I started going to figure drawing sessions in September 2009, and averaged one session per month over the whole year. There is now a summer break until after Labor Day and that seems a long time away. I think I'm making progress, and more frequently sketch faces during the longer poses. Here are the two 10 minute poses and two 20 minute poses done this week.
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 "colored" in their sketchbooks during the weekend and had me draw some of their favorite images for them to color. New York City was soooo hot, that we started each day at the newly renovated Central Park playground that is next to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They wore their bathing suits to take full advantage of the water play for several early morning hours.
Sydney and Callum have Christmas birthdays and for the second year in a row Syd and I celebrated her birthday in July with a trip to the art supply store. This year we went to Dick Blick and she selected a wonderful assortment of art supplies and activity kits. She used the last few dollars to buy cute little flash card notebooks for herself and two brothers, so I sketched all of them.
Callum really, really loves dinosaurs and dragons and brought a big box of them to play with during the weekend. He was showing me his squishy dragon when I decided that this was the perfect image for the day.
Yesterday afternoon, my son dropped off their youngest (11 month old Zach) while they went to a baseball game to celebrate their other son Robbie's 5th birthday. Zach stands alone, crawls really, really fast, and would love to be walking-running. We spent some time with him in our long hallway, pushing the baby carriage that we bought for Syd for her 1st birthday (but now lives with us to share with the babies). Here is Zach squealing with delight as Syd and my husband try to slow him down a little.
After Henry, Sydney, and Callum went home and Zach fell asleep, I took a few minutes to paint Zach's really cute little sandal.
A new Matisse exhibit opened at MoMA on Sunday - entitled Radical Invention, 1913-1917. The paintings were somber in color and he was definitely experimenting with the human form, culminating in his painting The Bathers. I sketched faces from one of his paintings and several of his prints for the Prisoners of Bohain-en-Vermandois.
I then use3d one of the drawings to inspire my "Eyedropper Face" which is Lab 13 from the Carla Sonheim book Drawing Lab. I used a small eye dropper and FW acrylic ink to draw the face, then painted it with watercolor.
I'm really enjoying the "labs" in the Sonheim book - and will continue to work through them even though my art buddies returned home after our evening art sessions at our beach week.
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 at the surfline. These were our beach treasures. The shells were not very plentiful this week, in comparison to just one week ago when we we there for July 4th holiday.
Morning 4: We found one small dead fish, one children's plastic toy fish (blue) and one toy rubber flounder covered in sand in addition to several other types of tresures. I sketched and painted these on one journal page as we set at the Cooper's Beach Snack Shack having coffee.
Morning 5: I found a real assortment of things and put them all together as a still life with my empty coffee cup.
Morning 6: I found a few shells and a beautiful long gull feather from one of the brown spotted gulls. All week we used "google" to see if we could confirm that these large gulls were actually the young ones. Anyone know?
Departure: We kept a vase of fresh hydrangeas from the garden, in the kitchen, all week, and I finally decided that I needed to end my beach sketchbook pages with a painting of them.
We are at the beach this week with friends - who we met in the 1960s. There are early morning beach walks, afternoon pool swimming, and lovely dinners on the house patio. Three of us sketch together, so we are creating visual journal pages and having great fun doing "labs" from Carla Sonheim's new book entitled Drawing Lab.
These are the visual journal pages from Mon-Wed. Mon and Tues we went to the beach. This morning we had a huge thunderstorm just as we were leaving and we spent the morning in the sunroom identifying bugs.
I'm taking photos of my journal instead of scanning the pages, so even the white bacground is slightly blue....
Our group met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, instead of in Central Park, because of the threat of inclement weather. Our first drawing session was a major challenge - the Starn brothers bamboo structure on the Museum rooftop. I decided to really limit my scope and to focus on the method that they used to connect the bamboo and creat a structure which supports many people on internal walkways.
Our next drawing session was in the current exhibit called The American Woman - from the costume institute. I already sketched some of the fashions in the exhibit on a previous visit and this time concentrated on the room called "The Heiress."
Our 3rd and final sketch was in 19th C. European Paintings. I am studying Cezanne's card players over a several year period and this time did a simple line drawing of one of the card players. For more information about this project and my 2007, 2008, 2009 paintings, click here.
We just returned from a Holiday weekend with our children and their children. This is the first photo that we have of all 6 grandchildren this year - and I'm thrilled to have a new one.
