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Looking For Inspiration and Slowly Rejoining My World
I started to keep a regular Sketchbook Journal and Blog in 2003. I was partially retired and thinking about how many of my part time creative activities I could enjoy full time. Until the pandemic I had annual "progress reports"...
Interesting Children's Clothing Store Windows
More Pen/Ink drawings from my early AM neighborhood walks. I stopped during the cold weather and any wet days but eventually the Covid collages and medical reading took over most of my time. I'm going to try to take me sketchbook...
My Covid Year: March-December
My blog will be 14 years old on Jan. 4th. I was partially retired and...
Outrunning the Virus
"Stay at Home NYC" may end soon. Some regions of NY State are ready to move into Phase 2 of Reopening, some just started Phase 1, and if the COVID-19 Statistics remain on course we will enter Phase 1...
Beautiful Blooming Star Magnolia in Central Park
On the last day of my neighborhood walks this Star Magnolia Tree was in bloom in Central Park. It was a beautiful day and the Park was too full for my comfort. I felt as if I were the only person worrying...
Another Walk, and More Fashionable Dogs
We are locked down in NYC and my last walk, with social distancing, was on March 13th. I miss my neighborhood drawings lots and haven't settled into a regular drawing project since then. When I fractured the wrist on my...
First Daffodils I Saw in 2020
My daily solitary walk is giving me some fresh air, keeps me sane, and lets me do a quick drawing. When I come home I return to my heating pad for back therapy and I'm usually anxious to pick up my current book. I think...
Sketching on My Daily Walks
During my years in Medicine I was exposed to many contagious diseases, and was a young faculty member when we started to recognize HIV infections and develop appropriate methods for safely drawing blood and doing bone marrow aspirates and...
Juilliard Concert and the NY Society Library
I carry a very small purse when I'm moving around in New York City, but always have blank white index cards and a mechanical pencil in there. At concerts, I never know whether I will be able to draw, and I've...
My Reading Winter
January and February have been reading months for me - first bronchitis with horrible coughing leading to a back problem which is slowly getting better. But although I haven't been completely house bound, my flexibility is still reduced and...
More Paris Sketchbook Pages: October 24
I am very slow getting sketchbook pages posted from our Fall Paris Vacation. I love Degas, and as my husband and friends were going through the D'Orsay, I stopped at the Degas sculptures - and sketched. The patina on this wonderful...
Master Drawing Week 2020
This past week was Master Drawing Week in NYC. Galleries on the Upper East Side mount special exhibits of master drawings - from the 1600s through moderns like Matisse and Picasso. They have a booklet you can pick up with...
Paris 3: October 2019
I'm still working on drawings I did when we were on vacation in Paris. This first sketchbook page was done quickly from our apartment window before we left for the day. But most of the drawings I did in...
Line of Action Drawings January 2020
I want to start off the New Year drawing more line of action figures. I started these small drawings in 2018, and only occasional ly sketched them in 2019. I typically draw them quickly if I have a minute...
Blog Anniversary, Progress and Goals
Warning: This is a long blog post, and written to give myself inspiration and focus for 2020. I started my blog on January 4, 2006 and I like to use the anniversary to review my annual Progress and set new Goals. Art...
My Newest Watercolor Sketchbook (#64)
I make my sketchbooks for general drawing and this is my newest one. When I started drawing again in 2006, and wanted to learn how to paint with watercolor, I couldn't find any reasonably priced sketchbooks with 140lb watercolor paper. I used...
Merry Christmas To All
We will celebrate Christmas Eve with dinner at our apartment tonight for our NYC children and grandchildren - carrying on a Christmas Eve tradition started by my parents for me. Our children had stockings placed at the end of their...
It is Almost Christmas!
Christmas cards are sent, ornaments for our 8 grandchildren are finished, Minky blankets, pillowcases, and pillow shams are sewn as requested by 4 of them, and I finally had time very early this morning to draw and paint in my sketchbook. This...
Our Grandson's Bar Mitzvah
Thirteen years ago my husband and I were racing across the Atlantic when our daughter was admitted to a London hospital 6 weeks before our grandson Callum was due. She had excellent care and when he was born 6 days later he was...
Paris Musee Picasso
I really like Picasso, especially his non-cubist drawings, paintings, ceramics etc. We missed the reopening of the Picasso Museum 5 years ago, and I was very interested in seeing the renovated space and collection. The building is gorgeous, and they...
Sketchbook Pages from Sothebys Auction Preview
I love the Christies and Sothebys Spring and Fall Impressionist and Modern Auction Previews. These are more of my drawings of sculptures, my current favorite things to draw. I love Degas' dancers and remember the first time I saw them lined up in...
Fun Saturday in New York City
Guess Who Planned a Meetup for Sketchbook Skool Students last Saturday, in Washington Square Park, New York City? When I partially retired from Medicine in 2005, I discovered Sketchbook Art and Danny Gregory's Everyday Matters Yahoo Group. Several months...
Paris Sketchbook Pages: Part 1
I carried my Paris Sketchbook with me everyday, and almost always sketched something while we were visiting a museum and in a restaurant. When it is just my husband and I traveling, we periodically stop for 45 minutes and he does a New...
Home From Paris
We're Home! We had another wonderful visit to Paris - walking the City for miles, seeing some wonderful museum exhibits, and eating delicious meals. I made a special sketchbook for this trip and carried it with me all day. ...
Off to Paris and My Sketchbook is Ready
We will be leaving for Paris for a short vacation, and for many years I included "Mickey" on one of the first few pages in my travel sketchbooks to Europe. He is a character in Maurice Sendak's book In...
Picasso and Matisse
A group of my friends and I went to Swann Gallery for the previews of their Drawings and Prints Auction last month. They have important representatives of 19th and 20th century artists, and we all usually draw some of them for practice. I sketched...
September "Bodies in Motion" Drawings
When I have time after breakfast in the morning I still like drawing bodies from photos - these are from The Nude Figure: A Visual Reference for Artists by Mark Edward Smith. I draw them on copy paper scraps and...
September Flowers in Wagner Park
Summer is almost over, and I will miss my visits to Wagner Park to see and draw the flowers. The Battery Park Conservancy has wonderful gardeners, and every week there are new varieties in bloom. They have an adult art...
Line of Action Drawings - Summer 2019
I really enjoy figure drawing and during the last few years I've been sketching from photos after breakfast. I tear scrap copy paper into 4 pieces, and leave a stack on the breakfast counter, with a pencil, pen, and small scissors. This...
Another Visit to the T.C. Cannon Exhibit at NMAI NYC
I returned to the National Museum of the American Indian (NYC) last Wednesday to again see the T.C. Cannon exhibit which closes on September 16th. There are so many paintings, prints, and drawings that I wanted to add to my sketchbook, just...
Art of T.C. Cannon at the National Museum of the American Indian
After seeing this exhibit presented on a PBS NYC show, I wanted to see it. TC Cannon grew up in the 1950s, and translated his native culture to the world in which he was growing up. He was an...
Making Paste Paper for Bookbinding is ADDICTIVE!
I love making "paste paper" and spent 1 1/2 days last week making some with a friend for an upcoming bookbinding project. Next week we are going to make portfolios, and decided that was a good reason for me to teach...
A Few More Sketchbook Pages from Martha's Vineyard
We had a wonderful visit with our friends in Martha's Vineyard this summer: an architectural tour in Edgartown, the new MV Museum, a performance by Vineyard Sound, a film at the Film Center (Inviolable), a play at the MV...
My New Paris Watercolor Sketchbook
We are going to Paris this Fall, and I always recycle a theme-appropriate book as a watercolor sketchbook for our trips. Five years ago it was a book of old Paris black and white photographs by Atget. This time I found...
Urban Sketchers June 22, 2019
Drawing along Museum Mile: The group met in front of the Guggenheim Museum, and Urban Sketchers spread out along 5th Avenue throughout the day.Two sections of my Accordion Sketchbook: This is my USK accordion book which I reserved for NYC...
Direct Watercolor Painting Challenge - No Pen or Pencil
It was hard for me to add to my Summer Vacation Sketchbook and a special sketchbook for direct watercolor painting when we were on vacation - so I am behind already. I made a 16 page Teesha Moore pamphlet book...
Last Sketchbook Page Before Vacation Ended
We learned lots about Sag Harbor during this vacation. It was the Whaling port for Long Island during the height of the Whaling Industry in the 19th C. Whale boats, for whale ships, were built there, and the men from the...
Beach Treasures
These are a few of the treasures I picked up on our beach walks. The channel whelk shell is a beautiful gray- blue and only about 3" long. The Sand Dollar, the first one I ever found, is silver...
Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia
Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PAIt was a gorgeous Spring Day in Philadelphia and I had just arrived for a reunion. I took a long walk and revisited Rittenhouse Square. There were people at every outdoor restaurant, sitting on every bench,...
People Drawing People: Portraits
I'm behind on my Sketchbook Skool class People Drawing People, and here are homework drawings - portraits of Carlos Aponte and Felix Scheinberger. I intend to go back and watch all of the 5 weekly classes again, and then I will...
Drawn, Not Painted
These are homework drawings from the Sketchbook Skool online class People Drawing People. These have been busy weeks and I just need a morning to sit down with a hot cup of coffee to paint them with watercolor. I'm really...
People Drawing People: Sketchbook Skool May 3, 2019
Figure Drawing with a Live ModelThis week in the Sketchbook Skool online People Drawing People Course, the theme was foreshortening. In this 20 minute pose our model rested her head on her hand and her face was foreshortened in...
Practicing Figure Drawing with the Masters
I am currently taking the Sketchbook Skool 5 week online course People Drawing People. This week I joined artist friends at 2 NYC art exhibits: Self-Portraits at Neue Gallerie and Lucien Freud at Acquavella Gallery. I chose a self-portrait drawing by...
People Drawing People: Sketchbook Skool Apr 30, 2019
Week 2 of this wonderful online course is "drawing people in motion". Like Week 1, there are several artists drawing figures in motion demonstrating their specific method for this difficult task. I draw lots of figures, some in action poses from reference...
Screen Printing Project Four
Source: We converted art photos to half tones, and made photo emulsion screens to print our images. This is a sketchbook ink and watercolor painting I made many years ago in London. My two oldest grandchildren, who are now teenagers,...
People Drawing People
I am taking the 5 week Sketchbook Skool class called People Drawing People. I go to figure drawing, both nude models and dressed models, and I often draw people on the bus, or subway, restaurants and concerts. I feel comfortable drawing in...
Making a Coptic Watercolor Sketchbook
My major reason for making books is to have a watercolor sketchbook that meets my needs, and isn't expensive to make. I make cased in books with dyed fabric covers for my standard watercolor sketchbooks, but this month my bookbinding student and...
Bookbinding and a New Watercolor Sketchbook
Once each month I meet with a friend to teach her bookbinding. She makes wonderful books and I have a new one for myself at the end of the day. This month we made a cased in-book with 140 lb...
Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again
There is a large Andy Warhol Exhibit at the Whitney Museum. This is one of several exhibits of his art in NYC that I've seen - at the Met, MoMA, Morgan, and now at the Whitney. The MoMA and the Morgan introduced...
Line of Action Figure Drawings - from end of January
These are my line of action figure drawings from the 2nd half of January. I call these Art After Breakfast because I do these 5-10 minute drawings while I'm finishing my coffee, and paint them immediately. I cut them...
Making a Watercolor Accordion Sketchbook
Accordion Sketchbook with Fabriano Artistico 140lb Soft Press paper: I made 3 of these and used them for sketching during NYC Urban Sketchers meetings when weather permitted. This is one of those three. I am teaching a friend from NYC...
Random Sketchbook Pages
We gave 4 of our grandchildren new art supplies for Christmas. Each of them enjoys drawing and painting and I put together a set of NeocolorII watercolor crayons, Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils, a Pelikan opaque paint set, two waterbrushes, and...
Art After Breakfast: Early January 2019
I am not doing as much drawing this month while I catch up with sewing projects. But it is easy to do my quick gesture morning figure drawings, and I collaged another group of drawings, sketched on paper, into my...
C Street Washington DC
We took our Granddaughter back to Washington DC on New Year's day and spent two days there as the Government shutdown spread to the Museums - our usual happy places when we visit. But my favorite place is Capitol Hills...
December 2018 Art After Breakfast
More of my "after breakfast" line of action drawings. My models are photo images from The Human Form in Action and Repose by Phil Brodatz and Dori Watson (1966). I use one-quarter of a page of scrap copy paper, draw a...
Art Progress 2018 and Art Goals for 2019:
January 4th is the 12th Anniversary of my Blog, and I like to review my progress and goals for the next year at this time - an activity that was first recommended in an online art group when I first...
A Santa for Christmas 2018
Getting ready for Christmas and celebrating with friends and family meant that I had almost no time to do a Santa painting for 2018 in my sketchbook. One morning my 10 year old grand daughter and I, when she was the only...
Neue Galerie: Auguste Macke and Franz Marc
My friends Pat and Eunice met me last week to see the Macke-Marc exhibit at Neue Galerie in Manhattan. This exhibit focuses on paintings and their lives between 1909 and 1914. Both artists died in WWI - Macke in 1914...
Julilliard Concerts Dec 4 and 6, 2018
We have tickets this week to 3 Juilliard Performances: Juilliard Jazz, Juilliard Orchestra with Itzhak Perlman conducting, and Juilliard Drama performing Sondheim's musical "Into the Woods." Our oldest grandson joined us for the Jazz concert, and two of our youngest grandchildren...
Art After Breakfast
Danny Gregory wrote a book called Art Before Breakfast. My brain doesn't function until I have coffee, and when I had a wrist fracture last spring I seriously started drawing figures after breakfast. Each of these figures is drawn on...
Visit to London: Part 4
I still have ephemera and a few photos to add to my London Travel Sketchbook. But I decided to end my blog entries from our trip with two other types of pages that I usually include. Two X Two inch Grid: I...
Action Drawings from Photos: 2018
I am still practicing drawing figures in action from photographs. These are my "art after breakfast" drawings, first started during my 6 weeks with a fractured wrist on my domiant hand, and now done because they are a very quick way for...
Airport Sketchbook Page
I went to the airport very early in the morning because of road closures for the New York Marathon and another one of the early arrivals took a long nap - and I had time to both draw and paint him. ...
International Quilt Festival in Texas
I am going to the International Quilt Festival in Houston Texas this weekend for 5 days. This is my 33rd annual Festival - and it has grown from several large spaces at the Shamrock Hilton Hotel, when I first attended,...
Figure Drawing Class Using Toned Paper
This week in our figure drawing class we used toned paper and black and white media- my pencils were Conte. We had two models and two poses, each about 40 minutes to draw the two models together. This was...
Visit to London: Part 2
I'm slowly finishing more of the sketchbook pages in my London Sketchbook All of the pages were drawn quickly in pencil, then inked with a Sakura Pigma Micron pen. I was then able to paint them later, using a photograph taken when...
Art Tools for London
Art Tools for Travel to London: I wanted to use gouache on a sketchbook page, and decided to draw representative art tools that I am taking to London. The blue green color is from my Pelikan Gouache set, and it...
London More than a Decade Ago
London was the first European city my husband and I visited when we finally had jobs, and we explored London for two weeks. Over the subsequent years we visited again several times and grew to love the City even more. In 2006-7 our...
Sketchbook Skool Week 3: Playing with Gouache
I bought tubes of Winsor Newton Artist Grade Gouache in September 2012 - and squeezed out paint into a new palette. I quickly learned that they flaked, and came out of the wells easily when they dried making them not portable. This...
My Traveling Companion For My Travel Sketchbooks
My companion for my London Sketchbook: This is Mickey in his bread airplane, taken from Maurice Sendak's book In the Night kitchen. I painted him on the first "notes page" in my travel sketchbook for my upcoming Fall trip to London. ...
My Series of "After Breakfast" Figure Drawing Continues
I DEDICATE THESE DRAWINGS TO THE STRONG WOMEN WHO STEPPED FORWARD TO TRY TO LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD FOR ALL OF US. I'M OUTRAGED AT THE REPUBLICAN REFUSAL TO HAVE THE WHITE HOUSE REOPEN THE FBI BACKGROUND CHECK! WE NEED...
