitable male wearing a hat for balance! 

This was sketched from a photo in my Nude Models for Artists book.  Although the graphite smudging doesn't show up on the watercolor paper, it really does in the scan.  This is one of the liabilities of being left-handed for sure.

A sketch from the Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I went on my own Sketchcrawl today and did 3 projects that I planned for my next museum visit.  The New York group was meeting at South Street Seaport for their Worldwide Sketchcrawl - and it is a hot, humid day.  The Museum. in contrast, was beautifully cooled....  Ah, I'm getting old and fussy!

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We had to disconnect our scanner to have a window air conditioner fixed and then developed modem problems with our computer - so I'm finally uploadng last week's and this week's Everyday Matters Challenges at the same time.  I bought this peach just for the challenge and unfortunately can't eat it because of allergies.  It looked delicious! 

Posted by Shirley at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

One of my goals for 2007 is to sketch in my own city as if I were on an exotic vacation.  Manhattan is so large and so varied, from neighborhood to neighborhood, that I will never tire of the scenes.  This is one apartment building on 5th Ave - in the 80s - as seen looking Southeast through foliage in Central Park.  I think these are terraces associated with the penthouse(s), but the roof watertank is also probably housed in one of these structures.

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I always love doing the EDM Challenges and try to make them a learning experience.  I still have a great deal of difficulty with reflections, so I chose my clear green plastic spray bottle for this sketch.  I think the transparent surface is recognizeable, but the few light reflections that I saw aren't very apparent.  More practice needed!! 

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I love books, journals, paper, and almost anything sold in stationary stores - so buying school supplies was always a thrill.  Now my purchases are year round, not just in September, and I love it when we start a new project at work and need to look through catalogues for new supplies. 

At home I'm currently obsessed with the Levenger catalogue and new items for their "circa" notebooks.  Although I have some in all 3 sizes, and even a leather cover for my junior size notebook, I carry the compact notebook that contains index cards in my purse and use it all day long.   I have a punch that makes those great holes along the edge of the card (two pages can be cut from each 5 X 8" index card) and then the tabs wrap around the black circle discs.  Pages are really easy to add or remove - which is the beauty of the system.  The cover of this compact notebook is translucent plastic and I painted a daffodil on watercolor paper which shows through.  The pen that I use for everything is a medium Pilot Easy Touch - I don't have the obsession that many people have for fountain pens!

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We visited friends for 3 days near Keene NH - and on the middle day drove 3 hours further north to the Shelburne Museum.  I completed one journal page/day, and even had time to piece some quilt squares for my Liberty of London quilt.   

They have a beautiful view from their deck over Silver Lake.  The colors of the foliage in front, the lake water, and the mountains beyond the lake change color so frequently that it is hard to really capture the view.

The Shelburne Museum would be a fantastic place for a Sketchcrawl - so many old historical buildings buildings have been moved to the site.  My favorite was the 1871 lighthouse from Colchester Reef in Lake Champlain.  The lighthouse protected boats from 3 dangerous intersecting reefs as they sailed to Burlington with their cargo.

I sketched the clothesline over the deck as I ate breakfast the last morning we were in NH.  This is a collection of shorts and shirts from a day of fishing - from their younger family members who didn't want to make the trip to Burlington.

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I actually did EDM Challenge #129 before this one.  I walked around and around the apartment looking for a view that I felt like drawing.  Some views were boring, some too challenging, some not blog material (bathrooms).  This is the view from my dining room to a tiny stretch of counter space in my kitchen.  The perspective isn't as wonky as it looks - the counter actually is slanted and there are triangular shelves above it where we keep espresso pots and a few favorite cups.  Our coffee pot and cannister of coffee take top billing on this stretch of counter!   

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I really tried sketching my grandson Henry's face in this sketch - done from a photo taken of him just as he turned 3 last summer in London.  And in spite of my efforts to improve figure/face sketching in 2007 - it was scarey!  I think I might have been able to add a generic face, but I'm going to stay away from people that I know and love for now.  The next photo in the sequence has him winding up, leg raised like a real major league pitcher ,to throw the ball.  Baseball is big in their house!   

Posted by Shirley at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I went back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Paul Poiret fashion exhibit again yesterday with out of town friends.  These garments were from the first several decades of the 20th century, but avant garde for their times and still wearble.  The hats were fantastic and rarely seen today, so I chose to sketch the mannequins with the best hats.  I'm still trying to do fast loose, figure sketches, so this was a perfect journal page for the day.   

When I saw the exhibit for the first time I carefully recorded colors and painted the sketch when I got home.  Yesterday I didn't have time to really look at colors, so I'm leaving these as line drawings.

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We were riding up WhiteHall in the front seat on the top deck of a #11 bus when I took this photo of storm clouds gathered over Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery.  During most of our recent visit, black clouds alternated with sunshine and there were periodic drenching rains.   

Posted by Shirley at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

This was a really difficult challenge for me.  I clearly need more practice seeing, sketching, and painting textures.  The pie-shaped section is my attempt to paint a close-up of the bathroom sponge surface.  Out of frustration I added a foam brush - a quasi-sponge! 

Posted by Shirley at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We lived in San Antonio for 18 years - and I never considered sketching the Alamo.  While there on a business trip this week I sat on a curb in Alamo Plaza under the hot Texas sun and sketched this picture of the original front of the mission.  Then, to capture more of the flavor of the city, I sketched Lucchese boots the next day.

Posted by Shirley at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

EDM Challenge #122:  Drawing shade was really difficult for me because it required me to paint a landscape.  I took a photo walking through Central Park last Friday, with my husband and grandson, because I wasn't able to stop to sketch it.  Then I procrastinated and did 4 journal pages since then - including the next challenge.  The area of the Park is so beautiful that I will also include my photo.

I simplified this scene and structure considerably from the photo (or I would never have done it).  Here is the photo:

EDM Challenge #123: Draw a Bell

I have no bells in our apartment except for Christmas ornaments which are packed away.  Then my husband remembered my bear - complete with his own bell.  I was a frantic mother when my two sons went on a camping trip in Alaska and there were so many bear/bear bell stories that my boys brought me this really cute, plush bear.  I sketched it for the first time on a journal page that I prepared with a brown wash - right after I developed my blog at the beginning of 2006.  And I sketched and painted it again for this challenge.  Here are both versions.

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Another visit to the Greek and Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with fellow EDMer Paula.  She is returning to Brazil at the end of the month, so this was our last time to sketch together for awhile.  We're both hoping that she will come back to NYC for work - regularly.

There are cases and cases of artifacts that are wonderful for sketching.  The ewer on the left was so beautiful because of the colors.  The funny head on the right is one end of the yoke for a real Roman Chariot - an amazingly beautiful piece.

These are two small terracotta horse heads - even though one of them looks more like a moose without horns.  I love using a colored pencil for these sketches.