I sketched every day in my summer watercolor journal - in which I try to paint something that will help me remember the day. Here are 4 pages.
Blue Mussel Shells: I bought a wonderful laminated shell identification card which Callum calls "the map" and we tried to ID shells that I brought home from our beach walks.
Our 3 and 4 year old grandsons made great progress "swimming" this weekend and spent lots of time going back and forth between their parents and the wall without floaties. This is a pair of goggles that were abandoned on my chaise while I was watching them.
We waited for our car AC to have freon added and I was sitting next to this planter and flag - which looked especially forlorn after the holiday was over.
I take sea gull pictures each time we walk on the beach. These are several drawings of one gull from those photos.
Our Central Park Meetup Group met at the Conservatory Garden again and it was beastly hot. However, there were enough non-wilted flowers to paint. They are not labelled and I have little practical knowledge of flowers - but I love drawing individual blooms.
There are two wonderful fountains in the Garden. One of the fountain areas was the site for a lovely wedding. The other fountain, the Three Dancing Maidens, was in bright sunlight. But we discovered that we could dangle our feet into ice cold fountain water until the guards reprimanded us. I drew this fountain twcie before (see here and here) and this time I decided to just draw one of the maidens. I had just enough time before the guards came!
Following Meetup, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a special afternoon program on Picasso to go along with their huge current exhibit. Francois Gilot gave a long and excellent lecture on her encounter with Picasso, She lived with him for 10 years and had two children with him. Professor Michael Fitggerald presented detailed information about the first private American collectors of Picasso's paintings and the history of the Met vs MoMA and their Picasso acquisitions. Then there was a wonderful French film (The Mystery of Picasso - 1955) in which Picasso drew on one side of a support and we the audience just saw the lines forming and colored inks being added. It was mesmerizing.
We were at the beach for several days in June and I never uploaded any of the daily drawings that I did. It was an amazing week for finding shells on the beach - last year we barely found any and this year I only brought home perfect ones.
My Straw Hat - but it was too breezy to wear it on our morning walks.
A few of my favorite types of shells - the variation in color of the moon snails and bay scallop shells is truly amazing. I could use one shell for an example of nature's perfect color combinations each time I paint.
I love the seagulls and this was the only one we saw with this coloration.
We took a ride to the end of the South Fork to the Montauk Point Lighthouse for the first time. It is a wonderful place for drawing and painting.
There are two weekly figure drawing sessions at the Society of Illustrators in New York City - and in one of them models are partially or fully clothed. Last week was the first time that I was there when two models were fully in costume - a Marie Antoinette type costume for one and a pirate costume for the other. It was the hardest sketching I've done there - a huge challenge.
Here is one of my 2 minute sketches of the woman model - complete with an elaborate wig and full ruffly gown:
Here is one of my 2 minute sketches of the male - in pirate costume, but without all of the braid and other decoration on his jacket, belt, and hat which I just didn't have time to include.
They proceeded to disrobe before the longer poses at the end of the evening. This is one of the 20 minute poses:
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 some great children's books about composers and I sketched before the rehearsal began. It was the first time that I sketched live musicians while they played.
Yesterday I went to a panel discussion about creativity and sketchbooks - presented by Rice Freeman-Zachary (whose 2 books I loved), with my friend Melanie Testa, and Wendy Hale Davis. Rice is such a colorful character that I just had to sketch her while I listened. And I didn't even put on all the jewelry that she was wearing.
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. We sketched in 3 separate areas in the Park and shared our sketchbooks at the end of each. Here are my 3 watercolor journal pages from the afternoon. This is the fountain on the west side of the Park.
There are umbrellas, chairs, and lamposts everywhere!
These were the flowers blooming in the big planters that were scattered all around the Park.
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 how often I will work in it.
Single Page Plus back of Rear Flap:
Over the past several years, I celebrated my love of coffee while doing Every Day Matter weekly challenges. It seemed like the perfect topic to use to finish this play project. The collages were scanned, printed, and cut out from sketchbook pages that show how many ways we have to make coffee at home. The square stamp is actually 4 small square stamps of different sizes that can be combined using different stamp inks.
Inside Back Cover and Back Cover Flap:
I wrote myself a long note about the circumstances of this challenge by Melly and Pat, and my process and the fun that I had. I decided that I definitely needed to acknowledge my muses and used pieces of a photo of the 3 of us on a recent field trip to see Art Quilts at the Morris Museum.