Watercolor Rules: Week 1 Ian Sidaway
I am taking the new Sketchbook Skool class called Watercolor Rules. Ian Sidaway, an amazing watercolor artist from England, was the teacher for the first week, and he was brilliant as he presented everything you always wanted to know about...
Recycling a Used Book as a London Watercolor Sketchbook
We are going to London this Fall and I just recycled a London 1960s Photography book to use as my watercolor travel sketchbook. My daughter and her family lived there for 14 months a decade ago, and I'm finally ready to...
Sketchbook Skool WHIMSICAL Weeks 4 and 5
Miriam Bos is an illustrator and her paintings are used for books, magazines, fabric, ceramics, and greeting cards, etc. It was fun learning about her creative process, and for our homework we were asked to create a book character and...
Art After Breakfast: Week of August 13th
Figure Drawings from "After Breakfast:" These are my 10 minute line of action figure drawings that are done on scraps of used copy paper while sitting at the kitchen counter as soon as I finish breakfast. I began to do these...
Sketchbook Skool WHIMSICAL Homework for Anna Denise Floor
Anna Denise Floor has beautiful watercolor journals of her family life. Early in her project she started to develop layouts for her pages and showed us the five major 2 page spreads she uses as guidance. She draws from her imagination, capturing special...
My History With Watercolor and a Return to Being a Beginner
In 2003 I became interested in keeping a sketchbook, with the hope that I could also keep a travel sketchbook in the future. I sketched in pen and played with "watercolor," not even realizing that I was using The French...
My Left Hand vs My Right Hand
On July 21st there was an Opinion Column in the New York Times called "My Left Hand vs. My Right Hand" and friends sent me links and copies of the article. It was a fun read!https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/opinion/sunday/my-left-hand-vs-my-right-hand.html Readers of this blog might...
Sketchbook Skool WHIMSICAL - Week 2
Mike Lowery, graphic designer and Children's Book Illustrator, was the artist teacher for week 2 of Whimsical. He did several demos online, and after each one he suggested that we try the same techniques. Shapes His lifetime goal is to draw for 30...
Sketchbook Skool WHIMSICAL Homework - 1
I enrolled in another multiteacher Sketchbook Skool class (Whimsical) and watched the new class each week for 5 weeks. But I didn't have time to do the homework then and just now restarted the online class. Rebecca Green, a children's book author, asked...
Flowers and a New Handmade Sketchbook
I sketched flowers at Wagner Park last week, but didn't finish painting them until this week. Every week the blooming flowers change, and I try to capture them in my sketchbook. I love having a sketchbook with the paper I...
Deliberate Practice: Drawing Figures in Action
Line of Action or Gesture Drawing: I love figure drawing and although I go to sessions with live models, I wanted more experience drawing bodies in action. I watched Suita Shirodkar's Craftsy class and liked her line of action...
Urban Sketchers 30 X 30 Direct Painting Challenge
Day 30: This is the final direct painting (i.e. no lines) that I did for the challenge. My observations from the 30 days are listed below. I love drawing, and really love lines, so I was skeptical about this challenge. ...
Urban Sketchers 30 x 30 Challenge: June 26.29
Direct Painting for 30 X 30 Urban Sketchers June Challenge: Last summer I took a 3 hour workshop from Urban Sketcher Anne Watkins. I love her style of painting random people, especially those that she does onsite at Weddings. ...
Urban Sketchers 30 X 30 Challenge: June 20-25
It is hard keeping up with my art goals while being on vacation with my husband at the home of very good friends. I find that I am only able to do it by taking photos and painting during quiet...
More Sketchbook Pages from the Beach Vacation
We are enjoying our visit to Martha's Vineyard with some of our oldest friends. I have to fit in sketchbook pages whenever I can, and I'm now taking photos and painting from them later in the day. This is a...
From Beach to Beach
After our beach vacation on Long Island, we are returning to Martha's Vineyard to vacation on another beach. Retirement is wonderful and the settings couldn't be more different. To record the move from the Hamptons to the Vineyard, two of my...
Beach Vacation Three - 2018
We were shocked to find a shark on the beach during our morning walk. I still need to use the shark identification algorithm to figure out what type of shark it was. The week we arrived we saw a big seal...
Beach Vacation Two - 2018
I found this dead Monarch Butterfly on the beach, and brought it home in a large clam shell to draw and paint. I've tried photographing them as they move from flower to flower, but can never get a photo...
Beach Shells: Summers 2010-2017
We began going to the beach in Southampton each summer in 2008. Although I no longer enjoy sitting on the beach or swimming in the ocean, I discovered that I love long early morning beach walks, and careful observation of the...
A New Sketchbook for Summer Vacation
For the last 10 years I recycled an old book to use as a summer sketchbook. They are all different sizes, and have original titles that may or may not suggest a summer theme. But I like the variety,...
Spring Flowers in NYC
I love Spring flowers growing along the sidewalks of NYC - most are in planters around the trees, in big urns, or on the medians of wide avenues. The day I walked to Aquavella Gallery to see the Joaquin Torres-Garcia exhibit...
Figure Drawing May 9th - Dominant Hand
This was our 2nd Battery Park City Figure Al Fresco session for 2018, and I had one more page left in my Non-Dominant Hand Sketchbook. My plan was to draw with my non-dominant right hand, scan and resize the image, and collage...
Non-Dominant Hand Drawings: May 4-7
My cast is off, and my "Non-Dominant Hand Drawing Sketchbook" only has one more empty page. But I definitely need physical therapy to use my dominant hand without pain. Yesterday was my first session of 6. These were "line of...
Non-Dominant Hand Drawings: May 2nd
I saw my hand physician yesterday, and my cast was removed! It will take me several more weeks, and some hand physical therapy, before the residual pain is gone. I'm thrilled! And I only have a few more pages before I...
Non-Dominant Hand Drawings: April 26-30th
Koosje Koene: It was great watching Koosje do a session in Sketchbook Revival. I used an 05 graphite mechanical pencil to draw her while she talking and a Sketch and Wash pencil without water to add graphite to her blouse. ...
Non-Dominant Hand Drawings: April 23, 24, 26
Sketchbook Revival Video from Session 3. I signed up for this free online course because I need inspiration as I enter the last few weeks of my dominant hand wrist fracture with cast. Danny Gregory, who I first discovered...
Non-Dominant Hand Drawings: Apr 18th and 21st
Franz Marc The Shepherdess:I finally finished my last drawing from the exhibit at Galerie St Etienne. I wanted to use my brush pen again, because I have lots of difficulty controlling it, even with my dominant hand. For this...
Non-Dominent Hand Drawings: April 13th and 14th
April 13th: I met my friends at Neue Gallery last Friday to see their new exhibit called Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930s. I love their exhibits and brought my Hand Sketchbook so I had...
Non-Dominant Hand: Ink Drawing with Watercolor Wash
Spring is finally arriving in NYC, and I decided to sketch with the Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup group Saturday. We met at the 59th St and 6th Ave entrance to the Park and walked up the first hill, where...
Non-Dominant Hand Drawings April 10 and 11
GOOD NEWS: After my Xray yesterday, my hand surgeon determined that I would not need an operation on Monday! I fractured my wrist on my left (dominant) wrist on March 23rd. It occurred on my way to figure drawing, and...
Non - Dominant Hand Drawings April 7th and 8th
I sketched this angel from a wonderful fabric angel, carrying a gift basket. I was given her many years ago by a special friend. On Friday my hand surgeon told me I may still need an operation on my wrist, and...
Non-Dominant Hand Drawings: Mar 31-Apr 2
Mar 31st. I am drawing objects in my apartment each morning after Breakfast, and it is just what I did when I restarted drawing as I was retiring and decided that my retirement project was going to be Sketchbook...
Non-Dominant Hand Drawings Mar 29
I now have a wonderful sketchbook sent to me by my friend Maureen. She added an outline of a left hand on the cover - my injured wrist - and added words on the spine re: drawings by my...
Contemporary Southeast Asian Art 2018
Several years ago I discovered that I really like contemporary Southeast Asian Art and during Asia Week there are auction previews at the NYC auction houses for this specific type of art. The auctions are taking place this week, and...
Juilliard Jazz Orchestra, Art on Paper, Wine Bottles
Juilliard Jazz Orchestra - A drawing done while we were listening to the Jazz Orchestra play at Juilliard - always a delightful experience. My days got away from me and I decided not to paint the page. Art on Paper...
Drawing and Eating February 9th
Last Friday I went to a Swann Gallery's "Drawings and Prints" Auction Preview with my friends Pat and Eunice. There was a wonderful selection of art, more prints than drawings, but everything was inspiring. After looking at everything I chose...
And Still More Hands
I just finished my 5th Sketchbook of Body Parts - and I know that I still need to practice more. I continue to save magazine advertisements so I can use them for Deliberate Practice. These are the two drawings I did...
Playing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Joseph Cornell - detail from one of his 12 Boxes inspired by Juan Gris. Not my favorite art, but I wanted to remember working in a series. We wandered around trying to find a gallery that inspired all of us,...
NY Philharmonic Young Peoples Cocert
We began taking our Grandchildren to the Young People's Concerts 8 years ago. There are 4 concerts per year, and before the 1 hour concert, they have a 30 minute presentation called the Young Composers Concert. Three children from...
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri - "IL Guercino"
My daughter had a baby in London in 2006 Several months later we saw a Courtauld Gallery exhibit called "Mind to Paper." I fell in love with this Baroque Italian artist called IL Guercino, the "squinter" because he had a crossed eye. I loved...
Mali Art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
I walked by this Puppet every time I entered the Met and always meant to draw and paint him for my sketchbook. When I finished the drawing he looked lonely, so I added the mask and female figure to...
Comic Book Illustration at FIT
I just registered for Spring Semester at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). Seniors register for remaining openings in classes at reduced rates, and of my possible choices, I selected Comic Book Illustration. This is way out of my comfort zone,...
Two New Books - Happy Days Making Both
Not long after I retired and began to keep a pen-ink-watercolor sketchbook, I began making my own sketchbooks with 140 lb watercolor paper. At first I used commercial bookcloth, and then I realized that fabric I dyed for quilting, could...
Loving Dance and the New York City Ballet
Dance is my one lifelong physical activity, and loving to take ballet class also means loving to watch ballet. For the last 3 years my husband and I go to working rehearsals, orchestra rehearsals, lecture demos, and occasional dress rehearsals of...
Womens March 2018
My husband and I went to the NYC Womens March on Saturday along with 200,000 other people. The weather was great after our weeks of Arctic Chill, and the crowds were just as wonderful as last year. Both years I...
Looking Back to the Beginning of My Blog
I'm away for the long weekend and thought that it might be fun to go back and look at a few of my earliest blog posts, which began in January 2006.I always loved other people's travel sketchbooks, and I wanted...
NYC Urban Sketchers at the Met Museum
The NYC Urban Sketchers met on Wednesday this past week in order to draw the Christmas Tree in the Medieval Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The ornaments were made in Italy and are ceramic and fabric, with lush...
Blog Anniversary and 2018 Art Goals
My Blog is 11 years old on January 4th, and it continues to be an extremely important part of my post-retirement connection to a community of artists and friends. Last year I posted twice each week, fulfilling my ongoing goal. In...
Art Progress 2017
Art Progress for 2017: I love reviewing how I spent my year and thinking about my goals for the upcoming Year. I did sketch and paint regularly and posted to my blog twice each week in 2017. This quick annual reflection always...
Easy To Make Double Pamphlet Art Journals
Today my friend Eunice came to my apartment to learn how to make a Double Pamphlet Book. This is a good "first book" to make because you learn about paper grain, scoring and tearing paper, making folios and signatures,...
Drawing at the Fall Art Auction Previews
In the Fall and Spring, Sothebys and Christies auction houses hold BIG auctions of Impressionist-Modern-Post-War and Contemporary Art, and attending the previews for the auctions on the days leading up to them is like going to a new museum...
Bookbinding at International Quilt Festival in Houston Texas
Last week I took 3 days of classes at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. Imagine my surprise when I saw a sophisticated bookbinding class in the festival catalogue. Lisa Louise Adams, a quilter and bookbinder from Hawaii, brought many beautiful,...
NYC Urban Sketchers - 2nd Sketchbook Finished
I love making sketchbooks and devoted several accordion books, with 140 lb watercolor paper, to my days with the NYC Urban Sketchers. This book took a little more than a year to fill, partly because I didn't always use it...
Happy Halloween! And a Few Art Links For Inspiration
Today, while I'm in Houston Texas for the annual International Quilt Festival, I wanted to share two links for quick drawing inspiration.Link #1 Draw Tip Tuesday: Koosje Koene, one of the co-founders of Sketchbook Skool, presents quick tips for artists on...
Skechbook Skool Imagination - Week 5
Nina Johansson was the artist for our final week of the Sketchbook Skool Imagination Course, and we saw her One Year Imagination Project, and a demo of how she approached each day. She used a Moleskin Datebook Planner and...
Sketchbook Skool Imagination Homework - Ohn Mar and Stefan
Sketchbook Skool Ohn Mar Win Videochat: I already posted my homework from Ohn Mar Win's Class. but on my wet-in-wet "watercolor play" homework, I left out the mark making until I divide it into magnetic bookmarks (Oct 14 Blog Post). When I subsequently...
Sketchbook Skool "Imagination" Homework for Ohn Mar Win
Helping My Imagination to Overcome Resistance: Several summers ago I decided to spend 100 days drawing from my imagination, I filled 100 pages - and had fun doing it. I used pen for all drawings and smooth copy paper bound in a...
Sketchbook Skool "Imagination" Homework Week 2
I named my Inner Critic Mildred after my very critical Mother and Mother-in-law, Marge and Miriam. In this Sketchbook Skool "Imagination" drawing she is saying: You haven't done Marloes' homework yet. Your problem is that you don't have enough...
Drawings from My Imagination - Koosje Koene Homework
I am taking the Sketchbook Skool Class called Imagining. Koosje Koene, co founder of Sketchbook Skool, demonstrated her approach to a 5 day imagination drawing. She sat down each day without a specific plan and allowed ideas to appear. She...
My Newest Watercolor Sketchbook
Just a quick photo today of my newest handbound watercolor sketchbook. I dyed the fabric and made it into bookcloth, fusing it to mulberry paper for strength. There are 48 pages of Fabriano Artistico made from 2 sheets of...
A Sketchbook for My Grandchildren in DC
Two of our grandchildren live in Washington DC, and when the oldest was born I started a sketchbook to record daily events when we were visiting her. Pages were created for local places and important activities, and "stuff. "I'm now...
This and That From Early July
I have several sketchbook pages that I did before our recent trip tp Martha's Vineyard - and just finished painting them since our return. Each week I arrive at Wagner Park in Battery Park City during the final minutes...
Deliberate Practice: Drawing Hands and a Foot
I like figure drawing, and when there are live models, I try to draw hands, and sometimes feet on the longer poses (10, 20 minute poses). But I need to continue to draw both hands and feet from photographs, and...
Sydney and the Swan Float
We spent 5 days at the beach with our family, and even though we took our usual early morning beach walks, the rest of the days were busy with the family - and especially with the 8 children in...
Sketchbook Skool 6 Homework
I signed up for Sketchbook Skool 6 - Exploring - realizing that I was going to be in Venice after Week 2. After our return I completed watching each session, but then left for the beach and my beloved...
More Beach Sketchbook Pages
This was our 9th annual beach vacation with two couples that we've known FOREVER. We go for early morning 2 mile beach walks, stop for coffee and breakfast on the ride back to the house, and then just relax...
Long Island Beach Vacation 2017
We are at the beach for our annual June vacation - lots of early morning beach walks, visiting with friends, relaxing, and eating. The first two days were foggy for our early morning walk on Cooper's Beach, today we...
Sketching Sculptures
I like to draw sculpture when I am in art exhibits, and recently sketched several sculptures, and then painted around them in my sketchbook, leaving them as single line drawings. Henry Moore made many Mother and Child sculptures and...