I could spend many days in these galleries before even finishing all of the types of artifacts.  

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It was a beuatiful cool, sunny morning last Sat and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art rooftop sculpture garden to read for 2 hours(needed to work on the 500+ page book I have for Book Group tonight).  While reading I took approximately 20 minutes to sketch these towers on the building at 74-75th St and used watercolor pencils to add color.  The 4 pencils I used are listed in the paint samples.   It was liberating not to worry about all of the windows - and not to really try to capture all of the architectural detail.  When I enlarged my digital photo on the computer screen at home, I could really see how complex the towers are.

Posted by Shirley at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I have lots of trouble staying loose.  Even though I sketch quite quickly, it is too tight and I can become obsessed with detail.  Not that I put too much detail into a sketch, just that I can't seem to sketch it if I can't see it.  I envy those in the EDM group who can stay really loose and capture images of something - this week Casey in Hong Kong, Hashi on her LA city walks, and Gabi on the bus. 

I want to be able to do both - depending on the project.  So this morning I brought my sketchbook and watercolor pencils with me when my husband and I took our grandson to Bethesda Fountain and I forced myself to do just a really loose sketch, add color, and then water - all in < 30 minutes.

I definitely need to have more of these sketching sessions.   Need more practice!!

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My husband had these earrings made for me for our 25th wedding anniversary because I liked  black roman coins in gold jewelry that I saw somewhere with him.  He then gave them to me at a lovely dinner in a villa in Padua, Italy - so the roman coins returned home!  The coins are more black than painted here.  As I was sketching the front and back of one earring last night, I also "googled" Roman coins and was able to identify my coins as Gordian III - from approximately 240 AD.  There are many, many images of Gordian III coins and I would need to better see the images on the reverse side of my coin to be more specific.  Both earrings use the same image on the front of the coins. 

I used gold gouache for the gold casing and back of the earring.

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May 30th: There is a wonderful wall display of amphoras in the new Greek and Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I was really attracted to the composition, the colors, and the shadows.

May 31st:  Big Ben has such an intricate guilded structure around the clock face and I could see the details when I zoomed in on my photo.  I used W and N gold gouache for all of the gold.  This is the second sketch in my Big Ben series in my recycled Elizabeth I book.

This is the final sketch in my "Every Day in May" series.  For me this project was an exercise in uploading my daily sketch rather than doing a daily sketch.  It was time consuming on work days when I was tired.  I also didn't like the slight change in my attitude toward my daily sketch, i.e. I actually had to upload whatever I produced each day.  The major advantage is to have a full months body of work saved on my blog - and it really is eclectic: figure drawing including yoga poses and nudes; museum sketches as I repeatedly visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art; several pages in my recycled books: the 10 blocks series of NYC and Big Ben; and of course the EDM Challenges!

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May 28th: I really like my new book - Nude Figures for Artists - and can probably spend the next year sketching these models without running out of inspiration.  This was a quick sketch done with colored pencil - no faces yet and pretty poor hands.  But those are challenges that I will work on!  Michaelangelo on the left and me on the right.  Again having problems with the rough paper - the model didn't have hairy legs!

May 29th:  I went downtown early this morning to buy a gift for my daughter-in-law who will graduate from Medical School this afternoon!  She will begin her Pediatric Residency in June and we will still babysit their son Robbie on Fridays!  I then continued to walk downtown, through Washington Square, in the direction of Dick Blick.  I stopped for a cup of coffee and did this quick sketch at the SE corner of the park.  The proprietor cleaned and polished his cart the entire time I watched!

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It was a lovely cool morning and I decided that an early visit to the Met was a perfect way to spend the morning.  I stopped at the Southeast Corner for a quick sketch for my 10 Block series of NYC journal pages and to wait for the Museum to open.  At this corner, I sketched just one window of the windows from the Greek and Roman Galleries - and the amorphous stone sculpture that sits among the bushes. 

Inside, I wandered through more of the exhibits in the new Greek and Roman Galleries and saw the chariot for the first time.  I found one more marble figure to sketch and then went to find a small iron hunting dog in another part of the Museum.  I saw it previously and loved the shape.  Unfortunately, the body is longer than my page was wide and I didn't realize it until the end.  I will resketch it from photos so I have a better image.

I sketched the marble figure with a colored pencil and the dog with a Derwent Sketching Pencil (light wash).  I was then able to use my Niji waterbrush to add the gray color to the dog.  I love playing with those pencils!  And they are great for Museum sketching. 

Posted by Shirley at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

  Memorial Day weekend in the US, which means 3 days off work - and beautiful weather.  Many New Yorkers escape for the country or open beach houses.  Others, like us, love the city during the summer - it seems slower and neighborhood restaurants are less crowded. 

Yesterday I did another lesson from my Anne Elsworth Watercolor Skills Workbook:  Painting an all-white still life with a monochromatic color scheme.

Today my husband and I took a late afternoon subway ride to Battery Park - I had NEVER been on the Staten Island Ferry - a free 30 minute ride across New York Harbor.  Here are two pictures that I took from the railing - one on the way out of the ferry slip and the second one as we were returning to Manhattan.  I loved every minute of the ride, including the path past the Statue of Liberty.

After our ferry ride, we stopped for dinner at Battery Gardens - and sat on their outdoor patio overlooking the harbor.  I was able to sketch another table - and also do a 3 minute sketch of one of the huge sailboats that quickly passed our table.

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May 23rd: EDM Challenge #120 - Draw a Flashlight

We have lots of flashlights, but I love how long this one is - I guess to use in tight spaces.   

May 24th:  More Figure Practice from my new book - a book of nude photos for artists by Mark Edward Smith.  I need lots of practice and will be very happy when the Every Day in May challenge is over so I don't need to upload sketchbook pages every day!  Some of my practice figures would be best left unseen!  And I still hate rough paper. 

Posted by Shirley at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

  I continue to practice figure drawing and my Yoga Book was the inspiration for this quick sketch.  I don't "do yoga" and never have - so I only know that this is Shoulderstand Cycle from the figure legend under the photograph.  My husband is watching me type all of this and just said "That is a better foot!"  I certainly hope I am improving, if only a minute amount with each sketch!

Posted by Shirley at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

  May 19th:  I sketched my EDM Challenge while at the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday on the World Wide Sketchcrawl.  Rocks are a little hard to find in my immediate neighborhood and the weather was too awful to go into Central Park to paint one of the big rocks.  So I painted 3 big rocks that make up the side wall of the Temple of Dendur (15 B.C.E.).  This allowed me to really focus on the engraved drawings - which are wonderful.  There are approximately 5-6 figures down each side of the Temple and I don't think that any two are the same.

May 20th:  I walked 10 blocks from home, looked around, and sketched a small piece of the roofline of the Jewish Museum on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.  There was a man sitting on the one of the benches painting the facade in a wonderfully loose, impressionistic style.  I sat on the curb (because 5th Avenue was closed to traffic) and tried to just capture a little of the essence of the complicated architecture and decoration.  I love the aged copper portions.