The Back Cover:
I looked up the 3 Graces and the mytholocial muses and decided that this was a perfect image for my back cover. I previously did the drawing in the Greek and Roman Galleries at the Met, and scanned, printed, and collaged it to this page.
This was a fun project, and an interesting watercolor journal to use. I made it from Teesha Moore's YouTube video of the 16 page journal (really 12 pages plus flaps which are slightly narrower).
I have many sketches of ballet dancers in my journals - all from photos since I can't draw fast enough to catch them in action. This is a single page spread: the dancers on the top right and bottom left are collages of pages that were scanned, printed, and cut out. The dancer in the center was drawn on the top layer. This is another new stamp that I made.
Next: A 3 page spread of Central Park Zoo animals with many, many penguins. All of the animals were collages made from prior journal pages made at the Central Park Zoo, except the penguins that appear right above the words "Lots of Penguins." Those were drawn on a top layer. I used pieces of a zoo map for the first layer of collage, Neocolor II watercolor crayons, gesso, acrylic paints, and stamps.
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, printed in color, cut out and added as a collage. The stamp is one of the new ones I created when making this journal.
This is a two page spread in the journal - the back of the flap and the next page. Each of the flowers except the iris were collages taken from sketchbooks. The iris was drawn onto the top layer when I was finishing the page. This is a photo because the page was too big for my scanner.
I think I'm finally figuring out how I want to use my journals/sketchbooks. From the time I began this adventure and joined Every Day Matters, I've considered my sketchbooks as visual journals - sometimes used for practice, as when I did exercises from art books, or copied drawings of the masters, but most times used as a daily visual journal. I don't want to change that. But making the mixed media journal allowed me to see that I can print previous sketchbook pages, and use others as inspiration for redrawing images, to be used in mixed media journal book pages or artwork that is separate. However, image resizing with Photoshop, a scanner, and a color photo printer are necessary and my dining room table was full of paints, brushes, gel medium, gesso, stamps, stamp pads, calligraphy pens, acrylic inks, Pitt pens, scissors, rulers, and exacto knives. If I'm drawing at home, I do my evening journal pages with my sketchbook, pencil case, waterbrushes, and travel watercolor kit on the couch - a much simpler process!
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 year old. The drawing on the top left was Sydney and her brother Henry (age 3) in Hyde Park when she insisted that he hold her hand. Right below it is a similar painting from Central Park, NYC from this year. On the far right is Sydney wearing a "dress-up" hat at the Victoria and Albert's Children's Museum in London. As you can tell, I'm most comfortable drawing my grandchildren from the back.
The monkey drawing was done right on this page, to celebrate her "lovey" who still goes places with her. You can probably see him in the drawing of her in Hyde Park as well. And the drawing of Sydney was also done right on this page - from a drawing I did in May as a Bert Dodson Exercise on drawing foreshortened heads.
This page has lots of layers, including collaged text papers under my cut-out drawings, paint, gesso, stamps, waterproof ink calligraphy ink, Pitt pens, and more paint.
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 a page. Pat said add layers, many layers. I had an 8 X 10" journal that I made from Teesha Moore's 16 Page Journal You Tube video several weeks ago so I decided to use it and to accept their challenges. However, I wanted to make collages from my own sketchbook pages and add at least one new drawing to each page.
I pulled out all of my random art supplies and played for one week - just letting the pages evolve from printed sketchbook pages. Here is the front cover, and the first 2 pages. The collage painting on the cover was from the Poiret Fashion Exhibit at the Met and she reminded me of a muse. The Picasso page has several of his Barcelona artist caricatures collaged in one of the layers and a Picasso inspired drawing on top. My Maternite page has several of my pregnant model stamp images which I cut out and added as collages and the drawing of mother and child on top. Both drawings were done with acrylic ink and a dip pen.
The next page is a double spread and will need to be photographed, not scanned, so I will probably add it within the next few days.
I spent the day yesterday, with my art buddies Pat and Benedicte, at the Central Park Zoo. It was a beautiful, but hot day, and every school class in the City was there for a field trip! I love sketching at the zoo - it is a real test of how fast you can achieve an image of some type. I sketch in pencil and then take a photo so I know how to paint the animal when I get home. These are the first 4 pages (out of 6) that I painted.
Gentoo and Chinstrap Penguins
King Penguin - These are new penguins in the exhibit and they are bigger than the others.