Drawing "Constantly Moving" People in Venice 2017
These are the sketchbook pages that I did of constantly Moving Preople, as contrasted with my Architectural Sketches done while sitting and having coffee, wine, or dinner. I like figure drawing and I love trying to capture some aspect of people...
More Sketchbook Pages From Venice 2017
We had a beautiful view from our apartment balcony, and could even see a portion of the Grand Canal. I went out for a morning look and quick photo each day, and finally sketched the scene. I've never painted red tile roofs...
Venice Vacation 2017
We just returned from Venice - 9 nights in a lovely apartment in Dorsoduro sestiere. It is a wonderful section of Venice - and it felt like being in a small town. I love keeping a travel sketchbook and was able...
Venice Sketchbook Pages - 2012
Painting some Venice scenes from my photos from an earlier visit helped me fill my sketchbook during my 2012 visit. I don't know why I had such a "fear of failure" before our visit, perhaps my love of the...
2012 Venice Travel Preparation
We love Venice and celebrate some wedding anniversaries there. This month we are going again and I decided to post my previous Venice sketchbook "anticipation pages." Artist Laure Ferlita describes them here in her blog.http://paintedthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2017/04/training-to-overcome-fear-of-sketching.html I wasn't sketching or keeping a visual journal during...
Making a New Sketchbook for Venice 2017
I love to make watercolor sketchbooks and I frequently recycle an old book for travel sketchbooks - usually one that costs only $2 on the outside carts at The Strand bookstore in NYC.I made a travel sketchbook that I loved...
Illustration Class Final Project
The FIT Watercolor Comps Illustration class is almost over, and we each have to do a final project using the techniques we learned and practiced in this class. I decided to work more on my imaginary friends Axel and...
Macy's Flower Show 2017
New York City Urban Sketchers met at the Flower Show last week and spent the morning sketching. I've never been, and really enjoyed walking around on multiple floors enjoying this wonderful harbinger of Spring. The Theme this year was...
Marsden Hartley Exhibit at Met Breuer and Lobsters
My friend Pat and I met for lunch on Tuesday and then visited the Marsden Hartley exhibit at the Met Breuer. As we were entering, we met our friend Judy T. and then enjoyed the exhibit together. This exhibit focuses on Hartley's...
Sotheby's Asian Modern and Contemporary Auction
This is Asia Week in New York City - when museums, galleries, and auction houses focus on Asian Art. Several years ago my friend Pat and I discovered the Asian Modern and Contemporary Auctiuon Preview at Sothebys and we look forward...
Deliberate Practice - Drawing Hands Feb 6
I use "deliberate practice" to learn how to draw hands. This is a slow process, I even drew all of the photo images from an American Sign Language website several years ago. Now I keep a pile of photos cut...
Urban Sketchers NYC at Natural History
Yesterday was my first sketching session with Urban Sketchers - NYC in a long time and we met and sketched at the American Museum of Natural History here in NYC. In honor of Groundhog day most of us sketched the...
I finished my Liberty of London Quilt!
This is huge!!! In 2006 my daughter and her husband moved to London, taking our only two grandchildren, ages 1 and 3. To console myself, I decided to keep a daily travel sketchbook during our many visits, and to make...
Blog Anniversary and Art Goals for 2017
Art Goals for 2017: January 4th is the 11th anniversary for my blog - and it remains an important part of my creative life. My main goal is to develop better drawing and painting skills on paper and with dye-painting...
Art Progress for 2016
January 4th is the 11th anniversary of my blog and during December I love reflecting on my progress with drawing, painting, and dying fabric in the previous year. This is really my note to myself for inspiration. It may be...
Annual Christmas in NYC Day with Diane and Nancy
I was waiting to meet friends from DC at ABC Carpet, which is a winter wonderland each holiday season. Each year we look at the displays and get so many ideas for colors and decorating. I took the time while waiting...
Barcelona Travel Sketchbook - 6
This is the final blog post from my travel sketchbook. The remainder of the pages are filled with a few photos and relevant business cards. One beautiful day we took the Metro close to Barceloneta and set off for...
A Portrait of our FIT Class Model
Last week was a blur of food shopping, cooking, cleaning up, fixing leftovers, and lots of time with wonderful family and friends. I literally didn't think about a blog post until I was awakened at 4:10 this morning by...
Barcelona Travel Sketchbook - Part 5
Our trip to Montjuic, specifically to visit Fundacio Joan Miro:We were surprised that the Metro connected directly to the funicular and disappointed that it was also in a tunnel all the way to the top. But when we got to the...
Barcelona Travel Sketchbook - Part 4
I came home from Barcelona with a sketchbook full of ink drawings, but only half of them were painted. There weren't enough hours in the day! But I did have phone photos to use for my watercolor washes. This is...
I'm Drawing Sculpture This Month
This is a huge art exhibit month in New York City. In addition to the Fall Museum Exhibits, there are terrific gallery shows, and the huge auction previews. Both Sotheby's and Christies now have combined auction previews for Impressionist...
Transfer Artist Paper (TAP) - on Paper and Fabric
Last Week I was at the International Quilt Festival in Houston - an annual trek I began in 1983. It was so small then that it was held in the now destroyed Shamrock Hilton Hotel. I watched it grow...
Barcelona Travel Sketchbook - 3
I am currently in Houston, but wanted to continue to post my Barcelona sketchbook pages. Today Part 3.Gracia was just north of our hotel and we walked for hours exploring the tiny streets. After miles of walking, we returned to...
Barcelona Travel Sketchbook - 2
I am determined to create a vacation Travel Sketchbook when we are on trips, yet I find that I constantly have to remind myself to draw by having internal dialogues each day. My primary goal is to draw/paint a minimum...
An Acrylic Still Life Painting
I am taking another acrylic painting class at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) this Fall. Last semester we painted abstracts. This semester we paint a still life and live models. This is the 20 X 24" still life I did...
Museum Visits - Dubuffet and Klee
I met my friends, the day after we returned from Barcelona, for two museum visits in New York City. We marveled at Dubuffet's Drawings at the Morgan Library, had lunch, and then went uptown to the Met Breuer to...
Barcelona Travel Sketchbook - 1
We returned from Barcelona this week, and I wanted to start posting some of my travel sketchbook pages. Today I will post recurring features that I make part of each of my travel sketchbooks. Then as I finally paint the...
Flowers, Stuart Davis, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 9/11 Museum
These are a few of the sketchbook pages I created in the last 2 weeks. I walk through Wagner Park on my way to Battery Park City Figure Al Fresco, and occasionally draw single flowers. These are a few of the...
Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC
For the last week we were in Washington DC helping to take care of two of our grandchildren. While they were in school on Friday we visited the Hirshhorn Museum (one of the Smithsoniam Museums on the Mall) and looked at their...
Gallery Visits with My Friends Sept 2nd
A Gallery visit with my artist friends Pat and Benedicte. This was one of the first days of the summer that we were together, and planned a visit to Galerie St. Etienne at 24W57th St. It is one of...
Another Trip Downtown to the Battery
The Museum of Jewish Heritage, in Wagner Park, is great to draw. This is actually part of the back of the Museum that I walk by when going to South Cove for figure drawing. We try to spend time with...
Annabelle's "Camp" Week in NYC
Our Grand daughter is visiting us for a week from DC, and she has time alone with us and liberal doses of her cousins who live in the City. We took a trip to Roosevelt Island (which is in the middle of...
Portraits, a Hybrid Flower, and Cafe Customers
I have a variety of sketchbook pages from recent days. This month I quickly sketched my husband's portrait when we were out for coffee. I do this periodically and he doesn't think any of them look like him. Here...
Wonderful Week in Martha's Vineyard
We just returned from a vacation in Martha's Vineyard, extending our time walking beaches while visiting wonderful friends. We stay on the western end of the island and the beaches are very rocky. There are many, many rocks that wash...
Summer Camp Mail Art
Three of my Grandchildren are in Summer Camp for 7 weeks, and even if they never manage to send notes to us, I still write to them weekly. Last summer, as part of a Sketchbook Skool homework assignment, I sketched...
My Sea Shell Obsession
We were back at the beach with our family this weekend, and on my early AM walk with my husband I found an Atlantic Deep Sea Scallop Shell, my 4th in 9 years! And my husband almost stepped on...
Beach Vacation - 2nd post
We are at the beach on our 8th annual vacation with dear friends. I pick up shells on our morning beach walk, but rarely see any that I haven't found and sketched previously over the years. But that makes...
Summer Beach Sketchbook
We are at the beach for a short vacation, and one of our favorite parts of this vacation is our 2 miles walks on the beach early in the morning. My sketching is based very much on what shells I find on...
Drawing From My Imagination
I am again loosely following a 100 Day Project - Drawing from My Imagination - even if it takes me more than 100 days. Last year when I did this, my character Axel was just "born" and being developed. This...
Painting My Dinner for Sketchbook Skool Homework
Matthew Midgley, a British teacher and illustrator, was the Artist for week 5 in Sketchbook Skool 6. He is a master at painting his meals, even if it means that he doesn't eat it until cold. I knew that...
Sketchbook Skool 6 Homework
Vin Ganapathy, a teacher in Sketchbook Skool 6, demonstrated portrait drawing and then assigned us homework using his technique. He likes to do a quick drawing live, then take lots of photos, and use them to finish the drawing...
Making Monotypes at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
There are 120 monotypes in the MoMA exhibit Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty. On April 26th MoMA offered a drop-in session for museum visitors to make monotypes. Education staff from MoMA and staff from EFA Blackburn Studio set up a mini-printing...
Portraits in Public Places
Several years ago I worked my way through Carla Sonheim's book Drawing Lab. For Exercise 16 we were asked to draw 100 Faces, and I sketched most of the Faces on public transportation, and painted them with watercolor later. Since then...
"Continuous Line Contour" and "Negative Space" Drawings
Continuous Line Contour Drawings and the Sketchbook Skool Seeing Online Class (2014)- Brenda Swensen's Class Demo was a Continuous Line Contour Drawing with a Tombow pen and a watercolor wash. Even though I did these exercises, I spent much more...
Comics: Out of My Art Comfort Zone
Danny Gregory taught me about comics in his opening week of Sketchbook School 6 - Polishing. As a child I read about Archie, Veronica, Betty, and Jughead. In college I read whole books of Peanut comics by Charles Shultz. In...
NYC Urban Sketchers May 23rd
I went to the morning session of the weekend NYC Urban Sketchers for the second time, and in spite of early drizzle and rain, I really enjoyed sketching Cooper Union. It is a major historical building in the City...
Abstract Painting and Surface Design
When I restarted drawing, and learning about watercolors, I was most interested in documenting my life by drawing and painting in sketchbooks. I've now filled over 100 since 2005 and I love how much I remember about events when...
Degas - A Stange New Beauty
Yesterday my friends and I went to a Museum of Modern Art Members Preview of the new Edgar Degas exhibit. I was surprised to read that it is his first solo exhibit at MoMA! In this exhibit they feature Degas' monotypes,...
Long Weekend in Washington DC
My Husband and I spent a long weekend with our Grandchildren in Washington DC. We don't see them nearly enough, so I like to add their photos in a blog post so I can document our visit. Our Grandson...
Battery Park City Still Life Paintings
Still Life #1 We had limited props for our still life drawings yesterday, but some of the clippings from the Park Conservancy, including pussy willows, were lovely. I decided to play by drawing the arrangement with a brown watercolor...
Blotted Line Image Transfer
I was intrigued by Andy Warhol's use of this technique when seeing it in the 2015 Warhol exhibit at MoMA, and attended one of their art sessions to learn the technique for making these transfers. Here is information and photos of Warhol's prints,...
"Our Blood" Infographic for Sketchbook Skool Homework
The 3rd teacher for Sketchbook Skool - Expressing - is Sabine Wiseman, a Dutch Illustrator. She described infographic illustration and demonstrated the basic ideas. Our first homework was to make an infographic on a topic of our choice. I chose...
Fraunces Tavern and Museum
The Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup Group visited Fraunces Tavern and Museum last weekend and it was a perfect place to sketch. The current building was built in 1719, and throughout the years played a major role in Colonial...
Master Drawing Week in New York City 2016
Last Week was the annual Master Drawings Week in New York City. I've gone with my Art Pals for the last several years, partly because I love drawings, and secondly because it is a wonderful opportunity to see elevators...
Making Pen Pockets for SketchBooks
Pen Pockets for Sketchbooks: I decided that I wanted a pocket to keep on my Daily Sketchbooks and designed this pattern last summer. It fits around a book cover that measures 7 1/2-9 inches in height and has a...
Before and After the Blizzard
My husband and I joined friends on Thursday and Friday for rehearsals of the New York City Ballet (NYCB). We sit in the first ring for these rehearsals, far enough away from the stage not to distract the dancers. ...
Jill Weber Sketchbook School Homework
Yesterday I watched the video of Danny Gregory doing his Jill Weber homework, and was inspired to make my book immediately. I have many creative passions, and therefore find it hard to focus and work in a series. When I...
Tuesday Was Art Day This Week
And what an amazing day it was with my artist friends Benedicte, Pat, and Teri! We intended to visit 4 Galleries, but it was really cold and we found other really interesting exhibits in two of the buildings, so we...
Picasso Sculpture and Hand Lettering Homework
I saw the Picasso Sculpture Exhibit many times since the preview on September 11, 2015. Last week I went with my husband for what may be my last visit, although there are still more favorite sculptures I would like...
NYC Urban Sketchers and Art Wednesday
Twenty-five NYC Urban Sketchers met at Kremer Pigments (247 W. 29th St, NY, NY) on Wednesday morning for a lecture-demo by Roger Carmona, the Store Manager. Roger is an artist and an expert on Materials - specifically paints. During the...
I Love to Make Books!
Each year I make a "Remains of the Day" book - instructions by Mary Ann Moss - to keep photos and ephemera of my "Art Adventures" with friends. I just finished the pages in my 2015 book and made a new book for...
Art Goals for 2016
My main goal is to develop better drawing and painting skills on paper and with dye-painting and surface design on fabric. At the beginning of each year, I like to define new projects which will help me progress and then remain...
Reflections on Art in 2015
A Review of Art Experiences and Learning During 2015: A Progress Report January 4th is the 10th anniversary of my blog and it is always a good time for reflection and planning. Long Term Goals: Develop better drawing and painting skills on paper and...
Last FIT Watercolor Class
Last night was the final class of my Watercolor Class at Fashion Institute of Technology. My goal for this class was to finally spend time in a real class, instead of learning on my own, and to work bigger and...
Copying the Masters
There are lots of great gallery exhibits in New York City and my artist friends and I usually put together a list and then spend a day in a specific neighborhood. On November 18th we met at Penn Station and...
Stamping a Multicolor Santa
I was pulling out a set of fun foam stamps for the Santa image shown below, and thought my tutorial from December 2010 should be reposted this month. I have a few gift tags to make and this time...
A Pathway From One Creative Idea to Another
Fabio Consoli, one of the faculty from the Sketchbook Skoolhouse Stretching online class, wanted us to explore "child's play," combining a child's drawing with ours. My grandson Zach made the figure on the right and I completed the picture with...
Met Museum Exhibit
I went on an amazing one hour Gallery Tour with an exhibit Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last Friday. The exhibit is called Fashion and Virtue: Textile Patterns and the Print Revolution, 1520 to 1620. The Met collection of 60 Design...
Vacation in Spain - 4
This is the last of my sketchbook pages from our vacation in Spain - this time drawings done while we were visiting the fantastic art museums.The collection at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid is extraordinary, and even more amazing because it...
Looking at Art
I went to see Christie's Auction Preview for multiple auctions (Impressionist and Modern, Contemporary and Post War), and just sketched a few items on one Sketchbook page to remember the day.Joan Miro's sculpture, Le Personnage, was displayed right inside the...
Art Auction Previews
November and May are the months of the big Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary art auctions in New York City, and the auction houses schedule previews for several days before the auctions so the public can see and assess the art. ...
