Paper and Threads

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We saw this truck parked along 79th Street in New York City when walking to nursery school last Spring.  My grandson, who loves Superheroes, was fascinated by the truck mascot that was wired onto the front grill - spiderman dressed as a Mets Fan!  Fortunately I had my camera with me so took a picture of him. 

Posted by Shirley at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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

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

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

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

Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute, 1835

Castle Conway: 1798-1800

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

My 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 thoroughly enjoyed every day spent with members from our wonderful group and love putting a face to a name - as well as holding their sketchbooks in my hand and watching them work.  We met for breakfast at a local restaurant and then escaped from the New York City heat at opening time of the Museum.  We started at the Turner exhibit - I LOVE his watercolors and this was my 3rd time to visit them this month.  We sketched from Turner and then sat at the table containing the HUGE books from the exhibit and added some water to our pencil sketches with our water brushes (only pencils are allowed in these exhibits if they even let you sketch at all!).  We were so cold by the end of the exhibit, we went up to the Sculpture Roof Garden to see the Jeff Koons sculptures and warm up.  We then toured the section featuring African, Central and South American artifacts and each sketched different masks and ceramic figures.  After lunch in the Museum cafeteria and lots more talking, we ended the day in the 19th C. European painting galleries.  I now have 6 journal pages to finish, converting quick sketches in pencil into ink/watercolor wash drawings.  Lori, who is in NYC on an art grant, still had several more days of lessons and experiences. 

A quick photo of us as we were ending our day (Lori on the left and me on the right):

My Old Friends:  After leaving Lori, my husband and I drove to my hometown in Northern NJ for dinner with my oldest friends - 4 women who I first met in elementary school.  Our 6th group member lives in Florida and we secretly were hoping that she was going to arrive and surprise us!  Even my 7th grade homeroom teacher - and our high school class advisor - joins us for these dinners!

From left to right: Judy, Me, Nora, Mary Ann, and Nancy.  Nora and her baby sister Nancy (not the Nancy pictured above) are among my most faithful blog readers and Nancy told me that she wanted to wake up yesterday morning and read about my fabulous dinner and party at their house.  Sorry Nancy, yesterday I spent hours and hours backingup our desktop/laptop computers to our new terrabyte external hard drive and never had time to upload this photo.  My only photo of Nancy was in mid-sentence so I thought she would prefer that I mentioned her instead....

Posted by Shirley at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)