Three Scarlet Ibis:
Tortoise and Hornbill
Our Journal Study Group is going to the Central Park Zoo to sketch on Wednesday, so I decided to play with my Neocolors II crayons and previous drawings of the Zoo penguins to get ready! They have Gentoo and Chinstrap varieites which are drawn here. I had to use white and black acrylic paint, not my usual transparent watercolors, to paint these little guys over the crayon. We'll miss you Melly and Susan.
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 is the 3rd HCB exhibit I've seen and it was by far the largest - and included photos from many of his photojournalist articles in major publications. I really like his photographs, probably because they are such quick snapshots in the lives of people around the world.
The Picasso exhibit has a few of the same prints that are in the big Picasso exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art - but I never get tired of seeing his drawings, prints, and linocuts. I remain fascinated with his ability to capture so much in so few lines and sketched his drawing of Francoise Gilot - I think hoping that I will achieve his skill through repitition! I still have to draw quickly in pencil before using the dreaded Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. My added color is from a Neocolor II crayon.
The Whitney Museum was open around the clock for 3 days as their Biennial Exhibit draws to a close. It is usually very conceptual and not very interesting, but my friend Istar convinced me that this year there was art that would inspire both of us. So we went early yesterday morning and I really enjoyed seeing some of the work and I brought home a few ideas about things I'd like to try. This is the journal page on which I took some notes.
There was one large room filled with only large ink paintings by Charles Ray. Each one was of flowers - that were very similar - but with variations on the compositions from painting to painting. There were many, many flowers in each painting- arranged beautifully. The colors were brilliant - and the flowers with the long petals, each a different bright color, flip-floping back and forth over each other, were my favorites. My journal flower sketches were each done in less than a minute - just enough for me to remember a few of the variations in his flowers.
I used an image that I did several weeks ago at the Conservatory Garden in Central Park to make this design for a card.
Hand Drawing Practice:
I try to regularly draw hands because I'm so bad at them. Last September I decided to also draw the American Sign Language alphabet from photos on an ASL website. I use a watercolor pencil to sketch and then add water to get shading. This is something that I do when I have nothing else to record visually from my life that day - so I'm only half way through the alphabet. It isn't obvious to me that I'm getting any better with faced with hands during live figure drawing. Maybe I need to sketch 10,000 to achieve competency.
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 started me thinking about another project. These two books had a cover that opened in the center and either two faces - one on each front half - or one face - in the center back. I don't know how the faces were made - transfers from photos or painted - probably the former.
She makes little "quilt pillows" and then stitches them together to make her covers. I would adapt my regular quilt-making techniques and just borrow the ideas about a center front opening and faces. I'd like to put hats or paint hair on the heads and add arms, instead of wings. If I made these books for family, I would make the face theirs.
So, in order not to forget the idea, my sketchbook page became drawings and notes for the project. The colors and way of coloring the book are mine.
Our cousin (see last post) also has a wonderful sculpture collection, and while having my morning coffee, I chose this mother-and-child piece by Ruth Bloch to draw. There were other mother and child sculptures, by different artists in his collection, but I remember being with him one time at Art Expo in New York City when he bought a piece from Ruth Bloch - so I felt a tiny connection with her. The legs of this sculpted chair are as long as the mother - so it is a beautiful freestanding piece of art.
I guess I'm not done yet with my current focus on motherhood.
We stayed with our favorite cousin last evening in Philadelphia and really enjoyed seeing his lovely art collection again. I adore Picasso drawings and like to quickly copy them trying to learn how he captures so much in so few lines. Here is a very quick sketch of one of Larry's Picasso drawings.
Zach has a 9" soft cow made by Gund, that he loves to chew on. Yesterday he crawled around with one of the paws in his mouth - making me want to add it to my collection of drawings of our children's and grandchildren's toys. Henry had the lion from the same collection and wouldn't leave the apartment without it. My daughter had a back-up lion collection because he was forever dropping it out of the stroller. We still have one of Robbie's Gund tigers at our apartment because he needed it for his nap on the fternoons we cared for him.
I finally finished Chapter 3 in the Bert Dodson book Keys to Drawing!!!!
These two pages were done and should have been uploaded yesterday, but I was too tired after a very long (7:15AM-9PM), but wonderful, day with two of my grandsons. Eight month old Zach is crawling really fast and pulling up on anything, even trying to climb, so he requires constant attention. But he is a really happy baby - and it is wonderful watching his development. Four year old Robbie is a master builder of extremely complex multiple level Geotrax train systems and can build for hours when he comes home from pre-school. He has a wonderful design imagination and is extremely fast - and when he finishes another complex track he usually has 5-6 remote controlled trains navigating the system at once.