International Quilt Festival - 2015
I just returned from my annual trip to the International Quilt Festival in Houston Texas. In high school I became a seamstress, then in 1980, while living in Texas, I learned how to make quilts. By 1990 I was...
Vacation in Spain - Part 2
Before we left for Spain, I put 2 X 2" squares on several sketchbook pages, so I could add one image that stood out in my mind each day. Here are the 3 grid pages that are now completed. I...
Vacation in Spain
We just returned from 12 days in Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona. It was hard to find time to sit down to do a quick sketch as we traveled, so some of my time I carried an open sketchbook and sketched...
October Visit to Spain
October and our vacation will soon be here. For this trip I repurposed a $2 book of Spanish Drawings, filling it with watercolor paper, and using illustrations from the book for my end papers. These are the front endpapers. The...
New York City Drawings - September 16, 2015
On my walk along Battery Park last Wednesday, I stopped for what Marc Taro Holmes calls "cing a sept" - a fast travel sketch using 5-7 continuous lines. I didn't count lines, but I wanted to be on time...
FIT Fall Semester Watercolor Class
In 2003 I began to think about retirement activities and bought a student grade set of watercolors, and then played with paints, brushes, and paper over the next 2 years. I read several watercolor books including Cathy (Kate) Johnson's beginning watercolor painting book. ...
Art Day in Battery Park City - September 2, 2015
I am taking Marc Taro Holmes' Craftsy Class on Travel Sketching and was anxious to do more homework before arriving at Battery Park City on Wednesday. I draw fast and more accurately when I don't use continuous lines, so the...
Battery Park New York City - August 26th
I Love Battery Park! For me there is something so magical about sunshine, lots of trees, Harbor and River breezes, and lots of activity. The Art Program of the Battery Park City Conservancy, which runs from May through October, drew me...
Urban Sketchers and the Seaglass Carousel
Today is the Grand Opening of the new Seaglass Carousel in Battery Park. It took 10 years to reach completion and is a labor of love for the Battery Conservancy, a group founded by Warrie Price in 1994. The WXY...
A Fun Trip on the Staten Island Ferry
Our granddaughter from Washington DC spent last week with us in NYC and 3 of her NYC cousins stayed over the first night, and then Zach stayed for two more. We went to the Museum of Mathematics, an Art session at MoMA, Matilda...
Bookbinding in August
We are planning a Fall trip to Spain, and I like to repurpose/recycle an old book with a theme for our vacations. I found an old $2.00 book on an outdoor cart at The Strand in New York City - named Spanish Drawings. ...
July Was Surface Design Month
I spent the month of July playing with fabric and dyes. I use the fabric as bookcloth for my watercolor sketchbooks and a variety of other projects. It takes me awhile to get out all of the dyes, tools, containers, and...
Weekend Coffee in Central Park
We live within walking distance of the Conservatory Water in Central Park, and this is one of a series of photos I took this summer on mornings when we go for coffee and watch the activity of the toy boats in the...
From Dye Painting Silk to Watercolor to Dye Painting Axel on Cotton
I started to dye fabric for quilting in the 1990s, and my big projects were the dye painted, quilted, 6 foot square chuppahs that I made for our 3 children's weddings. We live in a Manhattan apartment and it...
This Week in New York
This month I am dying more fabric to use as bookcloth for my handmade watercolor sketchbooks, so there are less sketchbook pages being completed. I began my week at a Barnes and Noble Readathon for To Kill a Mockingbird. I...
Sunday Morning at the Toy Boat Pond with 3 Sketching Grandsons
Our oldest son's 3 boys spent the weekend with us, and we all went to the Toy Boat Pond. They wanted to bring their sketchbooks and a variety of crayons and markers, and we all sketched while Grandpa read...
100 Day Project
Only 8 more days in the online 100 Day Project (https://thegreatdiscontent.com/100days), and although I draw other things from my imagination for this Challenge", Axel is my favorite subject. His character developed during a "drawing with a child" homework assignment...
The End of Our Vacation Month
We returned home yesterday from a very busy wedding weekend in Texas, and I only filled one page in my Summer Sketchbook. Our friend Kathy is a wonderful gardener, and what I wanted to remember most from our visit...
Family Weekend at the Beach
We just returned from our Family Weekend at the Beach. One of our children lives in DC and as a group we have increasing difficulty finding a summer weekend that everyone can be together. Our oldest grandchildren are leaving for...
Watching a Gull With His Fish
We spent more than 10 minutes slowly walking toward a gull eating a fish in order to take photos. The ones I'm including here were taken by my friend Bunny. Mine taken at the same time were either sky...
Vacation on a Different Beach
We are visiting friends in Martha's Vineyard, which is a beautiful change in scenery. The four of us met in 1969, and now many years later still visit and travel together. We took 2 beach walks already and the...
Continued Adventures of My Alien
I am still doing my 100 Day Project (Daily Drawings From My Imagination). Recent ones feature my Alien which developed during a Sketchbook Skool Child's Play homework assignment. He is the star of the series and I am having fun playing with...
Beach Sketchbook - Part 2
We are still at the beach, for the 7th annual beach visit with two other couples. Our husbands met in 1965, so they are friends of 50 years! We love early morning beach walks on these wonderful wide, and...
Vacation at the Beach
These are two of the sketchbook pages that I did since our arrival at the beach. We have many little rabbits and one Mom running around the backyard. I collect shells on the beach, but never saw a sand dollar before...
Drawings From My Imagination With My Alien
I posted this Fabio Consoli Sketchbook Skool homework assignment previously. My grandson Zach sketched the blue figure on the right, and then I collaged it in my sketchbook, using it as inspiration to complete a drawing from my imagination -...
Urban Sketchers and Figure Al Fresco This Week
An Urban Sketcher from Sydney Australia connected me with a Sydney watercolor artist who was coming to visit New York City and we spent two days together this week. I'm constantly amazed at the international world of sketchbook art...
Bookbinding - Making a Watercolor Sketchbook
I started to make my own watercolor sketchbooks by first learning how to repurpose $1-2 "soon to be discarded" books. The original page block can be removed and a new watercolor page block inserted into books that are the size, and...
Sketchbook Skool Homework for Fabio Consoli
Fabio Consoli, our 3rd teacher for Sketchbook Skool Semester 4, wanted us to enjoy "Child's Play" by sharing a page in our sketchbook with a child, allowing them to make a drawing which we would then use as inspiration...
More Drawings From My Imagination
I am still doing daily drawings from my imagination as part of a 100 day Drawing Project. Some days I have to just draw a squiggle and go from there, and they are mostly dreadful drawings. Other days ideas flow...
Dip Pen and Ink Wash Drawings
We are still drawing with dip pens and ink washes, and I really enjoy it. Others in the class have gone back to graphite, although he is also recommending that we try Conte crayons. My experience in figure drawing class...
Video of Interview Done by MoMA of Our Art Friends Group
Museum of Modern Art New York- Matisse: Beyond the Cutouts StudioLeft to Right: Teri, Pat, Benedicte, and Me all busy creating collages. Late last year Associate Educators, Sarah Kennedy and Alison Burstein, at the Museum of Modern Art asked several of...
Collage from Imaginary Drawiings
For my homework for Jonathan Twingley in Sketchbook Skool 4th semester, I did many pages of imaginary drawings and then selected a few, cut them out, and made a collage. The background was created with paste paper that was leftover...
Searching for Imagination
I didn't realize that my 100 day project, in which I would make one sketch from my imagination each day, would suddenly explode. Last Friday Sketchbook Skool Semester 4 began with Artist Illustrator Jonathan Twingley. And his work, and his...
Drawing From Imagination - Yikes!
As a child and younger adult, I could draw from 2D images and always told my husband I was just a good copier. When preparing for my retirement from a 40 year career in medicine, I started drawing more...
Sketchbook Skool Challenge from Brenda Swenson
It is semester break at the Sketchbook Skool and faculty from the first 3 semesters are posting weekly challenges on the Sketchbook Skool Blog http://sketchbookskool.com/blog/. This week Brenda Swenson challenged students to do watercolor paintings on toned paper, using...
Working from Imagination - Can It Be Developed?
Sketchbook Skool Semester 3 overlapped with our vacation last Fall, and I still want to do homework assignments from Weeks 3 and 4. I was too busy, that is my excuse. But really that is subterfuge. Both Mattias Adolfsson and...
Asia Week Art and an Inspiring Video Drawing
I'm posting two completely unrelated Sketchbook pages today. My friend Pat and I went to two Asian Art Auction Previews on Friday. Sotheby's had a terrific preview for their Modern and Contemporary Asian Art Auction. Over the last two years, I've...
Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky
This exhibit just opened at the Metropolitan Museum of New York and it is spectacular. I went to the Member Previews last week, excited by the postcard that arrived about a month ago. Pictographs are among my favorite images and I didn't...
Playdate with Zach
Zach is in Pre-K and had his Winter Break several weeks ago. We scheduled a playdate and when I asked him where he wanted to go, he said the Museum so we could sketch. As soon as we got...
Second Exercise in One Point Perspective
We spent one more week practicing one point perspective and I think I'm finally gaining practical experience and some understanding of how to use these techniques. Last week we sketched long halls, but the same technique would work for roads and train...
Learning One-Point Perspective
This semester I am taking a Drawing I class at FIT. It is my very first ever drawing class (except for Figure Drawing at FIT in the Fall of 2013) and I've always just "winged it" when perspective was needed...
Studying Under the Masters - Pablo Picasso
It is Week 2 for me in the online course Studying Under the Masters. The Master for this week is Pablo Picasso, and over the years I have copied many of his drawings, because I love the images he...
Basic Bookbinding Class at FIT - Part 2
I love books and was basically a self-taught bookbinder because I wanted watercolor sketchbooks with specific paper at affordable prices. But then my interest grew and I spent 2013 teaching myself to make one new book structure per month. ...
Art Goals for 2015
January 4th is the 9th anniversary of my blog and it is a good time for me to think about how I will spend the next year improving my skills and interacting with artists online art community and locally. Long Term Goals: Develop better...
Progress Toward My Art Goals in 2014
REFLECTIONS ON 2014 - My main goal is: To develop better drawing/painting skills on paper and with dye painting/surface design on fabric. My specific goals for 2014 and my reflections on my progress: Sketch everyday and blog twice each week: Although...
Egon Schiele and Toulouse-Lautrec
My blog post today recounts two museum experiences this week. The Neue Galerie is exhibiting Egon Schiele drawings and paintings, and I love to draw his figures, even the tortured looking ones. This figure was drawn over a prepainted...
Sketchbook Skool Semester 3 - Danny Gregory
Danny Gregory was the last artist in the 6 week Sketchbook Skool Semester 3 "Storytelling" online course. He moved from LA to NYC immediately before, driving the entire way. So his sketchbook tours and demonstrations were all from his...
Deliberate Practice
I love figure drawing, and I wanted to draw some figures, channeling Matisse. There is a Beyond the Cut-Outs Studio at the Museum of Modern Art every afternoon except Tuesday, so I am trying to build my stash of...
Matisse and Lawlor
I sketched my favorite drawing at Christie's Impressionist and Modern Auction Preview on Monday, and on Thursday I painted the first panel of Matisse's 1001 Nights in the Matisse Cut-Out Exhibit. He is one of my favorite artists and I...
International Quilt Festival - Houston
I started quilting in 1980 - fulfilling a long term creative wish. The hand piecing, applique, and hand quilting were wonderful ways to be creative and make things for my husband and growing children, in the process keeping me mentally...
Sketchbook Skool Homework in Paris
I am enrolled in Sketchbook Skool Semester 3 - Storytelling, and just have to fit it in to an overfilled schedule at the moment. I watched Koosje's videos during Week 1, but couldn't even think about the fun assignments until we arrived in...
Outdoor Painting in Paris + a Picasso
Inspiration for Drawing in Paris: I wanted to have the courage to draw outdoors in Paris and found this wonderful, impressionistic drawing of Notre Dame in one of the books in my library. The artist simplified! And I could...
Home From Paris
We just returned from a wonderful week in Paris, and I'm thrilled that I have a travel sketchbook from our visit. I recycled an Atget B&W photography book as a sketchbook and before we went I created 2x2" squares...
Tombow Markers and Ball Point Pens
These drawings were done with Tombow Markers and then watercolor. The first is the Wall Street Bull sculpture, which sits on Broadway in the Financial District. The sketch was done early one morning, and I was amazed how tourists paid...
We Are Going to Paris!
I made a recycled book from a $2.00 used book as my travel sketchbook and showed it previously in a blog post.http://www.paperandthreads.com/2014/09/making_a_travel_sketchbook_for.php I've done some preliminary drawing/painting etc before we begin and wanted to add those pages to my blog now. I...
Meetup Central Park Drawing and Art Group - Saturday
Last Saturday was the first meetup group I've gone to since June and it was nice to be out with a big group of sketchers, all selecting views that were in the same areas. We met at Central Park...
My Fall FIT Bookbinding Class
I am taking a Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) Design and Communication basic bookbinding course. Except for one 8 hour workshop on how to make a cased-in book, I am essentially a self taught bookbinder, and even studied and...
Wedding Weekend in Minneapolis
We spent this past weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota for a very special wedding. And I actually made time to sketch in my daily watercolor sketchbook and finished 5 pages in 3 days. I haven't done an airport - waiting...
Making a Travel Sketchbook for Paris
I love to make special travel sketchbooks for our vacations, recycling old books about the location. I found a $2.00 damaged book of Eugene Atget photographs at the Strand bookstore in New York City. By carefully clipping the old binding...
Urban Sketchers New York - Union Square
The Weekday Urban Sketchers in New York met at Union Square last week and I painted on the back side of my accordion watercolor sketchbook I enjoyed using this book so much that I made another one today!This is...
Urban Sketchers - NYC Aug 14th
We went to Madison Square Park for my second day with the Urban Sketchers - NYC. I took the accordion book that I used for my first day with them and completed the first side of the paper with...
A Wonderful Day at MoMA
I had an amazing day at The Museum of Modern Art last Friday. My art friends were busy, and I hadn't seen the Toulouse-Lautrec or Jasper Johns exhibits, so I packed a lunch and went at 9:30 when these...
The Last Day of Sketchbook Skool
This is the final day of Sketchbook Skool Semester 2 - Seeing. I think that I will continue to work on some of the exercises again, just to play a little more! But I wanted to post some new sketchbook...
Sketchbook Skool Week 6 - Liz Steel Homework
This was Liz Steel's week, and I've sketched with Liz in New York City during each of her visits, so it was a real treat to be in her class. I don't have any tea cups in my apartment,...
Sketchbook Skool Homework from Andrea Joseph
Andrea Joseph, whose blog I followed for years, was our week 5 teacher in Sketchbook Skool - Semester 2. I have always been amazed at her ballpoint drawings and that was our first demo and homework assignment. I used a...
Last Beach Week of the Summer
We were back at the beach for the last time this summer. Three of our grandchildren just returned from sleep-away camp and we gathered to celebrate their return. This bunny was sitting in the yard, eating in the grass, and I...
Sketchbook Skool Homework and Benedicte
Cathy (Kate) Johnson was the Skool teacher this week and our first homework assignment was to draw birds - or other shapes - from nature. We see many birds in the Café in Central Park, but they move very rapidly,...
Sketchbook Skool Homework Failure
This is week 3 of Sketchbook Skool. I loved seeing Brenda Swenson's sketchbooks and looked forward to our homework - 3 drawings using Continuous Line Contours and then a contour drawing of 3 objects with a watersoluble pen followed by painting with...
Sketchbook Skool - The Rest of My Selfies
We finished our week with Koosje Koene in Sketchbook Skool and I did most, but not all of my homework. Today I'm posting another selfie from a mirror, and one from a photo. The first ones from a mirror...
Summer Mornings in Central Park
My husband and I love to go to the Conservatory Water early in the morning for coffee and some quiet time in Central Park. This is the Conservatory Water, which is on the East side of the Park just...
A Hydrangea and a Row of Sea Gulls
We finally came back to New York City yesterday, after a wonderful weekend with our family at the beach. The beach was sunny and cool with wonderful breezes and NYC was humid and in the 90s.The first class of...