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 Another rainy day in New York City so the Sketchcrawl group switched the location from Southstreet Seaport to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (my 4th trip this week!).  We spread out in the new Greek and Roman Galleries and sketched - ancient sculptures and visitors.  I was really happy that Paula (an EDM member from Brazil who I met last Fall) joined me.  We had fun catching up as we sat on one of the many benches that are scattered throughout the beautiful sculptures.

Since I really want to learn how to sketch figures in 2007, I used this opportunity to sketch as many sculptures as I could before we went to the Museum cafeteria with the rest of the group.  I loved the fact that none of these sculptures had heads, hands or feet.  I'm not up to those lessons in my self-imposed curriculum yet.

These sketches were done with a Faber-Castell Polychromos pencil in a Moleskine watercolor journal.

Posted by Shirley at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

 We had another bad weather Friday in New York City.  So we took our grandson back to the Met for the second week in a row.  This week we visited the Astor Court in the Asian Art Galleries to show Robbie the pool full of Koi.  While he was enjoying the Courtyard and periodically returning to the pool with my husband, I sketched one of the swimming fish.

Posted by Shirley at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

 Those of us participating in the Every Day in May challenge are more than halfway - and I'm definitely getting faster at scanning and uploading my daily journal pages.

 May 16th:  I went to the Paul Poiret fashion exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was captivated by the mannequin who was reclining on piles of pillows and a bed in the middle of the gallery. 

 May 17th: Katherine Tyrrell and I found Christopher Lambert's book Taking a Line for a Walk when we visited the Southbank Galleries in London in February.  Katherine bought it then and I received it as one of my Mother's Day presents.  The author walked from Le Havre France to Rome with several pens, some watercolor pencils, and a small sketchbook - and kept a wonderful travel journal - one page per day - every step of the way.  He never considered publishing it and the writing is small - but very interesting - necessitating me to use my magnifying glass to read the text.

Posted by Shirley at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

  Today was my monthly Empire Quilt Guild meeting which is held on the 8th floor of Building A at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).  I arrived early to meet with my small applique group and while sipping more coffee sketched the view from the window - another NYC rooftop image.  I'm not sure what fascinates me about these water tanks.  If you take a minute to look up in the city, they are everywhere!  And no two structures or rooflines are the same.  This is the back of the buildings on W. 26th St. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

 Friday is the day that we take care of our Grandson Robbie - who will be 2 the end of July.  When the weather is nice, we love to go to the Boat Pond in Central Park.  But today it was raining off and on so we chose our back-up location - the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  All of our grandchildren love wandering through the big open space that houses the Temple of Dendur.  Today he threw at least 50 pennies into the large pools and kept us really moving as he explored.  Before we left the museum we went into the Egyptian Galleries to visit William the Blue Hippopotamus, an informal "trademark" for the children's program in the Museum.  William is only 8 inches high and approximately 4000 years old!

Posted by Shirley at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I am currently working my way through 2 art workbooks, one on watercolor skills and one on figure drawing.  Both authors are currently exploring "light and shade" in the lessons.  For my journal page(s) on May 10th, I moved my basic shapes around and redrew them.  Then I put in the hard shadows using watercolor pencils.  Finally I looked at the shapes to add the shading and was horrified to notice that I didn't really have a light and dark side that corresponded to the shadows.  I have two overhead track lights and two wall lights above my desk in my studio which really confused the lighting.  And I decided not to use the strong sidelighting that I used the first time I sketched these shapes because I needed to turn all of the other lights off and then couldn't see my sketch journal well enough to draw.  So I added some of the subtle shading that I saw, but it really doesn't correspond well with the true, actual hard shadows.  I will rearrange these shapes again one more time and use watercolor paints - not pencils.

I sketched a figure from my figure drawing book and then added watercolor to shade the figure.  I'm still having problems with proportions This is the rough WC paper that I added to my Michaelangelo Sonnet recycled book (along with several other types) and I hate it.  It is hard to use a pen on it and worse than that, it scans really poorly! 

Posted by Shirley at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

 Another long work day - and a quick sketch and painting from one of my photos of Montecatini Alta, Tuscany, Italy.  I love rooftop sketches and started to look for photos in my archive that I can use for practice.

Posted by Shirley at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

 Time to start Lesson 4 in my Watercolor Skills Workbook: 3-Dimensional Form-The Art of Illusion.  The first exercise is "Drawing the Basics: cylinder, cube, cone, and sphere."  I set up the forms, put a light across the still life and sketched the shapes.  Next I may try to do them with watercolor shading - but not tonight. 

Posted by Shirley at 7:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Late day at work - so I decided to try PoseManiacs 90 second images for my daily sketch.  Wow, the figures were in tortured positions and 90 minutes went by very fast.  I did 3 of the images and then added my grand daughter's hands and feet to the page for more human figure practice.

Posted by Shirley at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are journal pages from May 3rd, 4th, and 5th.  I think it might be easier if I at least scan them daily, because my evening hours are too short to do everything I want to do.  I definitely won't take the time to also upload them to the Every Day in May Flik'r group.

May 2nd:  There was no sketching or photography allowed at the Met's exhibit "Barcelona and Modernity."  But I was taking a few notes in a really small notebook when I saw the Gaspar Homar's 1905 furniture design drawing.  I still think like a quilter and I still collect images that I want to save for textile projects.  The guards couldn't really see that I was sketching instead of writing.  The top half of the image is Homar's and the bottom half is my addition.  The colors are all mine.

May 3rd:  I was permitted to sketch in the "Venice and the Islamic World" exhibit and among the many pieces of Venetian art that were inspired by their Islamic trade, I found this "ewer."  The surface was marbelized, something I couldn't do on this journal page.  However, I tried to capture the shape and colors.

May 5th:  I was "stuck" on the last exercise in Lesson 3 of the Elsworth Watercolor Skills Workbook because I don't love landscapes.  My city landscape has really tall buildings everywhere!  I finally decided to work from one of my photos, taken during a wonderful trip to Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast in Oct 2005.  The exercise was to paint a landscape using the layer-on-layer method - and here is Mount Vesuvius from Sorrento on a partially clear day.

Posted by Shirley at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

    I draw everyday so my commitment for this month is to upload one of my journal pages for every day in the month - which I never previously have done.  This one will be out of order because I wanted to post my EDM challenge today.  On Sunday I'll upload all of the other sketches.