The first drawing is of a foreshortened head. I did it using a light grid because I knew it was the only way for me to capture even a slight resemblance to my pretty grand daughter Sydney - who was eating a snowcone when I took this photo.
This page show some emphasis of facial characteristics which is the final page (but not a project) in Chapter 3. These were all drawn from faces in my figure drawing group this week.
There are 5 more chapters in the Dodson book - which is a very sophosticated full course in drawing. I was stuck at one place in Chapter 3 for too long and will try to make more continual progress. But I have no deadline and learn so much from the projects.
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 never go more frequently than that. This time I took my 9B woodless pencil and stumper that I played with when I was reading Bill Rankin's Fast Sketching Techniques book and loved using them for the longer poses. Here is one page for 2 min, 5 min, 10 min, and 20 minute poses. My new sketchbook is slightly bigger than my scanner and the person sitting next to me created charcoal dust periodically that drifted onto my page - so I cleaned them up as well as possible.
Two Minute Poses for each Model (2 of 20):
Five Minute Pose (1 of 4):
Ten Minute Pose (1 of 2):
Twenty Minute Pose (1 of 3):
I blocked out three days to make new fabrics to use as book cloth for my watercolor journals. Over the last 20 years I learned many surface design techniques for silks and cottons and love to play with dyes and resists to create textiles. In a Manhattan apartment, I need to "schedule" time to play with dyes because I have to get out so many supplies, tools, etc. And our dining room table is covered in plastic for several days as the fabric cures and dries.
I purchased 3 new primary color dyes in February and made up new stock solutions. Then when I was "playing" I decided to see if the stamp process I used recently for paper worked equally well with fabric. Here are my stock solutions, the secondary colors I mixed and my new stamp. I used it to stamp a dark blue design over an entire piece of dyed blue-green cotton that will be book cloth.
I made these 3 bears for my children when they were babies and they are well worn. I forgot that I had them until this weekend when I was looking for a dress I made for my daughter to see if her daughter could wear it (Sydney is too tall) and found the bears. I gave Sydney the one from her Mom and will deliver the boys' bears to them so their children can play with them.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a new fashion exhibit called the American Woman. It was crowded, and I sketched two garments quickly and then painted them at home - mostly from memory. The whitish stripe down the center of the page is from Photoshop removal of the gutter between the two pages.
I finally finished the book inspired by Gwen Diehn's book on Darwin. Hers was really small. The ones that our Journal Study Group made are 3" X 5".
Here is the cover of mine.
This book has two concertinas, one that makes up the spine and end papers of the book and a second one that makes the pages. The concertinas are stitched together with a 3 hole pamphlet stitch. The spine of the book is then held closed with one stick which goes through 3 tabs - two on the front cover and one on the back.
These are the pages that I created using stamps I made from figures I sketched at the Society of Illustrators figure drawing sessions this spring.
End paper on the left and page 1:
Pages 2 and 3:
Pages 4 and 5:
Pages 6 and 7:
Page 8 and End Paper:
When the stick is removed, the spine can be opened to reveal a hidden image. This is a stamp that I made from my painting of mother and child - inspired by a Henry Moore sculpture.
Another Stamp of the Pregnant Model:
I made yet another stamp from one of my drawings of the pregnant model at the Society of Illustrators Figure Drawing Sessions. I was wondering whether I could paint the page with watercolor and then have the stamp ink completely cover the paint.
Yesterday I went shopping with a very nice Mother's Day gift card. I replenished some supplies, extended colors in some watercolor paints, and bought one new toy. Since I have a lovely set of Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils that I bought from open stock over several years, I'm not sure how I will use these - but it is fun to play. And I'm sure my grand daughter Sydney will help me. I'd love to hear how others, who use both watercolor paint and pencils, use the crayons....
I had a leisurely Mother's Day yesterday and then joined my NYC children and their spouses for dinner! It was wonderful relaxing in my PJs all day. When we returned from dinner, I decided to draw my art mannequin in pencil (look closely) and then dress her in my PJs to remember this lovely day.