Holiday Weekend
We are at the beach with our children and grandchildren - except for the 3 who are at sleep-away camp. I spent more time organizing drawing and painting for them than I did working in my own sketchbook. This is...
Beach Vacation - Part 2 - Continued
We just returned from our vacation in Martha's Vineyard. What a beautiful island - especially "up-island" where our friends live. We loved walking on Philbin beach, and one morning I took a series of photos of cormorants sitting on...
Beach Vacation - Part 2
We are visiting friends in Aquinnah, on Martha's Vineyard. We were here once before 20 years ago, but now have the opportunity to see much more of this beautiful island.These photos were taken on Philbin beach, on a walk...
9/11 Memorial Museum
I am devoting this blog post to the recent opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum - with only one small drawing that I did there on June 9th for my daily sketchbook.The following description of the 9/11 Memorial Museum was...
Making a Simple Sketchbook - The Double Pamphlet
Making a Double Pamphlet Book is one of the easiest and fastest ways to construct a watercolor journal, a sketchbook or simple notebook. This is a watercolor sketchbook that I made in less than one hour and it has...
Beach and Flowers
We are at the end of our beach vacation, and I have several more daily sketchbook pages and two exercises from a Craftsy Class I am taking with one of my friends while we relax in the house.Some Drawings...
First Beach Visit - 2014
We arrived on a cold, windy, drizzly day - and since then had two glorious morning walks on the beach. This is our 6th annual visit with 4 of our friends that we've known since 1967! We take 2+ mile...
Faces and Hands
Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup Group: We met yesterday at Stuyvesant Square for a Portrait Party. Four of us sat together and simultaneously sketched each other. It was somewhat difficult to sketch a face when our subjects were also sketching...
Art on Silk
Our final project for my Fashion Institute of Technology class was a dye painting on a silk scarf. The design was our choice - and we could use any of the many techniques we learned to execute it. We...
Making Watercolor Sketchbooks
I started making my own watercolor sketchbooks when I couldn't find commercial sketchbooks that I liked. First I taught myself how to recycle old orphan books ($1-2), and then learned how to make case-bound books with black commercial book cloth. ...
Inspiration - 2 Jasper Johns
Last week we took a Road Trip to the Katonah Museum of Art in Westchester to see their current exhibit of Jasper Johns prints. For much of his career, Johns worked exclusively with a Master Printmaker named John Lund...
Just Graphite
Sometimes I like to just draw with a mechanical 2B graphite pencil - and today I'm posting 2 of these drawings.This is a drawing of my ballet teacher. I took a quick photo of her before class (with her permission) and...
The Need To Play
It is almost 5 years since I retired and one of my major concerns was finding friends who might share my interests - especially art. I always loved drawing and wanted to learn to use watercolors and keep sketchbooks -...
Simple Pencil Portraits
We spent last weekend celebrating the Bar Mitzvah of Daniel who is one of our closest friends' grandson. We met his grandparents in 1969, even before Daniel's father Ben was born. His birth may be one of the factors...
Recent Sketchbook Pages
My oldest grandson was singing in the Middleschool Choral Festival on Wednesday. I arrived early and listened to each individual school practice and sketched the center altar in the church they were using for the concert. I sketched in...
Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup Group
Yesterday we had a gorgeous day for outdoor sketching and our group met at Belvedere Castle in Central Park. We had approximately 45 minutes to move to location, sketch, paint, and then gather to show our sketches. Over 3...
Odds and Ends
I decided to end my Studying Under the Masters Class after 8 weeks. It was WONDERFUL and I learned so much more about using my watercolors and my palette - much more because I learned it on my own...
Inspired by Pinterest - for Documented Life
Before I knew how many projects I was going to have this winter, I signed up for a year-long series of prompts called Documented Life. I'm keeping track of the prompts, and will eventually catch up. I actually did week...
Studying Under the Masters - Chagall 1
I love Chagall and recently saw a fantastic exhibit at The Jewish Museum of New York - with numerous paintings from his later years (Chagall: Love, War, and Exile). It is difficult to sketch in the museum from one of his...
Studying Under the Masters - My New Class
Today was the first day of the first week of the Jeanne Oliver Course that I am taking online.. <jeanneoliver.ning.com> WOW! Jeanne selected Henri Matisse as her Artist and I've already watched over 2 hours of wonderful videos and haven't yet...
Our Visit to Washington DC
We spent a long weekend in Washington DC visiting our son, his wife, and two children. When they moved to DC, I started a "Washington DC Travel Sketchbook" and used it to record events of our visits. I finally...
Reflections on 2013
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE AND BEST WISHES FOR A GREAT 2014! It is time for me to reflect on my accomplishments in 2013 and set a few goals for 2014. This is my review of 2013 - I'll add my plans for 2014...
End of Year Potpourri
January 4th is the 8th anniversary of my blog. I had no idea that I would enjoy connecting with a creative world as much as I do. I've met wonderful artists online, and then in person, and shared so many experiences. ...
Christmas With Sydney
Last Friday I picked Sydney up at school for our 4th annual Birthday-Christmas trip to Rockefeller Center to have lunch, and Bryant Park to see the Christmas Village, watch the skaters, and eat dessert. The end of our walk is always Beads...
Charlie and William's Pet Mice
We have more mice in our house! These are called Rice Mice because they are filled with rice based on an old Danish tradition. There is a long story to these little children's toys, and their brothers and sisters appeared on my blog...
Our Christmas in New York City
I love the Holiday season and especially adore being back in the Northeast where Christmas is cold and snow is forecast for today. Wednesday evening my husband and I made a pilgrimage to Rockefeller Center to see "The Tree." It...
Museum Visit to See Vermeer and Chagall
I am having trouble coordinating my schedule due to a big Thanksgiving celebration and my Santa Workshop activities as I prepare for Christmas. I looked back in my sketchbook and discovered I missed these when I visited the two exhibits...
The Toad Collector - a Drawing
I am posting a Halloween journal page that I did at Quilt Festival in Houston earlier this month, while I'm making lots of Santa body parts for Christmas ornaments, and planning the cooking for a huge Thanksgiving dinner for family and friends. The Toad...
Obsessed with Sea Gulls
I love watching the sea gulls during our beach walks, and take lots of photos to document their size, coloration, and movements during take-off and landing. This sea gull was drawn on the first page of my summer beach sketchbook. ...
Annabelle's Sketchbook
I started a sketchbook for my grand daughter Annabelle when she was born. Since she lives in DC, I printed out my prior sketches from around her neighborhood and collaged them on the first 2 pages. Since then I...
A Few Sketchbook Pages From Last Week
Last Week Pat and I spent 2 full days out and about. On Friday we went to Christies to see the previews for the South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art in the morning and the preview for the huge...
Sketchbook Pages From My Meetup Session
The Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup Group met in Battery Park on Saturday and I finally was able to draw Pier A - the oldest pier on Manhattan island. It was built in the 1880s as a home for the...
Beach Weekend Sketchbook Pages
There is very little time to sketch when surrounded by 8 adults and 8 children (11 mos to 10 years). But I combined some activities and made enough paintings to remember a wonderful weekend.The first morning I sat with...
Sketchbook Pages
I am posting some of the sketchbook pages I did during July - evidence that I really do still use my sketchbooks amidst the bookbinding, figure drawings, and museum visits with my artist friends.One of these was done in...
Bookbinding Adventure - July
I am making Folded Books for July - as part of my year long Bookbinding Challenge. My first book, a Folder Journal, was adapted from an article in Cloth Paper Scissors magazine from Jan-Feb 2011 (Heidi Sekovski and Karin Winter). ...
This Week in New York City
This is a quiet week in New York City - as many people leave the city over the Holiday. Last Friday my husband and I went to see the current Maurice Sendak exhibit at the Society of Illustrators. WOW!! ...
Bookbinding Adventure - June
I just finished two Japanese Stab Books - one with a soft cover and the other with a hinged hard cover. Each month since January I researched a book structure and made one or two books to increase my skills. ...
Visual Journal
My "Daily Watercolor Sketchbook" is my visual diary - the place where I try to include bits and pieces of my life. I also have specific destination travel sketchbooks, a figure parts practice sketchbook, a live figure drawing sketchbook,...
End of Beach Vacation
We are home from the beach after a wonderful vacation and I'm uploading a few remaining travel sketchbook pages. Each year we invite wonderful friends who we met many years ago and the group takes early morning beachwalks, reads, swims, and...
Beach Fun and a Huge Beach Mystery Solved
All images are photographs, not scans, and I can't maintain the white background, even with Photoshop adjustments. There are large clam shells everywhere on the beach and I bring home several from every morning beach walk. Several evenings ago, my...
Beach Week Continues
We're thoroughly our enjoying our annual beach vacation, and except for a rainy yesterday, walk the beach each morning. I'm posting 3 sketchbook pages - the beach entrance to a HUGE beach house, some beach peas growing wild along one of the...
Beach Week 2013
We are at the beach again for our annual visit with friends. Each morning we take a 2 mile walk on the beach, collecting shells etc as we go. Depending on our schedule, we may stay on the beach for...
Charlie and Paul Klee
I finished painting the sketchbook page I did in honor of Charlie's 3 day visit. More details are in the previous blog post.Today I walked to 3 galleries to see their current exhibits and quickly sketched a few details from one...
Mother's Day
I hope that Mothers everywhere had a wonderful Mothers' Day. Being a mother makes me so happy, and being a grandmother is equally wonderful. We have 3 adult children who we adore, and now 8 grandchildren (ages 7 mos to 9). ...
April Bookbinding Project
I am exploring a different classic bookbinding structure each month in 2013. My coptic, long stitch, and flag books can be seen here.This month I made two accordion books using paste papers for the covers. They measure approximately 5.5 X...
Searching For Inspiration
Several weeks ago I asked for ideas for my daily sketches because I was bored with the possibilities during the last days of winter. Irene Brady suggested looking at animal webcams and sent me the link for an eagle nest. While watching...
Spring Daffodils, Gelli Arts Printing, and a Breakthrough
Spring finally reached New York City and there are daffodils everywhere along the streets and avenues. The tulips are just getting ready to bloom - they will be next week's paintings.Yesterday Teri, Pat, and Benedicte joined me at my dining...
Potpourri
I am posting a variety of pages from my daily sketchbook. There was a wonderful exhibit of Late Paul Klee paintings and drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I went early one morning, right before the exhibit closed, and...
Daily Sketchbook Pages
I make watercolor sketchbooks for my daily drawings and paintings. But because I keep a separate doodle book, a small sketchbook for drawing faces on the bus and subway, and several figure drawing books, I don't have entries in my daily...
Another Project Begins
I periodically work through a series of exercises in a book. This process is important to me as I explore new techniques or refine skills. In December I saw a new, exciting book mentioned on Beth Berman's blog: Finding Your...
3 Drawings for Grandchildren
Neither my husband nor my own children ever open my sketchbooks and I doubt that any of them ever look at my blog. But my grandchildren love to find their toys and can usually remember how to find the pages. It is so...
Quick Sketching
My friend Kathy made this cute little leather book for me and for the first time I have a sketchbook with me at all times. The pages are 4.5 in high by 3 in wide. I carry one ballpoint pen with the...
Bookbinding: A New Project for 2013
I LOVE books - all books - and always have. It is probably the reason that I gravitated to sketchbook/visual journal art when I was getting close to retirement. I decided to recycle orphan books when I couldn't find watercolor...
Chelsea, El Anatsui, and the Highline
My friend Pat and I spent a day visiting art galleries in Chelsea and walking the High Line. El Anatsui, born in Ghana and now living in Nigeria, creates enormous sculptures using copper wire and bottle caps/pieces of aluminum from cans and bottles. ...
Two New Books
I am taking an online class by Mary Ann Moss called Ticket to Venice. There are many videos demonstrating a bookbinding technique to make a travel journal. And she demonstrates 3 different bookbinding stitches, of which the double diamond is the most...
Deliberate Practice
I am drawn to figure drawing, probably from the same place in my heart and soul as I was drawn to the human body and a career as a physician. I love to draw figures and gravitate to them when...
Art Progress 2012 and Art Goals for 2013
Long Term Goals: Develop better drawing and painting skills on paper and with dye-painting and surface design on fabric. I am retired and developing skills in art gives meaning to my days - to play, have fun, be bold, and...
Happy Holidays from New York City
Rockefeller Center, the Huge Christmas tree, and the Skating Rink are all a central part of Holiday celebrations in our city. Each year, scouts travel by light plane around NY, NJ, and CT looking for the perfect tree, hoping the...
Prague - 2012
Prague is a beautiful city. It was the least WWII damaged of the 4 cities that we visited on vacation and the block building style of the Soviet era is not visible when you are in the oldest parts of...
Berlin - 2012
Berlin is a big bustling city and it is almost impossible to imagine that 75% of it was destroyed in WWII and is now rebuilt. We took a Hop On/Hop Off bus on our day of arrival, to stay awake...
Visiting Germany, Czech Republic, and Hungary
We just returned from our visit to Berlin, Dresden, Prague and Budapest. I sketched throughout our trip, but we were almost always on the move and most of my sketchbook pages were done while walking. Each day I also selected one...
I Made a Quilt for My Niece's Baby
I made a baby quilt for our niece - using a children's print and colors that could be used for a girl or boy. Baby Jack was born this past week - 2 new babies in our family in the...
Mixing Many Greens with Watercolor Paints
I got interested in mixing paints again after my last gouache experiments. When I bought my first Winsor-Newton artist grade watercolors in 2003, I bought a warm and a cool triad and then followed those purchases with 3 more "primary...
Berlin, Prague, and Budapest
We are going to Berlin, Prague, and Budapest this month and I recycled an old $2.00 book to use as my watercolor sketchbook. I searched for an old book that had some theme that would relate to our trip, but...
Fun Day in Art Supply and Second Hand Book Stores
Last week my visitor Kathy and I spent the day searching for books to recycle as watercolor sketchbooks and browsing for art supplies. It was great fun and very successful. I taught Kathy how to make a watercolor sketchbook during...
Playtime #2 with Gouache
My first artist grade watercolors were 3 warm primaries and 3 cool primaries - because I wanted to mix my own colors, like I do with procion MX dyes for fabric. Laura, of Laurelines.... was posting some color studies that she did...
Figure Drawing in Battery Park City
Last Wednesday Pat and I spent the morning at the Met - at the Preview of the new exhibit "Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years," and the afternoon at Figure Drawing Alfresco. Since then my days were devoted to our...
Experiments with Gouache
I love watercolor, and still haven't fallen in love with acrylic paint. So I decided to slowly buy some Winsor-Newton gouache in one cool primary triad, and to play with them before buying a warm triad. I bought Lemon Yellow, Permanent Alizarin Crimson,...
Drawing Practice - Portraits and Hands
I recycled a discarded $1.00 book entitled Artist and Model and now have watercolor paper in it to practice figure drawing from photos. I snip photos from magazines, especially hands, feet, and faces to practice drawing. I also love to copy drawings...
Labor Day Weekend
All of our New York City grandchildren (ages 3-9) spent the Labor Day holiday with us. We had a picnic in Central Park Saturday afternoon - playing soccer, and then several rounds of a favorite new card game called Apples...
Beach Weekend
We spent the weekend at the beach with our daughter and her family. The children are there during August, so we love visiting in order to see them. My husband and I walk 2 miles on the beach each morning...
Practice for Figure Drawing
I have one sketchbook in which I just practice drawing body parts. Readers of this blog may remember that I slowly sketched the American Sign Language alphabet, from photos that I found on the internet. I also practice drawing faces...
Our Annual Visit to New Hampshire
We just returned from a brief visit to Silver Lake, in New Hampshire. We've been visiting our friends there for 10 years, and I've been sketching for 6 of those years. All of my drawings and watercolor paintings are done in sketchbooks,...
Making Stencils for Art on Paper and Fabric
My friend Melanie Testa is starting a series of online classes through her new website which is called Clever Guild. If you know either of Melanie's books, you know what a talented artist she is - on paper and on fabric. ...