Three "sorta" round wheels:  I was leaving the International Center of Photography exhibit several weeks ago - really inspired by Henri Cartier Bresson's philosophy about impulsive actions, when a red pedicab pulled up to the light as I was crossing 6th Avenue.  The beautiful driver, then sat up and placed her hands on her hips - exuding power and confidence.  I managed to quickly take one photo before the light changed and she pedaled on, but I was fearful about sketching from the photo because I couldn't figure out how to sketch so many spokes on 3 wheels.  I even asked for advice from this group - and sketched "the anatomy of a bicycle wheel "from our bike rack at work.  But, when I saw the magnificent tandem bicycle in the large painting by Ramon Casas at the Barcelona exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I realized the wheels had NO SPOKES - and I might never have noticed if I weren't obsessing over this photo.  As soon as Karen announced the challenge for the week, I knew I had to do this - without spokes. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

EDM Challenge #116: Draw Something Green:  I searched all week for something green that was interesting and exciting enough for me to use for this challenge.  I gathered up my apartment green objects for my Color Project Green month last year, so I was more interested in finding something in another environment.  Today I went over to the new Greek-Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and sketched the south end of the gallery for an hour.  Then as soon as I started to wander around the space, I found wonderful Roman glass from the 1st C. A.D.  This green glass vessel is only 6 inches high, but so beautiful!

Posted by Shirley at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

In 2003 I purchased a set of postcards of Leonardo DaVinci's portrait drawings during a visit to Vinci, Italy and his museum there.  One of the drawing exercises from a book I'm working through was to use a grid to reproduce a drawing and I decided to try it with a Leonardo portrait.  It was great fun - and I decided to leave my grid marks in place so I could remember the utility of the exercise and method.

More figure sketches from my Yoga "How-To-Book" - purchased only to use for figure drawing practice.  These are definitely challenging because of the extreme body positions and work very well for my daily sketches when I'm too tired to compose a more complicated daily sketch page in my journals.

This year I hope to draw many more figures to develop some basic skills - but still don't have time for organized life drawing sessions.  I bought John Raynes' book The Figure Drawing Workbook at Green and Stone in London and I'm working through the lessons and exercises slowly.  These are a few of the first sketches completed.  I'm doing them in my recycled book of Michaelangelo sonnets, so you'll see one very yellowed page that I rebound from the original book.  The figure sketched on the sonnet page is actually inspired by Posemaniacs.com - the Japanese site that Cully recommended in one of his EDM messages.  I'm trying to use regular pencils, colored pencils, Conte pencils, and watercolor so I can also explore different media and papers. 

Posted by Shirley at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I'm slowly working my way through Anne Elsworth's book and Lesson 3 is drawing "negative space."  This concept is never in my mind when I'm sketching and my spacing would be so much better if I could remember to combine positive and negative space. 

For the first exercise I sketched an old kitchen stool by just filling in the negative spaces.  I used a Derwent 4B pencil with a light wash.

For the second exercise, I trimmed a plant and taped the leaves randomly to a piece of paper.  Then I used an Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil to sketch the negatvie spaces.

For the last exercise, I created a kitchen "still life" and then sketched using a combination of positive and negative spaces. 

I hope that this practice will make me remember how useful it is to always look at the negative spaces when sketching.  I know it intellectually, but just don't "see" them when I'm in the midst of a sketch.

Posted by Shirley at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Our general supermarket is one-half block away and I take frequent walks there to pick up a few items at a time.  We also have several specialty shops with produce and prepared foods 1-2 blocks away and a butcher, fish shop, and bakery within the same area.  Each of the stores has shopping baskets for those of us that walk there and only carry home small bags of groceries.  This basket was sketched from a photo that I took early yesterday morning when I was purchasing milk, yogurt and a banana for breakfast because Friday is the day we take care of one of our grandsons. 

Posted by Shirley at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I had a great deal of difficulty selecting something from my everyday life that was ugly, kept for sentimental reasons, and worthy of a sketch.  Our almost 35 year old salad spinner, purchased by our first Nannie for our small kitchen in LaJolla, is now cracked, but still working.  It is really ugly, especially with a crack in the lid.  It is also probably vintage and nearly a first edition!  But I just didn't feel like sketching and painting it.  So I selected my very favorite, brown leather, pocket-sized Filofax - which was purchased new when we moved to New York City in 1993.  The snap on the small piece  which closes the notebook is broken, and the estimate to replace it was $50 approximately 5 years ago.  A new comparable Filofax was only $85 and I just wasn't ready to retire mine.  So I made a small quilted wrap for the notebook and added a long piece of velcro along the end to close it.  It is still my only calendar and general all-purpose  notebook and it travels everywhere with me in my purse.

Posted by Shirley at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

One of the joys of my visits to the Royal Academy of Arts in London is seeing the prints of Donald Hamilton Fraser's ballet dancers in the Museum Shop.  I purchased a "postcard book"  with 18 of his postcard size prints of dancers during one of my visits and I tried to capture his sketches in ink with watercolor washes as part of my figure drawing exercises.  I love ballet, I love dancers, I love sketches and painting of dancers, and especially his prints which I knew nothing about before visiting the Royal Academy this year.

Posted by Shirley at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

I would never have thought of photos of yoga classes/instruction books for my figure drawing practice during 2007.  But Christeen http://christeensblog.blogspot.com/ on the EDM group has some great yoga sketches that she did and I found a perfect second hand book to use for photo images.  I won't stop sketching ballet dancers, although I don't upload many of them because I'm copying sketches by Donald Hamilton Fraser that I bought at the Royal Academy of Art.  I love his style and wanted to try to learn from him through studying his dancers - all of whom are caught during moments between practice or performance sessions.  Here are a few of the first sketches of yoga poses.

Posted by Shirley at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Last weekend (3/16-17) we had freezing rain and snow - precluding even walking because of the winds.  This weekend was much warmer and New Yorkers ran a marathon in Central Park and filled the playgrounds on Sunday morning.  We met our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson in Hippo Playground in Riverside Park.  He loves the slides - and I was warm enough to sketch the hippo sculptures.  There are buds on the trees and the early spring flowers have stems about 4" above the ground.  This is as close as we have gotten to "fresh"  - wonderful fresh air to cure winter cabin fever.

There are two groups of hippo sculptures - that children climb on and adults sit on.  Here are two pictures that I took of the "animals."

Very few New Yorkers even pay attention when I'm sketching, and while I was sketching the hippo head with open mouth, a woman kept talking to her friend and actually put her foot right up into the mouth obscuring my view.  And I was standing not more than 4 feet from her! 

Posted by Shirley at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

In 2003 I purchased Winsor-Newton watercolors in primary colors and Anne Elsworth's book entitled Watercolor Skills Workbook - 10 easy lessons.  However, it wasn't until July 2005 that I partially retired and in September joined EDM.  I'm finally starting to slowly go through the 10 lessons - and doing a few of the exercises and projects.   

Lesson one recommends a basic palette and then outlines exercises to mix secondary and complementary colors.  I mixed Winsor lemon and French ultramarine to make green and then added varying amounts of cad red to mix complemetaries.  These were used to paint houses from a painting by Camille Pisarro (The Hermitage at Pointoise - posted March 13th).