Yesterday was our monthly Saturday Meet-up Central Park Drawing and Art Group - and we met at Columbus Circle. It was a beautiful day but very windy. My eye immediately went to these purple flowers. I'll add several photos so I can get help identifying them. The entire circle was surrounded by these long stem beauties.
We then moved into Central Park to the area around the childrens' playground and the big climbing rock. It was much less windy and more pleasant for 30 minutes of sketching. I chose to do a painting of the top of the GM building over the park trees.
Finally we moved further into Central Park and climbed to the Chess and Checker House. There were only a few people playing, I was sitting too close to this couple, so I have a semi-caricature because I couldn't really stare at them long enough to sketch anything accurately.
This is a preliminary drawing that I did of an apartment building on the Upper Westside of Manhattan. I promised a larger painting and just wanted to play with the angles and perspective in my sketch book.
I'd love some suggestions for mixing a really good dirty brick color.
Three grandchildren came for dinner the other evening and Sydney brought me these flowers. They look like peonies, but are actually double tulips.
Our Journal Study Group met yesterday and we all made 3" by 5" books using a prototype that Gwen Diehn sent to me after she spent an afternoon with us in March. The stick goes through 3 loops, keeping the accordion spine closed. There are 8 pages of watercolor paper to use inside. I plan to put more of my pregnant model stamps on the pages inside and then have a surprise hidden on the spine. I'll take photos when I'm finished.
I just LOVE cute little books!
Yesterday I went to see the Watercolor Society of America annual show at Salmagundi several hours before it closed. This is the second year that I went to the exhibit and again I was overwhelmed by the talent of the group and their beautiful handling of watercolor. My fish were inspired by fish that I saw on two of the paintings. Following the show, I walked across 12th Street in the Village to Utrecht art to get a 9B pencil to work on David Rankin's Fast Sketching Techniques and saw this beautiful tulip growing in front of a brownstone.
Sydney and Callum came to our apartment yesterday afternoon while big brother Henry went to the Yankee game with our daughter and son-in-law. The afternoon ended with Cal and I playing with the Play-Doh factory!
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 new Picasso exhibit. It is a collection of the Met's Picasso holdings and it is really impressive. In the second room they have the collection of small caricatures that he did of his artist friends in Barcelona ca 1900. I fell in love with these when they were in the Barcelona Modernity exhibit several years ago and took a few minutes to sketch one.
Our Meet-up group then did several 30 minute sketching sessions in the American Wing of the Museum and shared our sketchbooks after each one. I sketched a sculpture in the Atrium, an art nouveau Roseville Vase on the Mezzanine, and a painting by Robert Reid in the Gallery.
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 preparative pieces for his movies. The exhibit was sold out today, and the crowd was young and enthusiastic as noted in the NY Times piece below.
Tim Burton Retrospective: THE mouth of a giant monster, its razor-sharp teeth glaring overhead and its tongue forming a long red carpet, ushers visitors into the Tim Burton retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Although the intentionally lighthearted chronicle of the filmmaker’s work received only mixed reviews when it opened in November, Mr. Burton’s fans don’t seem to care. More than 450,000 people have already attended the show, and by the time it closes on April 26, attendance is expected to exceed that of recent blockbusters like the museum’s “Van Gogh: The Colors of the Night” last year and “Dali: Painting and Film,” in 2008.
From The New York Times March 11, 2010 "She’s scheduled to sit there all day, every day, during museum hours, for the run of her show. The museum estimates that, if she can stick to the plan, she will sit for 716 hours and 30 minutes, earning her a record for endurance in the performance art sweepstakes. And every now and then someone will slip into that chair across from her — that’s what it’s there for — and spend some time exchanging stares, or energy, or going blank, or thinking, maybe for the first time, about that hard, high-flown, funny word “endure.”
Today there was a line of people who wanted to sit and stare at her - usually for 30-45 minutes each. Someone I spoke to said that she sat with her 3 times already since the show started- it is like meditation! I don't get it, but it was fun to sit there and sketch her. She never moved a muscle!
I am slowly working my way through the Dodson Keys to Drawing book projects. I have two more projects in Chapter 3 and five more chapters total.
I posted Project 3A - Standing Figure - in January.
Project 3B is to draw a lounging figure. I used a photo from my book The Nude Figure by Mark Edward Smith.
Project 3C is to draw a reclining figure (foreshortened). I used another photo from my book The Nude Figure by Mark Edward Smith.