Adult Art at Battery Park City New York
Last year I learned about a free Battery Park City Parks Conservancy adult art program. I went approximately 6 times last year between May and Oct, and this year already attended Figure al Fresco 3 times. I bring my...
Meetup Sketching Group
Our Meetup Drawing Group met in Battery Park yesterday in spite of the heat wave and threats of thunderstorms. It is at the tip of Manhattan, and the site of the piers for the Long Island Ferry and boats to the...
Two Figure Drawing Sessions
I went to figure drawing at the Society of Illustrators on Tuesday evening and Figure Al Fresco at Battery Park City on Wednesday afternoon. These are very different experiences, nude models at the Society of Illustrators (with music and wine) and a...
Family Beach Weekend
Our 3 children and 6 of our 7 grandchildren were together this past weekend at the beach. Henry, age 9, is at sleep-away camp for the first time this summer and missed it. We have great trouble getting a photo of...
Circles - The July Sketchbook Challenge
I have to force myself to doodle. Most of the time I have absolutely no ideas until I start, and then I struggle to fill up a whole page. I never feel very imaginative.This month, The Sketchbook Challenge is Circles -...
Making A Second Venice Sketchbook
I didn't start sketching and painting with watercolors until 2003. Before going on our recent vacation to Venice, I painted some iconic Venice sights from my 2002 Venice photos. I accordion-folded two 6" by 30" strips of watercolor paper and...
Doodles and More
Last week we had a special day with our 5 year old grandson Callum. We rarely get him alone, without his big brother and sister, or slightly older cousin. But we missed the last Grandparents Day at his preschool because of...
More Watercolor Magnetic Bookmarks
I save strips of watercolor paper when I am making watercolor sketchbooks. It was so much fun to sketch Klimt designs when I was in Venice, that I decided to make myself a new magnetic bookmark with gold gouache and...
Venice Sketchbook - Final Part
This will be the last blog post about our recent trip to Venice. The other 8 sketchbook pages were done at restaurant tables, on airplanes etc., and could have been done anywhere, meaning there is little that would make you think...
More from the Beach - 2012
We are still at the beach, so these sketchbook pages were photographed, not scanned. Clam Bar in Amagansett- We took a ride out to Montauk, the tip of the South Fork of Long Island, one afternoon, and stopped at a roadside...
Venice Sketchbook - Part 4
I am still working on my Venice sketchbook, and decided to upload 3 pages done since I returned home.We visited Arcobalena, the art supply store that sells pigments. It is centrally located, and a very quirky place. Half of the...
Two Museum Visits
I'm taking a rest from my Venice Sketchbook - and posting two paintings done at recent museum visits.The Jewish Museum in New York has a lovely exhibit of Edouard Vuillard and His Muses (1890-1940). I knew very little about Vuillard's...
Venice Sketchbook - Part 3
In Part 1 I included sketches done from our apartment window. In Part 2, there were fast sketches when I was stopped in front of a beautiful scene. I also sketched while walking, one small image after another, on the same...
Venice Sketchbook - Part 2
At least one sketch per day was done quickly when I had an opportunity to sketch while we were walking around Venice. On Sunday morning, I accompanied my friend Sara to Mass at Basilica San Marco. It was a great...
Venice Sketchbook - Part 1
I did 16 small Venice paintings before we went on vacation, using photos of Venice from our last trip in 2002. My primary goal was to practice painting water and bridges, while experimenting with texture on the buildings. I didn't...
Home From Venice
We just returned from a fabulous week in Venice and I'm trying to stay awake for 3 more hours in New York to avoid "returning jet lag." It is currently 2:45 AM Venice time and I started my day there at...
More Pre - Venice Sketchbook Pages
Last summer, the Morgan Library and Museum had a great exhibit about "Lists." I was really intrigued by a sketchbook list of one artist's packing for a trip. You can see the watercolor page here on the museum website.So I decided...
Venice 2012
We will be leaving for our Venice vacation within the next few days. I'm obviously very excited to be returning there to celebrate yet another wedding anniversary with my husband and friends.I recycled a book called Italian Dreams this winter and...
Venice Preview Sketches #14, 15, and 16
I made an accordion-folded watercolor "sketchbook" for me to practice sketching scenes in Venice before our trip and these 3 pages complete my Venice Previews. All of the sketches were done from photos that I took in 2002, before I...
My Love Affair With Cezanne's Cardplayers
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 (2007) and...
Win a Copy of Gwen Diehn's Book or One of Her Butter Sketchbooks
Lark Crafts is doing a giveaway of a copy of Gwen Diehn's new book - The Complete Decorated journal: A Compendium of Journaling Techniques. This is a new bind- up/re-editioning of Decorated Page and Decorated Journal. In addition to the two original books,...
Sketching Daily
There are periodic projects re: daily sketching on the websites/blogs that I follow. As a new Everyday Matters (EDM) online art group member, (Jan 2006) I committed to drawing/painting daily as a method to improve my skills and continue to learn. While...
Doodling Sketchbook
I doodled alot when I was a student in middle school and high school. And then I stopped almost completely. After that I drew images for my children, or for applique quilt patterns, but rarely did I just fill up...
The End of the Old, the Beginning of the New
I finished my last sketchbook with two pages of heads drawn during classes at Columbia University. The first page was done on a paper napkin with a ball point pen while we discussed Chekhov short stories. The second page of...
Exquisite Corpses - a New Exhibit at MoMA
Left to Right: Benedicte, Me, Teri, PatBenedicte, Teri, Pat, Judy and I went to the Museum of Modern Art yesterday to see the new Exquisite Corpses exhibit. This was a surrealist game of the 1920s and 1930s - initially...
Gwen Diehn's New Book
I was thrilled to receive my advance copy of Gwen Diehn's new book, The Complete Decorated Journal. In 2003, I bought The Decorated Page and fell in love! I always wanted to keep a travel sketchbook and she introduced me...
Self-Portrait Class
I took an on-line self-portrait class with Jane Davies in Jan-Feb, and thought it was about time to draw another one as I looked in a mirror. There is rarely a resemblance - but she made us do very loose drawing/collage exercises which...
Snow in South Lake Tahoe
We had 3 days of snow in Lake Tahoe - glorious for us because we took walks around the town and down to the Lake. The snow, and especially the wind, prevented me from doing any sketches that weren't from our...
We Had to Come to the Sierra Mountains to See Snow
We are in South Lake Tahoe for the week, and I was finally able to walk in the snow this year. I took a long walk yesterday morning through Heavenly Village - when the snow was so heavy that the mountains disappeared from view. I...
A Map, Some Art Supplies, and a Great Exhibit
I had a wonderful day Saturday - talking a long walk among art supply stores and ending at the Flatiron Building where Gwyneth Leech was ending her fabulous art exhibit called Hypergraphia. The weather was wonderful and the City was...
Happy Valentines Day
I'm not a very good "doodler" so I bring a Doodle Sketchbook when I go visit my mother each week. During the cold weather. we go for a long walk in her Senior complex and sit for awhile on a...
Watercolor Sketchbook Tutorial
I recently posted a 4 part tutorial on making watercolor sketchbooks from old books - recycling of orphan books to give them a new life. The tutorial is in 4 parts, in order to cover the procedure in depth. Rice...
Venice Sketches - 2
Here are two more sketches in preparation for our Spring trip to Venice. They are on the accordion watercolor strip of paper that was leftover from the new "Italian Dreams" sketchbook I made for the trip. That sketchbook was the subject of...
Making a Watercolor Sketchbook - Part 3
In this final section we will glue the page block into the old book cover. I struggled with this some, and then was told about a simpler, almost foolproof method for "casing-in," as it is called.You will need to remove...
Making a Watercolor Sketchbook - Part 2
CREATING THE NEW PAGE BLOCKIt is now time to put your folios together to make signatures. If you are using 140 lb watercolor paper, 2 folios per signature is the most I use. However, I add pages from the original...
Making a Watercolor Sketchbook - Part 1
This part of the tutorial will cover:1-A. Removing the old page block from the purchased book1-B. Collecting folios from the old book that you want to put in the sketchbook1-C. Tearing down watercolor paper and creating signaturesSome Useful Definitions for...
Sketching Venice
When I was making my Venice Sketchbook, I folded two strips of watercolor waste paper so I can do some preliminary sketching from photos. These are mainly photos that I took on previous visits, before I started drawing again. Scroll down...
Making a Watercolor Sketchbook - Intro to Tutorial
I love making cased-in, multiple signature, watercolor sketchbooks - and alternate between recycling old books as travel sketchbooks, and making new books for my daily sketches. We are returning to Venice this Spring and I wanted to recycle an old book as a watercolor travel sketchbook. ...
6th Blog Anniversary
I am a self-taught artist - fulfilling a retirement dream to draw more and learn how to use watercolor paint. I never imagined that I would start a blog, and now it is 6 years old. I love my contact with...
Last Blog Drawing and Art Progress For 2011
I sketched today during a Gallery Talk on Rembrandt and Vermeer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Last January I outlined my art goals for 2011 - just to have a map to guide me through the days. I maintain a...
Childhood Magic
Christmas weekend we took several of our New York City grandchildren to special programs. Five year old Callum needs some separate time with us, i.e. without big sister Sydney and big brother Henry, so we planned a movie date to see...
Christmas Trees and Reindeers
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL OF YOU! I'm thrilled to know that my blog posts are read, and hopefully enjoyed. Thanks to each and every one of you and my wishes for a happy and healthy 2012. Our Christmas Gifts are wrapped...
Mixed Media Artist Book
In 1976, the year after our 3rd and last child was born, I started to make fabric ornaments for our Christmas tree. I usually made 20-24 of the same ornament so I could give some away as gifts. And over the years I...
Daily Sketchbook Page - Dec. 1
My husband and I went to an open rehearsal of the NY Philharmonic to hear Mahler's 10th Symphony - and I sketched the lady who was in front of me on line (reading her NY Times which was hung over...
Thanksgiving 2011
We are relaxing a little after our Thanksgiving cooking marathon - this year for 22 adults and 5 children (ages 2-8). We cooked at our apartment on Tuesday, and then transported the food across Central Park to our daughter's. We cooked at...
Light and Shadow
I read about Dr. K. Anders Ericsson's research on "deliberate practice" on Donna Zagotta's blog and realized that my pathway since 2005 mirrors many of the concepts. Donna wrote "The essence of Deliberate Practice for artists is pushing ourselves just beyond what we...
House of Eliott
My dear friend Bunny lent me 12 DVDs to watch the 34 episodes of the BBC program "The House of Eliott." I'm not sure why I never knew about this series that was set in London in the 1920s. But...
A Day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Our Journal Study Group, minus Teri, went to the preview of the new Islamic Art Galleries at the Met this week. Wow! The space was closed in 2003 for renovation and they even brought in artisans from Fez, Morocco to create...
Keeping a Visual Journal
This time each year my mind turns to quilting and sewing and my sketchbook reflects that shift.1. I will attend the International Quilt Festival in Houston the beginning of November - and have only missed one year since 1983!2. We...
Drawing Practice
I regularly read that doing blind contour drawings improves your eye-hand coordination, especially if you draw the contour slowly. I am genetically incapable of moving my pen slowly, but periodically do some blind contour drawings with a pen to loosen...
9/11 Memorial and Battery Park Figure Al Fresco
This past week, my friend Teri and I visited the new 9/11 Memorial and then met Pat for lunch and Figure Al Fresco at Battery Park City. It was a gorgeous cool, sunny day - with an intense blue sky-...
Will Barnet Exhibit at the National Academy Museum
The "Will Barnet at 100" exhibit opened last weekend at the newly renovated National Academy Museum in New York City. I wasn't familiar with his painting, but loved the exhibit that spanned his very long, active career. He is still painting...
More Watercolor Sketchbooks
These watercolor sketchbooks were made with my bookcloth - white cotton fabric that was manipulated and dyed using procion MX dyes. All of them are full, even though I haven't numbered the last two before they were put up on the...
More Sketches With Watercolor Pencils
I just did several exercises from the 3rd Lesson in Kate Johnson's Mini-Watercolor Pencil Class. Exercise 1: I sketched randon tools from my sewing desk with neutral hue watercolor pencils (7 total) and decided that I liked the Albrecht Durer (A.D.)...
Holiday Weekend Adventures with Our Grandchildren
NOTE: My fabulous son Jason solved my blog problems this weekend, so hopefully there will be no further difficulties with access or comments.We had from 2-5 grandchildren here with us, without their parents, from Thursday through Sunday. My husband and I...
Hurricane Irene
My husband, 3 children and their spouses, and our 6 grandchildren were supposed to meet at the beach this weekend to end the summer. Needless to say, that didn't happen. We were packed and ready to leave on Thursday when we all...
Exercises for Figure Drawing
I really enjoy drawing figures and have a variety of exercises that I've done over several years to practice sketching body parts: faces, hands, and feet. Drawing faces: I save full face portraits from magazines and for this exercise I divide them in...
Figure Drawing Outdoors at Battery Park City
Today my friend Teri and I went to "Figure al Fresco" for the first time. This is a free art program held by the Battery Park Conservancy from May 1st through October 31st. There is one model in clothes for 2...
Alexander McQueen Exhibit at the Met
This exhibit has surpassed all prior exhibit records for the number of visitors, and I can't ever remember seeing lines so long in front of the Met and snaking through the galleries waiting to be admitted to the Galleries. By mid-July they...
Midnight in Paris
The heat in NYC was unbearable Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So even though we rarely go to the movies, my husband and I went to see Woody Allen's new movie "Midnight in Paris. It was great - especially the fabulous...
Sea Gulls on the Beach
I sketched and painted the sea gulls from two of the reference photos I posted here last week. Over the summer I become obsessed with getting photos of them as they start moving away from me and then take off and...
Memorial Day in Washington DC.
My husband and I spent a long Memorial Day weekend with our son, his wife and our 3 year old grand daughter Annabelle in Washington DC. When she was born, I started a sketchbook for her and I routinely fill one...
Some Experimentation
I was fascinated with many of the images on prints in the German Expressionism Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. At each visit, I made some quick sketches of some of the figures in the prints, and this week made two...
A Day in Brooklyn
I met my friends Pat, Melly, and Gwen in Brooklyn on Friday to celebrate Melly's upswing week (week 3 after chemotherapy) and had a wonderful day wandering the Botanic Garden and the Art Museum. It was my first visit to...
Meeting Doodling
I was at an annual meeting yesterday afternoon for My Own Book Fund, an organization for which I volunteer. We meet with 3rd graders in over 40 schools, in all 5 boroughs of New York City, and share our love of reading...
Branching Out - Notes from German Expressionism at MoMA
The Sketchbook Challenge for April is "branching out" and I definitely added another way of sketching in my watercolor journal during this time. I went back to the German Expressionism exhibit at MoMA on Monday, and took notes and made...
Sunday Sketchbook Pages
Our Central Park Drawing Meet-up Group met at Belvedere Castle, in the sun, on Sunday and I spent several delightful hours talking to and painting with Lillian Kennedy - a Boulder, Colorado artist. One of her students put us in touch...
Two Sketchbook Pages
I was in Washington DC this week for a meeting, and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and there were pansies and daffodils seen everywhere. I'm definitely yearning for spring! Here is a quick pansy sketch - which I painted...
March 2011 Figure Drawing
Another evening of figure drawing at the Society of Illustrators. This was a fun evening because my art buddy Teri met my book group friend Istar for the first time and they had so many things to talk about during...
Making Watercolor Sketchbooks and Painting a Live Luna Moth
I love making my own watercolor sketchbooks and for at least a year have also been making by own book cloth using cotton fabric that I dye with Procion MX dyes and several suface design techniques. This is the sketchbook that...
Daily Journal Pages
I like to use my watercolor sketchbook as a visual journal and that means that I use photos as inspiration for some of the pages. Here are several of those pages from the last month.To create a page for the day we went...
Journal Study Group Meets Carla Sonheim
Melanie Testa arranged for Carla to spend time with us between two classes that she was teaching in New York, and then Melly wasn't feeling well enough to join us. We missed her terribly, but did a little text messaging during...