 I'm now posting 2 projects from lesson 2: 

Project 1. Drawing a still life on mirror tiles: I took several items from my china closet and sketched them on a round mirror.  It was fun, but I'm not sure I would know this "busy painting" is because of reflections in a mirror if I didn't know it.

Project 2.  Painting the silhouette of buildings:  This is a painting of the Tower of London rooflines from a photo that I took during our October visit.  I loved doing this project and will probably paint more photos from the series of photos that I took that day!

Posted by Shirley at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

We had spectacular onion soup at the original Au Pied du Couchon in the old Les Halles area of Paris in November 1970.  The soup was delicious and the thick, melted layer of cheese extraordinary.  My husband and I perfected Julia Child's recipe from Volume I: Mastering the Art of French Cooking and bought these soup bowls  to use for the last minute cheese melting step and serving. 

After the Les Halles market moved out of central Paris and Au Pied du Couchon underwent a significant face-lift, the soup was the same, but the ambience of the old place was gone.  The marzipan pig was saved from my dessert plate from one of our later visits.  Somehow it survived the trip home and is now rock hard from years in the china cabinet.

Posted by Shirley at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

I adore candles and all varieties of candle holders, but now limit myself to using only closed varieties, i.e. globes of some kind, because of fire hazards.  My painting of the flame needs lots more work - I should have made it bigger and just concentrated on the wonderful colors that I saw.  However, I love this Dutch brass candle holder that we bought on the Rokin in Amsterdam in 1989.  The antique brass shop had/has been in the family for well over 100 years and was then managed by a father and son named Hart  This piece is estimated to be from ca 1770 and sits in a prominent position in our apartment for my constant enjoyment.

Posted by Shirley at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

We visited the Guggenheim Sunday afternoon to see the El Greco to Picasso exhibit before it closes on March 24th.  What huge crowds!  The lighting was wonderful - a combination of light from the skylight in the rotunda and the lights over each painting.  I was captivated by the view across the open center and stood along the balcony to sketch the scene.  I had to reduce the number of people in my sketch in order to really see the paintings.  The half circle in the center of the sketch is an open area overlooking a small adjoining gallery below.

I then quickly visited a few of my favorites in the permanent collection and sketched this small portion of Camille Pissaro's painting Hermitage at La Pointoise.  I love rooftop scenes and ! was looking for something to paint using a single color triad: cadmium red, Winsor blue, and Winsor lemon. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

My husband and I love sitting in the front seat, on the upper deck, of a #11 bus as it winds it's way between King's Road Chelsea and Trafalgar Square/Strand, London.  We are on vacation when we are in London and have lots of time to really look at all of the buildings - which all look so cool from our aerial position.  I "examined" this clock on the front of the west entrance to Westminster Abbey during every busride, thinking about how much I would love to sketch it.  I had practically memorized all of the details - and therefore sketching from one of my photos was easier and more pleasurable.  I used my W-N gold gouache again for the gold on the clock.  Since I sketched it in my WC Moleskine, I had to simplify the center section of the clock because of space and it is not accurate!

Posted by Shirley at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

We thoroughly enjoyed the Hogarth exhibit at Tate Britain during our recent family visit to London.  Until I watched Danny's videoclip, I totally forgot about upside down drawing of people's faces - and just had to try it.  One of my favorite Hogarth paintings was one which had multiple faces of his family servants, so I sketched one of them quickly upside down.  While it is not a perfect representation, it does look like a face.  For small things I am grateful.

Posted by Shirley at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I usually have a problem doing the EDM weekly challenge when we are in London.   However, the light bulb from the lighted globe that we bought for our 3 year old grandson Henry for  Christmas burned out last night and I sketched it before taking it out to shop for a new one.  I'm having fun playing with a Winsor-Newton gold gouache and used it for the brass bottom on the bulb.  Although the photograph doesn't show it, it actually glitters on the page.

Posted by Shirley at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This past week was hectic, as I met various deadlines at work and got ready for another visit to our London family.   I tried to think of other examples, but only had one pickle left in my jar and no Sour Tarts in my local store.  I love lemon flavor, but only when sweetened.  My daughter and her two children eat fresh lemon and lime slices - the thought makes my mouth pucker!  I need to play more with paintings of citrus fruit cut surfaces to get more texture - maybe during a less busy week.... 

Posted by Shirley at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Several weeks ago I sketched my quilting supplies and a quilt that I was working on while too sick to be more active.  In this sketch I included my cute little blunt-nose Gingher scissors.  When air travel restrictions were relaxed and these scissors were allowed on airplanes in the US, I was horrified to lose a pair while passing through security at DeGaulle Airport in Paris.  The gendarme didn't say a word, he just reached over and dropped them into a plexiglass box full of confiscated items.  Strange that nothing was said on the prior trip through DeGaulle in the other direction.

These are the scissors that I drew for the EDM Challenge - 26 years old and still perfect.  I first learned about Gingher scissors when I started quilting and now have the above 8" shears, 2 pair of small embroidery scissors, 1 pair of the craft scissors, 1 pair of pinking shears, 1 pair of applique scissors (which I don't use), one pair of clippers, and 2 pairs of the blunt-nosed scissors sketched above.  It took awhile to convince my family that all of these were fabric-only scissors, but they have all survived and perfomed quite well.  I think this qualifies as a Gingher collection!

Posted by Shirley at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I loved the Holbein in England exhibit at Tate Britain and decided that he would be one of the Masters who I copied periodically to learn more about his methods of drawing faces and figures.  This is one of the few full length drawings, most of the others were only portraits. 

I am struggling to draw occasional people when sitting in public places, but usually the seats are so close together that I'm intimidated.  On Tuesday, during lunch at the Morgan Cafe in the Morgan Library and Museum, I had a leisurely lunch and was able to spend a few minutes after I ate making a quick sketch of a husband and wife who were facing each other at a small table approximately 10 feet away.  This is a huge breakthrough for me.  I have no problem sketching inanimate or non-human subjects in public.  Maybe now I'll slowly build up confidence to draw people!

Posted by Shirley at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

In our kitchen we use a glass cannister of Kosher salt and a pepper mill to season food - and really don't have specific S and P shakers that we use during daily meals.  However, my daughter gave me a set of miniature salt and pepper shakers that we put out on the dining room table when we have a group dinner - especially on holidays.  Roz told someone in the EDM group that she has calligraphic gold gouache in her watercolor palette and I thought this was a great excuse to buy a tube of glittery gold for myself.  My local art store only had Winsor-Newton, not the Daniel Smith color that Roz has.  You can't see it on the scan, but these tops really glitter as you move the page around.  The darker color is the gold.  The lighter color is Winsor lemon that I added for the light reflection.  I love the effect of the sparkles!!    