Another Day at the Met
I went back to the Met on Holiday Monday with my friend Judy and I saw two more new exhibits.Guitar Heroes is a collection of guitars, violins, mandolins, lutes, and even a ukulele - the guitars from the 1930s on and...
Another Project
Almost 2 1/2 years ago I took a weekend book binding class to learn how to make a cased-in watercolor sketchbook. Before that I was recycling old books, using their covers and sewing in watercolor paper signatures. But I wanted to learn how a...
Pam Carriker's Strathmore Journal Workshop
I participated in Pam Carriker's online classes as part of the Strathmore Journal Workshops and just finished the 4th and final week's additions to my journal page. I worked on a page in my 6.5 "X 6.5 handbound sketchbook containing 140 lb watercolor paper. ...
EDM Challenges 267 and 278
Here are two EDM challenges that are from Feb-Dec 2010 - 10+ months that I didn't do any last year. I printed out and cut up the individual challenges and put them in a jar next to my chair - I can now...
Sketchbook Challenge 1 - Highly Prized
BOOKS: I adore my husband, who I have known since 1960, and my children and their families - including 6 grandchildren. I prized my career, my City, and now retirement. But from early childhood, what I loved most was books. For this...
Journal Study Group + Two
Our small, but active, Journal Study Group, had two guests this past Wednesday - Gwen Diehn and Vivian Swift. Gwen is an honorary member now that she has a grandson in Brooklyn and we always look forward to her visits. ...
Art Goals 2011
Five of our 6 grandchildren join me in wishing everyone a Wonderful 2011!Art Goals 2011 : 5th Blog AnniversaryI am a self-taught artist - someone who began this journey slowly in 2003 because of Gwen Diehn's book The Decorated Page, and more...
A Remains of the Day Journal
One day in December I followed a few links, to another few links, and unexpectedly found Mary Ann Moss, her blog Dispatch From LA, and a reduced fee for her "Remains of the Day Journal Class." I was just finishing...
Art Progress - 2010
1. Maintain an artist journal - doing one page per day minimum - to include illustrated journal pages, travel sketches, skill practice pages, figure drawing, etc. I did maintain my daily sketching, doing at least one journal page per day...
Multiplying Santas
I made a fun foam Santa stamp from a drawing that I posted earlier - and used it to stamp on the front of a sketchbook. I then stamped the envelope of a Christmas card and a piece of newspaper to...
Visual Journal Pages - Random
I love to create journal pages that reflect my daily life - and post them only occasionally to my blog. Since I started sketching daily in Jan 2007, I filled 33 sketchbooks in addition to travel sketchbooks and those devoted...
Playing With Yupo in the Journal Study Group
Yupo, a synthetic plastic "paper," was discussed many times over the years on the Everyday Matters message board and/or members' blogs. However, I never was interested in playing with it until I saw wonderful watercolor paintings, using crayons as a resist,...
Inspiration from the Recent Picasso Exhibit
Our Journal Study Group went together to see the recent Picasso exhibit at the Met. Picasso's linocut reinterpretation of a Lucas Cranach II painting made us wonder whether could reinterpret a master painting and make a print using fun foam stamps. Lucas Cranach II, Portrait...
More Strathmore Visual Journal Samples
I felt like playing yesterday and worked on 4 Strathmore Visual Journals simultaneously.I colored each page with 3 different Neocolor II watercolor crayons and then wet them, mixing the colors even more. After they dried completely, I used my pregnant...
Last Week's Field Trip With Art Buddies
I spent one day last week with my "artbuddies" Melly and Pat - lunch followed by the Morgan Museum, then supper, and then a lecture at the Textile Study Group of NY by Holly Heller. Since we share interests in sketching/visual...
I was the lucky recipient of 3 of the new Strathmore Visual Journals from Rice Freeman-Zachary, and I promised that I would use them and share my comments. These are very nicely sized books (5.5 X 8 inches) - not too...
Learning a New Skill
I took a class with 2 of my art buddies this week, in which we learned how to make Thermofax screens that can then be used to transfer images to paper or fabric (with fabric paints or thickened procion MX...
Figure Drawings from September
Thursday evening at the Society of Illustrators is with "costumes." At my last session, both models were dressed as gun molls - and sketching was much more difficult than usual. Here are several of my drawings that were "least bad."Two Minute...
Keeping a Visual Journal
Most of the time my watercolor sketchbook is a visual journal and I try to incorporate part of my life in my sketch of the day. But I don't always think that I have enough time, or the perfect location,...
A 3rd Figure Drawing on Fabric
After months of delay, I made another quilt journal page today, my 3rd for the week. I really wanted to play with some of my figure drawing images on fabric, but just couldn't get started. I'm sure that I was afraid that...
Carla Sonheim Drawing Labs
Lab 16 in Carla Sonheim's Drawing Lab book is to draw !00 Faces. I cut 20 pieces of watercolor paper and packaged them with a pencil, eraser, pen, and 7 watercolor pencils - and now keep it with me when...
A Weekend in Washington, DC
We spent a long weekend with our grand daughter Annabelle in Washington DC and my daily journal pages were all done in a sketchbook that I have devoted to her neighborhood and her life during each of our visits. Previous...
A Few Watercolor Journal Pages From This Week
This was a busy week. We visited our San Francisco friends at their lake house in NH as we do most summers. And it was hot even in the woods. The dogs were therefore sleepy much of the time and...
Bethesda Fountain, Central Park - Then and Now
I started sketching in 2003, after buying Gwen Diehn's book The Decorated Page. It took me almost 2 years to fill a watercolor sketchbook because I was still working long hours. One of those early sketches, and watercolor painting with student...
Grandparent Visual Journal Pages
My daughter's 3 children (ages 7,5,3) spent 3 days with us while their parents celebrated their anniversary at the Beach. They are really energetic and fun children, so I dedicated my daily journal pages to them. The two youngest ones actually...
Beach Week - Part 2
These are my morning journal pages from the second half of our beach week. Each morning we would all go for an 8AM 2+ mile walk on the beach and the 3 wives collected things that we wanted to draw/paint while walking...
New Watercolor Sketchbooks
Moleskine lost a customer forever, when they ignored requests to make their watercolor journals in a portrait format in addition to a landscape format. I now make all of my watercolor journal sketchbooks in a 6 X 8" size using...
Recent Journal Pages
We took my 6 year old grandson Henry to Lincoln Center for an open rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic. He takes violin lessons and is very interested in music - and seemed excited when we invited him. He read...
Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup Group
Although the Meet-up Group usually sketches in Central Park during the non-winter months, this past Saturday we sketched at Bryant Park which is located behind the New York Public Library. It was a beautiful day and the Park was full. ...
The End of my Mixed Media Journal
I am uploading the last 2 page spread, acknowledgements, and the back cover of my mixed media journal. It was a great project and I'm already making another one of these 8 X 10" watercolor paper journals, although I'm not sure...
More Mixed Media Journal Pages
I posted this page several weeks ago - it is actually the first flap in the Teesha Moore 16 page watercolor journal - and when opened it leads to my full "Les Fleurs" page. The flower image was scanned from my sketchbook,...
Another Mixed Media Journal Page
I looked through my sketchbooks and decided that I had several drawings of my grand daughter Sydney that I would like to combine on a double page spread. I scanned and printed 3 images -two from her life in London as a 2...
A New Project
My art buddies brought their sketchbooks to the Met when we went to see the Picasso exhibit and I told them how much I loved their mixed media pages. Melly said - try it, put more than one thing on...
Every Day in May - 30
Only one more day in May to post a daily sketchbook page! Yesterday my husband and I went to the Museum of Modern Art early to see the current Henri Cartier Bresson photography show and the Picasso print exhibit. This...
Every Day in May - 25
I was just about to start my daily journal page last night when I found a 4-part video on Teesha Moore's blog about making quilted books. In Part 1 she showed many quilted covers, some of which contained paper, and two of them...
Every Day in May - 19
Last night I went to Figure Drawing at the Society of Illustrators in New York City. I think some of the people that I see there regularly go twice each week. I'd love to go twice each month, but will probably...
Every Day in May - 5
Last night I sketched 3 posemaniac.com figures in 5 minutes each using the 9B woodless pencil and stump recommended by Rankin in his Fast Sketching Techniques book. I enjoyed fast sketching and equally fast shading with the stump, but this morning...
Every Day in May - 1
Elena Nazzaro, French Toast Girl, proposed an "Every Day in May" creative project several years ago and several members of Every Day Matters decided to sketch/draw everyday and upload their work to their blog or the EDM Flickr group. Elena...
Central Park Sketching and Art Meet up Group
Our Meet-up Group is now meeting twice each month - and because of a very rainy Sunday, we met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this week. I went over early so I could see the Members Preview of the...
Museum of Modern Art Visit
I spent several hours at the Museum of Modern Art today - primarily to see the Tim Burton exhibit before it closes on Sunday. There are hundreds of drawings and many sculptures. Many of the drawings are from sketchbooks and many are...
Meet-Up Central Park Sketching and Art Group
Our Meet-Up Central Park Sketching and Art Group met at the Conservatory Gardens on Saturday. All of the flowering trees were in full bloom and the early flowers ranged from buds to full bloom. It was gorgeous, but problematic for...
Weekend with Annabelle
We spent last weekend with our son's family in Washington DC - belatedly celebrating Annabelle's 2nd birthday. I started keeping a watercolor sketchbook for her when she was born, and try to complete one daily journal page during our visits. ...
EDM Challenges 262-264
When I joined Everyday Matters in 2005, most of the sketches in my sketchbook were EDM weekly challenges. When I started sketching daily in 2006, I still added one of the challenges to my journals and blog each week. Now...
Journal Study Group
I belong to a small group that meets monthly to explore sketchbook art. Four of us are quilters and maintain artists' journals. Two keep sketchbooks and also do larger paintings. In addition, there is a strong interest in bookbinding shared by...
A Productive Day at the Museum of Natural History in NYC
The Meet-Up Central Park Drawing Group met at the Museum of Natural History yesterday. During our regular sessions we meet at the entrance, draw in a general region for approximately 30 minutes and then return to a central location to...
More Bookbinding Adventures
I just finished making my second watercolor journal using book cloth that I made from dye painted fabric (procion MX dyes and corn dextrin resist). The first one can be seen here. This 6 X 8"book is made using 140 lb...
Another Bookbinding Adventure
I use watercolor journals for my daily sketchbooks/visual journals and for the last 18 months I used books I made with commercial bookcloth on the covers. This year, while experimenting with corn dextrin resist, I created pieces of fabric that I thought...
Another Evening of Live Figure Drawing
Last night, The Society of Illustrators had two lovely models, one of whom was 6 months pregnant. It was a joy to sketch them - trying to capture their lovely poses and bodies. A Five Minute Sketch in GraphiteTwo twenty minute...
Re-energized
While reflecting on my progress for 2009, and setting art goals for 2010, I re-energized and finally worked through my block in the Dodson Keys to Drawing book. More specifically, I was stuck at Exercises 2D and 2F - making...
Art Progress 2009
Progress in 2009Many EDM members post their annual art goals and it is very educational and inspirational to read their blog entries. This was my 4th year of setting Art Goals at the beginning of the year and reflecting on...
Figure Drawing at the Society of Illustrators
I went to Figure Drawing last night, in spite of the incredible cold in the City. We had two models during the entire time, one of whom wore an elaborate head dress with devil horns and 3 large silk flowers. I'm posting...
Paris Vacations
We rented one specific apartment twice, each time for one week, almost 10 years apart. I wasn't keeping a travel sketchbook in February 2005, so I have hundreds of photos of Paris over 35 years, but no sketches. I adore...
Journal Pages for the Last Two Days
I love strolling on Madison Avenue, past the windows of the famous designer boutiques. But Madison Ave also has its share of street vendors, and as I walked up on Friday, I sketched their wares and the street decoration that has...
Keeping an Artist's Journal - Lesson 1
Kate Johnson's "Keeping an Artist's Journal" class started yesterday and the first lesson covers the basics: Exploring what YOU want and expect from this class, plus practical matters like materials and supplies. For one of our first exercises, I need to...
Visual Journal Pages
I signed up for Kate Johnson's Visual Journaling Class and I'm trying to focus my sketches on my daily activities for several weeks.I sketched and painted a detail from a beautiful stained class window at the Museum of the City...
Daily Journal Pages
I try to sketch in my journal daily and love documenting some aspect of my day in my sketchbook, although some days I have nothing much happening and just sketch for practice. Here are a few of my recent pages,...
Two Exercises for Daily Drawings:
I did several "play" exercises before I left last week for the Quilt Festival. Prepainting a Page Background: Roz http://rozwoundup.typepad.com/roz_wound_up/ recommends prepainting the background on some pages in your sketchbook and then just drawing and painting over it. I prepainted every other double-page spread...
EDM Challenge #244: Draw the Oldest Thing in Your Refrigerator
Procion MX Dye Stock Solutions: I use Procion MX dyes to "paint" cotton and silk and keep the primary color stock solutions (plus black) in the refrigerator - tightly capped and way in the back on a bottom shelf. I...
Paper and Threads Representations of a New York City Subway Mosaic
I was invited to applique a square for the Empire Quilt Guild 2011 Raffle Quilt. All of the eighteen 11 inch squares are based on New York City subway mosaics and I was thrilled to be assigned the Chambers Street IRT mosaic...
Sketchbook Pages
Three more journal pages to upload for this week:On Saturday my husband and I took a wonderful long walk from Washington Square, through the West Village to Hudson River Park and then back again. We stopped for a lovely, early...
Friday Activities
I spend lots of time thinking about how to maintain a visual journal and some days my life is just too boring! However, I was inspired yesterday to fill two sketchbook pages. In the morning I returned to ballet class at...
Big NEWS!
I retired on July 1st and last night finally went to my first Figure Drawing session. If you follow this blog, you know that I was practicing for this moment by sketching figures as 90 sec. sketches of posemaniac images,...
Central Park Sketching Meetup Group
Today the group met at John Lennon's Strawberry Fields Imagine Mosaic and then walked to a rocky promontory on the Lake. I stayed for 2 hours and did the following sketches - in bright sunshine. It was a glorious day...
Back at the Beach
We're back at the beach for the weekend - enjoying our grandchildren. I love the sea gulls and keep finding new ways to sketch them. These were sketched with the Pilot Varsity Pen and then "painted" to get the ink to run.I...
Sketchcrawl at the Central Park Zoo - Part 3
I finally painted my last sketchbook page from our trip to the Central Park Zoo. The tortoise and the skink were not very interestin animals, but they stayed perfectly still while I made a quick sketch, so I decided to...
Sketchcrawl at the Central Park Zoo - Part 2
I painted sketchbook pages 6 and 7 from our sketchcrawl on Thursday - but will probably leave page 8, the tortoise and the skink, as is. The Snow Leopard is one of two introduced to the Zoo this past Spring...
Holiday Weekend Sketches
We spent the 4th of July weekend at the beach with two of our children and their families. We were busy having fun with our 4 grandchildren, so only a brief sketch was done in my recycled sketchbook each day. I...
EDM Challenge #230: Draw a Map
Last Tuesday was my last official workday, 40 years after I graduated from Medical School. I made this trip from my apartment on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan to Albert Einstein College of Medicine regularly - and was always amazed that...
Recent Sketchbook Pages
I was invited to hand applique a subway mosaic square for the 2011 Raffle Quilt for the Empire Quilt Guild in Manhattan. I chose a photo that I really liked only to find out that it was a mosaic of...
Recent Sketchbook Pages
Vicky gave me permission to paint her lovely photo of a rosebud, and we've had so many straight days of rain, I needed to brighten the day with a little yellow. This week my two oldest grandchildren came to spend...
Sketchcrawl At the Met
Jane, Kathleen, Peg and I were supposed to meet at the Central Park Zoo but torrential rains forced us inside. I started in the Greek and Roman galleries at the Met and sketched this statue from the bench conveniently placed...
Every Day in May - 29
We are off this morning for a mini beach vacation. When we return, I will post my last two sketchbook pages from Every Day in May, and hopefully lots of travel sketches in my new recycled book.At the end of...