Posted by Shirley at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

One of my Art Goals for 2007 is to become more comfortable sketching human figures - especially hands.  This week I pulled out some reference photos of ballet dancers and magazine advertisements showing hands and just played with them.  The hands on the first dancer are so bad that I resketched them at the bottom of the page,

I'm such a novice with watercolors, that I am simultaneously trying to work with skin tones and shading so these sketches in my large watercolor Moleskine serve two purposes.  My husband and I watch the Lehrer News Hour each night after I come home from work and that hour was a perfect time for one of these journal pages.  I could listen, but not really watch the speakers.  And then I had the rest of the evening to hand quilt a wedding quilt that is overdue (My oldest son was married in July 2004)!  Too many baby quilts for my grandchildren kept getting in the way and I still have a wedding quilt for my other son who married in Oct 2005 on my list to be quilted.

The background on the pages looks muddier than in real life.  I suspect that my scanner is picking up pencil that was used and poorly erased.  I am one of the EDM group that does a quick preliminary sketch in pencil.  Otherwise I don't think I would be able to make these learning experiences.

Posted by Shirley at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I wonder if I will be the only EDM member without exercise equipment to sketch for this challenge?  When considering what I really do to stay healthy, I could only focus on really good weight control and daily walking.  Obesity is such a major problem in America.  When research data is displayed at national meetings that I attend, and the average weights of the study subjects are reported (regardless of the type of medical study), there is always a chuckle from the audience when comparing the numbers from the US in comparison to the study populations from other countries.  The only way that I have been able to maintain an ideal BMI as I age is to weigh myself every morning and rein in my food selections and portion sizes.  By walking, I really don't mean that I am Julie or Penny (or other EDM members) who walk a fixed distance every day.  By living in a city, however, I now walk almost everywhere that I want to go.  My car is parked 3 blocks from our apartment and when I get to work I park several blocks from my building.  All daily errands are done by walking in my neighborhood and carrying home the packages.  Our car remains in the garage, except for work days and we walk long distances in the city on weekends.  It is almost exactly one mile with stroller(s) between our apt and that of our grandchildren.  This is a huge difference from our previous life in Texas, where the culture is garage door openers and car trips even one block to the covenience store for a newspaper.  During those years I took 2 ballet classes each week in the evening after my husband came home from work and our children went to bed.  Although I do take occasional ballet classes here in Manhattan, I can't fit everything that I want to do into my usual work week.  I now buy walking shoes that move comfortably from work to play and wear out one pair of these shoes every several months.       

Posted by Shirley at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I feel as if we now live in a world of power strips and plugs that are huge and heavy to recharge our electronic devices.   And when we go to London we need equally large UK plug adaptors in which to plug these huge recharger plugs to allow us to recharge everything while we are visiting.  I too wish we lived in a simpler world - where all of our modern conveniences were interchangeable.  At my daughter's home in London there are separate DVD players for those DVDs bought in the UK and those from the US. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

One of my goals for 2007 is to draw more human faces and figures.  I sketched the Holbein drawing of Anne Cressacre again and this time added a watercolor wash.  In addition, I started what I hope will be a series of dancers taken from photos in dance magazines and programs from our New York City dance companies.  I think it will be fun to struggle through these exercises - I certainly need many days just drawing hands!

Posted by Shirley at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I buy soap less than once each year because the soap provided in hotels is so yummy.  And the minute you open one bar, they replace it with a new one making it hard to resist taking the replacement home.  Lemon trees are plentiful on the Amalfi Coast and everything comes in lemon-flavor.  I bought several packages of these small soaps to bring home, but was disappointed that they really don't smell like I expected.  The Peabody Hotels have live ducks that "march" into the lobby and swim in the fountain several times each day - making the duck the logo for the hotel.  I couldn't resist these cute white soap ducks after watching the ducks for several days in the Peabody Orlando.  I have no idea which hotel provided Gilchrist and Soames soap, but I haven't yet opened the  cleansing bar or exfoliating soap. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

We cleared our apartment of desserts and sweets after Thanksgiving, so I brought home a candy from the candy dish in our Department office.  I am struggling to learn more about painting reflections and thought that the cellophane wrapper would be a huge challenge.  Fortunately, no one can see how poorly I achieved the desired effect in this scan.  I brought home a second piece yesterday and tried Jana's Mask-it trick, but that wasn't any better. 

I leave in an hour for a 6 day business trip without my laptop, and now realize how much I enjoy my daily review of the EDM group site.  I'll have lots to catch up with when I return.

Posted by Shirley at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Last Sunday I explored Bryant Park, the space behind the New York Public Library.  A free skating rink and 100 artisan Christmas shops were set up in the park and Christmas decorations were everywhere.  The sky was clear and the late afternoon sun was on the Empire State building and the Chrysler Building.  I sketched and painted both of them, and tonight collaged the wreath that I painted last week on both buildings.  However, I'm not proficient enough in Photoshop to do it digitally, so I cut out the wreath, used restickable glue (like post-it notes) and put the wreath on each building before scanning.

Our family Christmas card each year is a Manhattan holiday design - next year I might be able to make my own. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

In September I posted my first non-sketchbook watercolor painting - my son and daughter-in-law's new house in Washington DC.  When I was talking to my son on Thanksgiving, he said they would love to use the painting for their Christmas cards but wanted it to have a wreath on the door and candles in the window.  I am madly trying to finish baby quilts, ornaments, and other family gifts before we leave for London for the holidays so I told him another painting was not possible. 

So yesterday morning I looked at some images, and created this sketch:

And by dinnertime, and through the magic of Photoshop, my son had created this:

He even had to do some color adjustment on the plants and tree to turn summer into late autumn.  I am so delighted that this worked so easily and even more thrilled that my watercolor painting of their very first house will be their Christmas card this year.   

Posted by Shirley at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I brought my sketchbook, waterbrush, and travel set of watercolor paints to a Med School Retreat last week and sat in the last row at an end seat so I could doodle during the proceedings.  I sketched the keynote speaker and then painted the sketch without the person sitting next to me even realizing.  Then I turned over the program and sketched the panel discussion and moderator in ball point pen - to try to practice figures.  In the spirit of playing with art, I decided to cut out and collage my figure doodles with the painting.  Definitely an unplanned composition!  Again, I think I'm so tired after a 2 day Thanksgiving event in our apt. that I forgot to crop the scan before posting it!  It is definitely in my Moleskine large size journal!

Posted by Shirley at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I am really, really bad at painting reflections in glass and metal.  So I actually drew spoons for 2 days to try to improve my skills.  In reality, I would need to paint reflections every day for an entire year to understand what I am doing.  As I type this I realize that I never even cropped the second sketch so it is very obvious that I am using the Moleskine watercolor journal now for my daily practice.  I am able to use both sides of each page using watercolor, so I am enjoying the process and results as I flip through my visual record of the recent weeks.

Posted by Shirley at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

EDM Challenge #90: Draw Something with WingsI was in London during the "Wings Challenge" and saw mostly pigeons!  However, on a long walk past Fortnum and Mason, I saw this wonderful large glass peacock that was a major feature in one of their window displays.  My husband had just patiently had coffee while I sketched St. James Church and I decided not to push my luck and his patience.  So I took several photos and waited to sketch and paint my bird until I returned home from my travels.

EDM Challenge #91 - Draw an Apple:  I don't eat apples and I therefore had to find one to sketch and paint.  I wasn't working wet enough to get good blending of all of the colors, but I try to share all sketches, whether I like them or not.

EDM Challenge #92 - Draw a Paper Bag:  We didn't have one brown paper bag in our apt, so I begged a small one from my neighborhood grocery store, folded it, and carried it in my pocket the rest of the day. 

EDM Challenge #93- Draw Eggs and an Egg Carton:  My husband immediately told me how wonky the egg on the left is - which of course I knew as soon as I drew it.  But I bore easily and couldn't bring myself to start over or repeat the sketch the next day.    We're trying to clean out the refrigerator before we gather our groceries for a big Thanksgiving dinner, so we won't have a fresh dozen eggs until next week.  So here is my egg carton and last 2 eggs.

Posted by Shirley at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Immediately after arriving home from London, I unpacked, repacked, and flew off to Houston Texas for the International Quilt Festival.  I started quilting in 1980 and attended my first Houston Quilt Festival in 1983.  It was relatively small and held at the old, wonderful Shamrock Hilton Hotel.  Since then it has changed venues several times and continued to expand.  This was the 23rd year that I attended and it now fills the entire Houston Convention Center - all 5 parts.  I sketched this view of just one of the 5 parts from my 10th floor room at the Hilton Americas.  The building always reminds me of the Pompidou Museum in Paris. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have 100s of buttons in my studio from my many, many years of sewing.  When we lived in Texas I bought an old English oak button cabinet to use as a side table, and the buttons that I sketched tonight were some of the lovely metal buttons that came with that table.   Each one has a very intricate design, regardless of how small.   The two largest buttons in this group are 3/4 inch and the smallest is 1/2".

Last Saturday I spent the day between the New York City Garment District and Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) with my new fried and fellow EDM member Paula.  She is from Brazil and currently studying at Columbia.  I have walked past the Garment District sculptures at 40th and 7th Ave many times, but on Saturday joined Paula in taking a few pictures of the large button, needle, and garment worker.  It sometimes takes new eyes to make you see something that is so familiar!  I thought that I would include it as another sketch for the Button challenge.

Posted by Shirley at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I have never sketched a flag - and was lucky enough to have one in front of a historically landmarked building in my neighborhood in New York City.  I want to do multiple sketches of this beautiful building that was the home of a light opera composer in the early 1900s.  In the 1930 census that I viewed its value was already estimated at $1,000,000 and it is well maintained and now contains several luxury apartments.  I was able to do the sketch while standing in front of the building and then take a photo of the flag when it was blowing to sketch and paint at home. 

Posted by Shirley at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

My husband and I went to DC last weekend to visit our son in their new home near Eastern Market in the East Capitol Hill section.  We went to the Market early each morning for food and on Sunday I went 30 minutes before the group so I could quickly sketch the Eastern facade (built in 1873).  I stood and then sat on the sidewalk across the street and just finished when they arrived.  Then we realized that the image used for the market on T-shirts and by local artists is the North facade.  One of the artists in front of the Market told me, "I'd never do that complicated Eastern facade."  My sketch of the north facade is coming.

On Saturday we went to the Library of Congress Book Festival on the Mall to hear Mo Willems, the author/illustrator of the pigeon series of children's books.  Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus is a real favorite in our apartment with our grandchildren and he was wonderful - even passing out paper and pencils to all of the children in the audience and then teaching them how to draw the pigeon!  We walked home up the Mall toward the Capitol, but I didn't have time to sketch the rotunda.  This sketch was done from a photo taken as we walked by.

Posted by Shirley at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The grid format was perfect for sketching my lunch today.  My work always far exceeds the amount of time I have in any day, so whenever possible I bring lunch and eat at my desk while reading, answering email etc.  Some days lunch is provided at meetings and I have some control over the menu so the choices are reasonable.  I'm not a health freak - and it takes alot for me to pass up potatoe chips, french fries, juicy big burgers, melted cheese, tacos and fajitas, and large loaves of freshly baked bread.

In the past, when I didn't bring lunch to work, I seemed to eat all relatively unhealthy things that were available in the building and growing older means slower metabolism and the need to reduce calories.  The sandwich is smoked turkey and fresh tomato on whole grain pita.  I only sketched half.  I bought the tomato from a produce cart halfway between my apartment and garage on my way to work and it was really fresh and delicious.  The remainder is self explanatory.   

Posted by Shirley at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I looked at traffic signs all week as I drove from home to work and back again.  Our streets are very wide and I suddently realized that 95% of the traffic signs  are along the sides of these 4-6 lane city streets and highways.  I never remember seeing half of the signs that I saw when I was patiently looking (and trying not to hit the cars in front of me).   My favorite was the yellow and black sign in the middle of this drawing - on a signpost in front of yellow and black arrows.  An undivided city street suddenly acquires a center median and all traffic needs to move to the right.  If you fail to do so, you plow into the sign and a huge row of black rubber containers!   My second favorite is the "Don't block the Box  - Fine +2 points" sign.  I wonder if our EDM members would have any clue what this sign means?

Posted by Shirley at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Grids were being posted to EDM just as I was leaving to go out on Tuesday - and it seemed like the perfect answer for my daily sketch.  I started at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where I saw the special Ambrose Vollard exhibit and painted Derain's view across the Thames of London and a Cezanne tree from the paintings I saw.  No sketching was permitted in the exhibit - but fortunately I was able to buy postcards of these two paintings.  The garnet and gold eagle is from 500AD - and part of their jewelry collection.  The lion is from the Rembrandt drawing exhibition.

I then took a bus down 5th Ave to the bead district on 37th St. to buy beads and sequins for a group project with my Art Quilt friends.  

Next I walked down 6th Avenue to NY Book Center to get a class chedule in case I decide to take a weekend class in bookbinding (I'm going to blame Jan Allsop and her recycled books for this new interest), and then along W.25th Street to City Quilter to buy  muslin for my next baby quilt (grandchild #4 in January in London).  The Manhattan skyline is their business logo (I colored what is usually just an open line). 

Finally I ended at Talas on W. 20th St. to buy linen thread, an awl, and a bone folder to recycle a book.  I sketched the thread spool, awl, and the book I bought entitled Bookworks by Susan Doggett.

 It was a great way to sketch my day and purchases.