Every Day in May - 25
My husband and I planned a quiet holiday weekend exploring Central Park. On Saturday we walked uo to the Harlem Meer on the Northeast corner of the park. Today we walked up to the Northwest corner of the Park, called...
Every Day in May - 16
I had breakfast with my friend Istar and then we joined the Meet-Up Central Park Sketching and Art Group at the Central Park Conservatory Garden at 5th Ave and 105th St. This was the first time that either of us...
Every Day in May - 15 EDM Challenge #223
This was a difficult challenge for me. I could think of lots of sounds I really like (my grandchildrens' belly laughs!), but nothing I wanted to draw or could draw. I could also think of lots of sounds I don't...
Every Day in May - 5
EDM Challenge #222: My Favorite Art ToolI love Niji Waterbrushes! I started playing with watercolor paints approximately 5 years ago and bought a series of round brushes from size 00 to 12. I learned how NOT to spill my water...
More Sketching at the Met
I live close to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and my membership card is used almost as much as my Metrocard. We visited the Raphael to Renoir Drawing exhibit again last Sunday with weekend guests and I sketched from another Guercino...
EDM Challenge #216: My Inner Critic
This is ME with my Internal Critic pictured in front of my "right brain." I tried to assign a particular human form to my internal critic, but I know that it is just a piece of me that I need...
Trip to Washington, DC
We just returned from a short trip to Washington, DC - part business and part pleasure. Our youngest grandchild lives there and I have a dedicated sketchbook to use each day that we are with her. Annabelle will be one at the...
Miscellaneous Watercolor Journal Pages
I sometimes feel as if I have sketched everything in this apartment at one time or another. After a full day at work, when too tired to look further, I sketched a few items from the drawer that I use, right...
Virtual Travel Sketchbook - India
I love my friend Bunny's photos from her trip to India and look forward to sketching and painting some of these interesting people in their beautifully colored clothes. It is a joy to look at her albums for specific photos for...
3rd Anniversary of my Blog on January 4th
I had no intention of starting a blog until I joined Everyday Matters in September 2005. Initially I lurked and just enjoyed the energy and inspiration of the group, while sketching most days and doing the EDM weekly challenges in my sketchbook. ...
Art Goals - 2009
Art Goals 2009: EDM members inspired me to set goals several years ago and I am grateful for the suggestion. Without them, I'm not sure whether I would have remained as active and productive. So here are my current plans for...
Art Progress 2008
Progress on My 2008 Art Goals: This was my second year to list my goals - and it is now time to reflect on my progress (written in bold type).1. Continue doing a daily sketch, a weekly EDM Challenge, and...
Selected Journal Pages from the Last Week
I was in San Francisco for several days at a meeting and wanted to upload select recent journal pages from the last week. This passenger, in the departure lounge with me at JFK, worked on her laptop right up until...
More Sketchbook Pages
Suddenly we heard a large crash, then the sound of glass breaking - right in front of our apartment window. When we went to look, there was already a huge crowd gathering and several observers taking cell phone photos of the large lamp...
New Sketchbook Pages Uploaded
I still haven't seen a baked potato or rope in my world, so I'm uploading a few sketchbook pages instead of catching up with EDM challenges.Our Book Group read Moveable Feast - and I found my old copy which I read...
Face and Figure Practice
I still try to draw and paint several figures and faces each month. These are 3 of my journal pages from November. My 3 year old grandchildren walking through Central Park. They were running most of the time and...
Quilt Festival 2008
I began to attend the annual International Quilt Festival (in Houston) when I lived in Texas and continued this yearly pilgrimage after I moved to New York City. This was my 24th year and it was as informational and inspirational...
Need Inspiration? Artists' Sketchbooks Online
Nina Johanson, a member of the Everyday Matters (EDM) Yahoo on-line art group, posted a message about this website in November 2007 - and I looked at it and bookmarked it for future reference. http://www.gis.net/~scatt/sketchbook/links.htmlIt is an index with links for...
Some Animal Drawings
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...
Drawing Practice
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...
Sketchcrawl with Casey
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,...
Watercolor Journals
I enjoy recycling old books as watercolor journals, but took a workshop in June so I could also make cased-in journals of a standard size. The journal we made in the workshop is bigger than the ones I like for...
Beach Vacation Sketchbook
We spent almost one week with our daughter and grandchildren at a summer rental in the Hamptons and I was able to complete my recycled book that I dedicated to summer vacation travel. Selected pages will be uploaded over the...
JMW Turner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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...
New Friends and Old Friends
My New Friend: Last Saturday I spent 6 hours on a sketchcrawl at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Lori - an Everyday Matters Yahoo art group member that I only previously knew through her blog and email. I have...
Beach Weekend Sketches
We spent a long weekend in Southampton - and I used one of my recycled books as a travel sketchbook. There were gorgeous hydrangeas in bloom everywhere and I tried a quick painting of several blooms. We love walking on the...
Weekend in Washington DC
I had one more Cachet Linen Watercolor Journal from my original purchase, and decided that I would take it to Washington DC with me every time I visit Annabelle. It is the same type of journal that I used for our...
Quebec Travel Sketchbook = 6
Montreal (Last Entry)These are the last of my selected sketchbook pages from our days in Montreal. In total, I have uploaded approximately two-thirds of the pages that I completed - and filling the entire 36 page recycled sketchbook thrills me. ...
Quebec Travel Sketchbook - 5
Montreal (Continued)A first Montreal Metro ride and a visit to Musee Beaux Artes: We first toured the Cuba Art exhibition and learned something about their artists. I enjoyed how their art reflected the history of the time and sketched a few...
Quebec Travel Sketchbook -4
Montreal:We took the train back to Montreal and checked into the lovely Hotel Nelligan - a boutique hotel in Vieux Montreal. We arrived just in time for "Happy Hour" in the lobby so I documented our arrival with a sketch...
Quebec Travel Sketchbook - 3
Quebec City (continued)Rain arrived in Quebec City on our 3rd day and we did our big walk through the streets (haute-ville and basse-ville) with umbrellas. But we definitely didn't want to spend the rest of the day in the hotel. ...
Quebec Vacation Sketchbook - 2
Quebec City (continued) Exploration of Basse-ville: We wandered down the hill from Chateau Frontenac, not using a map, nor the funiculaire, nor the "breakneck steps," and found Rue St. Paul - a wonderful street of galleries and antique shops. On the way...
Quebec Vacation Sketchbook - Part 1
We just returned from a 10 day vacation to Quebec City and Montreal - and I did finish at least one sketch per day - thereby completing my "Every Day in May" challenge. There was a recent discussion on...
Every Day in May - 20 and 21
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...
Every Day in May 8 and 9
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...
Every Day in May - 7
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...
Every Day in May-3
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...
Everyday in May-1
I debated whether to participate in this challenge again this year. I sketch everyday, but last year in May uploaded each sketch instead of just posting a sketchbook page several times each week. It definitely was more time consuming...
Sketchwalking
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...
Face and Figure Practice
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...
Our First Visit with Annabelle
We took the train to Washington DC last weekend for our first visit with Annabelle. I used 3 Cachet Linen Watercolor Journals for our multiple visits to London to visit our other grandchildren when they lived there in 2006-2007. I...
Recycling an Old Book as a Watercolor Sketchbook
Robyn of Have Dogs, Will Travel asked if I was planning to put a demonstration of this technique on my blog - and I'm having so much fun making these journals that I quickly said "yes."I like to look for...
The Baby Quilt is Finished
We're expecting our 5th grandchild in 3 weeks and I just finished hand quilting the baby quilt! I used to love to hand quilt in the evening and now I spend much of the time playing with my sketchbook. ...
Museum Visits in New York City
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...
Art Goals 2008
I really enjoyed formulating my Art Goals last year and decided it was definitely worth doing again. The contemplative/reflective part of the process leads me to question what my BIG Goals are, and this year I had to write about...
Art Progress 2007
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,...
November Figure Drawing Practice
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. ...
EDM Challenge #140: Draw an Envelope
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...
More Figure Drawing Practice: September
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...
"Travel Sketchbook" Manhattan
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...
Piccadilly Circus - in Color
While watching "breaking news" of the car bomb found on the Haymarket, I sketched Piccadilly Circus from a photo I took several days before. I sketched in pencil and then used a Zig Millenium pen to draw the scene more accurately. ...
London Visits: Last Pages in Sketchbook #3
There were several empty pages at the end of my 3rd London sketchbook so I decided to work from photos to fill the journal. Horseguard: We finally walked by the Horseguards on Whitehall one of our last days in London and...
Sketchcrawl: Casey, Sandy, and Shirley
Casey, Sandy, and I met this morning at 10 and spent the day sketching together in Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is so much fun to meet other EDM members - who you feel like you...
London Visits: Part 32 - Our Year Visiting London
A view of The City from a riverside cafe at Hay's Galleria on the Southbank of the Thames. We are nearing the end of a wonderful year during which we really got to know London so much better. It was a...
London Visit: Part 28
Hockney on Turner Watercolors at Tate BritainI met Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark yesterday for a day at Tate Britain. We browsed through the Turner watercolors in the morning, had lunch at the museum Restaurant where we shared sketchbooks...
EDM Challenge #124: Draw Something Yellow
We arrived in London on Tuesday and the only interesting yellow object to sketch was my grandson's toy tractor. It gave me lots of practice with perspective and he always remembers pages in my sketchbook that relate to him. Even...
Exercise in Looseness
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...
Every Day in May: EDM Challenge #120 and May 24th
May 23rd: EDM Challenge #120 - Draw a FlashlightWe 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...
Every Day in May: May 16th and May 17th
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...
Tagged by Katherine Tyrrell: Seven Things About Me
Yesterday I received the following email comment from Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark - one of my very favorite art blogs. Hi Shirley you have been tagged by me - and now need to share with us seventhings most...
Quarterly Progress Report for EDM Group
Goals for 2007: I am annotating this list - after each goal. So far I think I'm on my own schedule and having lots of fun.1. Continue to sketch/paint everyday in my large Moleskine watercolor sketchbook. I have done at...
Bookbinding
I haven't found a watercolor journal that I really love - and wanted something similar to the Moleskine sketchbook, but with watercolor paper instead of that waxed cream-colored paper. Last year I was intrigued with Jan Allsopp's recycled books...
London Visits #24: More Museum Visits
Thirty-seven years ago, on our first visit to London, we visited the Royal College of Surgery Hunterian Museum. It recently underwent a 3 year renovation and reopened in 2005. The history of William and John Hunter and how the specimen...
London Visits: Part 21
My husband and I went "gallery hopping" for several hours on Cork Street - primarily because the Helly Nahmad Gallery had 20 Picasso paintings from "La Californie" in an exhibit. We found several other wonderful exhibits and then stopped at our favorite coffee...
EDM Challenge #107: Where I Get the News
We are currently back in London with our fantastic grandchildren. That means less quiet time, more fun, and "news on the run." Since I have my laptop with me to keep up with work, I read the quick headlines on Google...
More Sketchbook Practice: Figures and Hands
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...
London Visit Part 19: Miscellaneous
We are now home from our Holiday visit to London and I have two more journal pages to upload - completing my second London Travel Journal. This is a portion of a clock at Michael Hoppen Photography on Jubilee Place...
London Visit: Part 18 - British Museum
I'm about to enter the British Museum to see the exhibit "The Past From Above" - 100 aerial photos of the major archeologic sites of the world. In addition to the photos they had artifacts from the British Museum...
Art Goals - 2007
WARNING TO FELLOW EDM SUPERBLOG SUBSCRIBERS: This is a long blog entry written primarily for my own self-reflection and planning. I can't believe that anyone else will be interested enough to stay with me to 2007 Goal #8 .... Members of the Everyday...
Arrival in London
My daughter and I both must have known subconsciously that our schedule would be changing completely this Christmas. She set up the baby's room one day before being hospitalized and wrapped all of the presents. I finished all of the gift...
A Personalized Christmas Card
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...
Conference Doodles
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...
London Visit - Part 11: Chelsea, London, UK
My daughter and her family are living in Chelsea, right off King's Road, so I have many opportunities to walk in the neighborhood with strollers and my grandchildren. The sketch on the left is the back of...
London Visit - Part 10: Museum Visits Oct 2006
We returned to the Imperial War Museum with our daughter and both of our grandchildren during this visit to London. Our grandson loves the submarine simulation and spends much of his time at the controls. My 22 month...
Quilted Silk Wedding Chuppahs
None of my current "threads" projects are close to being done. I have 2 wedding quilts and one baby quilt in the process of being quilted or pieced. And I'm hand piecing a Liberty of London quilt during this year of London...
London Visit - Part 9: Miscellaneous Sketches
These are the last London sketches that I wanted to post from our September trip. All of the other pages of my sketchbook that I haven't scanned have drawings from our daily life with our grandchildren in my...
Return to London
We just returned from our second trip to London to visit our daughter, son-in-law, and two small grandchildren. The foiled bomb plot in London occurred since our last visit so the Heathrow restrictions were now in place. Each passenger is...
Finally - Moleskine Watercolor Journal
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...
London Visit- Part 2 Museum Visits
During our recent visit to London, my husband and I visited Museums while our grandchildren were busy with other activities. I really wanted to sketch/paint at least one page from each visit in my Travel Sketchbook, but needed to choose...
London July 2006 - Part 1
We've returned from our wonderful London visit and this morning I scanned some of the sketches that I did of buildings. These include: the house that my daughter's family is renting, clouds overhead after a rainy day with details of...
Holiday in London
We are enjoying a holiday in London with our two oldest grandchildren, age 3 and 18 months. Although I am sketching more, and finally using one of my nicest watercolor journals, I don't have access to a scanner. All of my...
Color Project Orange - June
I didn't have many orange items to paint - and will soon be leaving for London - so I'm uploading a few of the completed sketches/paintings before the month is over. My warm and cool reds and yellows produced...
EDM Challenge #70: FEAR
I made a special trip to our Manhattan Dick Blick store to buy the new Moleskine watercolor notebook before going to Washington DC to see my son's new row house. I had every intention of using this new watercolor journal...
East Capitol Hill residence
One of my sons and his wife just bought an East Capitol Hill row house and this weekend all 4 parents joined them for a marathon painting session. Although I travel to Washington DC on business at least yearly, I...
Journal Sketchbook Entry
I'm still completing one sketch per day (usually pen with watercolor wash) in 2006. This week the sketches all were inspired by my two oldest grandchildren (ages 2 1/2 and 16 months) as they prepared to move to London for at...
Drawing Every Day
Exploring sketching and watercolor painting was one of my personal goals after I partially retired in July 2005. I worked through the Challenges after I joined the EDM group in September, and then decided to try to sketch (with...
EDM Challenge #56
This is the first self-portrait I have ever done - and one of the first pencil sketches. I took all of the advice from the Everyday Matters group today and my choice was to make myself look 20 years younger! ...
A Quilt Journal Page
I've been spending most of my leisure time since Christmas sketching and painting and I needed to remind myself why I named this website Paper and Threads. For most of my lifetime my passion was for fabric. As I...
Thread vs Paper Supplies
My Fabric Studio: This is the old maid's room in my 1920s New York City apartment. The previous owner made this 7 ft 3 inch by 9 foot 9 inch room into a small library and the lovely cabinets/bookshelves that...
Pompei
I loved Pompei! We had an excellent guide and I was able to stop for really fast sketches while he was talking. This is one sketchbook page showed my favorite view of the end of the forum with Mount...
10 Days in Sorrento
At the beginning of our trip I made one square for a quick sketch from each day. I usually filled in the square early the next morning, reflecting on one remembered image from the previous day. This was a...
Painting my View From the Window in Sorrento
I didn't want to experiment with watercolor paints on Moleskine sketchbook paper before I had a chance to scan my drawing, so I went to the local Copy Shop in Sorrento and had a copy made on reasonable weight...
An Illustrated Travel Journal
While my son honeymooned in Spain, my husband and I vacationed in Sorrento, Italy. This was a perfect opportunity for me to see if I could make quick sketches and keep an illustrated travel journal. I decided to use a...
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