Posted by Shirley at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I love books and bookstores, and while the big superchains really allow you to browse and read all day, I like the personal selections and recommendations of independent bookstores.   This is one of several in my neighborhood.  I also love specialty food stores, but when I looked at my favorite green grocer/food shop, the facade just wasn't as interesting as I thought.  Too many piles of fruits and vegetables on large shelves across the front and no architectural interest above the level of the awning.

Posted by Shirley at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When the EDM bread challenge was posted last week, I took this photo in Baker and Spice, a wonderful bakery and gourmet food shop in Chelsea, London, UK.  It would have been wonderful to spend time in the bakery, sketching and painting because the smells were wonderful, but it was hard enough even getting a photo due to the size of the space in front of the bread counter.  I love bread and the most wonderful part of moving back to New York from Texas is the incredible variety of bread that is available fresh every day within walking distance of our apartment.  I was very uncertain about painting it, but tried to stay loose and just see what happened!  The walls were actually painted the brick red color that I tried to match. 

Posted by Shirley at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This Wet Canvas exercise in creativity encourages the artist to move from realistic to abstract in a series of 4 sketches.  I did it earlier this year using an image of household scissors.  This time I sketched a small art piece of seagulls that my now-grown children gave me on Mother's Day when they were children.  It now "lives" in the center of a round table in my office at work.  Each of these sketches were done quickly in my office because my day was full and I needed to do my "sketch-a-day" at work instead of at home in the evening.  Sketches 2-4 were done in a Moleskine watercolor journal with a Zig Millenium pen and Winsor-Newton tube paints in 3 colors (yellow ochre pale, Payn'es gray, and burnt sienna).

Posted by Shirley at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I sketch and paint anywhere, and rarely use space in my very small, very crowded textile studio.  My goal this year was do at least one sketch every day and to explore watercolor washes with pen and ink.  Most frequently, I don't have time to think about the sketch-of-the-day until in the evening after work and then I want to spend time in our library with my husband.  So this half of the couch is my current workspace.  I work in journals that are no bigger than 6 x 9 inches; use both a travel set of watercolor paints and a palette with dried tube watercolor paints, Pigma micron and Zig Millenium pens, and Niji waterbrushes.   I intended to sketch more of the couch, bookcases, leather footrest and chair, but ran out of space due to poor planning.      

Posted by Shirley at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I first read the EDM chalenge, at 5:30 in the morning, I thought that it said traffic light.  So I grabbed my camera when I left for work and took a photo of the traffic light on my corner.  I didn't want to get run over as I stood in the intersection sketching and decided a photo would have to be used.  After I sketched and painted it, I realized that Karen's email said "streetlight".   Since the streetlight is the single pole that holds everything, I sketched it too.  The height has been shortened to make the composition more compact.  There are endless varieties of street lights in my neighborhood (one light or two) and traffic lights (single and fixed to the pole or double and triple and suspended over the intersection on a long arm that is attached to the street lamp pole).  Since this is such a walking city, I also included the Walk - Don't Walk signs that are on the street lamp pole.

Wednesday night I was in mid-town Manhattan and noticed that they have much nicer lights on their poles.  Before this challenge, I never realized that there were regional differences in street lights on the main streets in the City!

Posted by Shirley at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

When this challenge was announced, I sketched an ear in pencil because I lacked the skills to paint it in watercolor.  Then I decided to take photos of each of my grandchildren and practice.  The ear on the left is Robbies and it was painted in a Super Aquabee.  The two on the right were painted in a Moleskine watercolor journal.  It is definitely easier to scan the Moleskine.  I used alizarin crimson, winsor lemon, burnt umber and Payne's gray. 

Posted by Shirley at 7:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

EDM Challenge #80: Part 2

Although being with my whole family makes me happiest (see part 1 below), my Bernina 1030 sewing machine is also a source of enormous happiness.  I have had a sewing machine for 50 years - sometimes a rented one (poor student days) and sometimes a very inexpensive one.  The above Bernina was purchased in 1989 and as I told my husband, it cost almost as much as our first car - a new VW bug purchased in 1967!  I don't use the sewing machine for days at a time, but when I need to have it serviced I feel very lost.  The months leading up to Christmas are busiest - but I also set aside one week during the cold weather in February and call it "creative week."  I try to arrange my schedule so it is the week before President's Day so I have an extra long weekend before I need to go back to work.  I love immersing myself in projects all day, every day, for 8-10 days and each year have done something different - including making lots of baby clothes for our first grandchild who was due 4 months later, dying silk for a wedding chuppah and making the 6' by 6' pieced top that was then quilted, cutting out fabric pieces for group wedding quilts, and planning and making baby quilts.  Two year's ago I designed a machine quilted whole cloth quilt with cotton velveteen on one side and 100% pima cotton on the other.  I made 5 of these already for immediate family members and still have more to be made.  These quilts precipitated the last emergency service visit - velvet lint buildup that paralyzed the feed dogs!   

Posted by Shirley at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

This week I've been trying to think about EDM challenge #80 - what makes me happy?  I'm thrilled when I am with all of our adult children, their spouses, and our growing group of grandchildren.  We take care of our youngest grandchild Robbie on Friday and last Friday I posted a sketch from the Central Park Boat Pond Cafe - done while he sat with us for an hour.  Our London-based grandchildren then spent the weekend with us (an absolute joy for my husband and I) and Saturday morning we watched the penguins and seals being fed and the Widelife theater play at the Central Park Zoo.  I did these sketches very quickly in the Petting Zoo area - the first two are the large sculptures along the pathway and the 3rd sketch was the perky little LIVE llama that seemed to be saying "I'm the cutest - sketch me!"  And then stayed still for 2 minutes for me!

There was lots of discussion about Moleskines this week among the EDM messages.  I HATE the format for the watercolor journal, but I do like the paper and I love how it scans.  I finally became comfortable with using more than one journal at a time and next will try an RKB Fat Pad with Fabriano 5 watercolor paper that I bought in London.  However, this is risky because they don't appear to have a US distributor.

Posted by Shirley at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I have great difficulty using new journals and work best in my inexpensive spiral Aquabee.  I shared my journal angst here previously on several occasions and this Moleskine actually was carried back and forth to Washington DC without a mark being entered.  Since then I successfully used a Cachet linen watercolor journal while in London - and forced myself to take the Moleskine on a weekend trip to Chesham NH so I would have to use it for my daily sketch. 

I loved this discarded old slightly rusty lantern that was propped on the wood pile with an aluminum pail used for citronella candles.  There was little variation in color or tone in the "still-life" and I didn't try to add something that wasn't there.  My goal: just get some pen and paints in the Moleskine journal-finally!  However, as soon as I started using my journal, Moda & Moda sold Moleskine to the French so maybe I shouldn't get too attached.  Perhaps the French will also get my email to Moda suggesting that Moleskine make the watercolor journal using the sketchbook format.  I hate the shape of this book!!  Their reply: We'll put it in our suggestion box....

Posted by Shirley at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)