Project 3D is to draw a full face portrait. I used a photo of Obama and practiced using a grid system. The drawing can be seen here.
Project 3E is to draw a three-quarter view portrait. I used a photo from morguefile.com.
Although there is a section on drawing profiles, there is no project for drawing a profile in the book. But I decided that I needed the practice. I used a photo from morguefile.com.
In 2000 my husband and I realized that we knew little about our ancestry, and family members who knew the information were aging. We decided that we would like information about our family at least back to our great grandparents. I honestly believed that this was going to be a combined project, but I loved doing the research and problem solving and my husband loved learning about my discoveries. My ancestors were all in America by 1880 - pre-Ellis Island. My husband's family only started to arrive in 1900, so the approach and the records were vastly different. I love learning new things and New York City has wonderful resources between the New York Branch of the National Archives and the Milstein Division of the New York Public Library.
Over the course of the next several years, I easily completed research back to our great grandparents - with census records, passenger lists, naturalization papers, and birth-marriage-death certificates, solving a few family mysteries along the way. However, the family that I knew the least about was "Parker" - my maiden name. One of my goals this year was to review my research records and resume the search.
These 3 journal pages were done as I prepared for the project.
I kept detailed research journals since the beginning of my research - and I'm now on #8 (4000pages)!
P
Packing for Research Day: I spent all day Tuesday at the New York Public Library - trying hard to find the father of my Great-great grandfather John Parker, in Wilkes County, North Carolina - through marriage bonds, land deeds, estate sales and inventories - collecting information about every Parker head of household in Wilkes County in 1820. I will continue to research these Parkers until I have enough information - but research in the South is very different because the records are so different and so many were lost in burned courthouses during the Civil War.
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 anyone with several tree allergies. I loaded up on meds and went, planning to stay only as long as my allergies would permit.
We had 4 30 minute sketching sessions in 4 different areas of the Gardens. After each one, group members lined up their sketchbooks and shared their work. Nearly 100 photos are already posted on the site and can be seen here.
I sketched both fountains in May of last year and did both again. The 3 Dancing Maidens is a real challenge in 30 minutes and this year I didn't need to stretch one of the arms to double normal length to have two maidens holding hands. Neither year did I have time to do more than a pencil sketch.
During the other two sessions I sketched two of the blooming flowers. The daffodils were gorgeous. The other flower (I have no idea what they are) were beautifully colored, each little component in shades from pink through blue to purple - the same colors as hydrangeas.
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. Previous pages can be seen here.
Annabelle and her Daddy on a walk:
Her new birthday scooter and helmet from cousins Robbie and Zach:
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 the weeks seem to pass quickly and several weeks go by without me thinking about the challenge. Then I decide to do 2 or 3 at once! That is what happened last week.
EDM Challenge # 262: Draw Your Shower
EDM Challenge # 263: Draw Your Favorite Cleaning Supply
EDM Challenge # 264: Draw a Floor
One of the current exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is The Mourners - numerous alabaster grave sculptures (1443-56) from the tomb of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and his wife Margaret. There is a fabulous website with photographs of all of the sculptures. Each can be rotated 360 degree on the website for full viewing.
"The Mourners from the tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy are deeply affecting works of art. Beyond their evident visual and narrative qualities, we cannot help but be struck by the emotion they convey as they follow the funeral procession, weeping, praying, singing, lost in thought, giving vent to their grief, or consoling their neighbor. Mourning, they remind us, is a collective experience, common to all people and all moments in history."
Sophie Jugie, Director, Musée des Beaux-Arts. Dijon
The sculptures are in perfect condition - and so impressive, all lined up in two rows in the middle of the Medieval Hall in the middle of the Museum. I am most attracted to the ones with the the hoods over their heads and sketched one full figure and one head.
I'm so delighted that our modem was replaced and we now have internet access again.
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 share our sketchbooks. We then move to a new location and repeat the process again and again for almost 3 hours.
Yesterday we began in the African Mammal exhibits - on the balcony - and I was capitvated by the ostrich and babies. I also did a quick sketch of a baboon (paint added today).
We then moved to the North American birds section (I'm not a bird lover) and I sketched a golden eagle.
Around the corner was the primate section and the chimp had such a wonderful hand pose, I had to sketch him.
Finally we went to the 4th floor to the dinosaur skeletons and I sketched the head of T.Rex. The sketch was done in pencil and then I practiced using the dreaded Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and a watercolor pencil to finish the painting.
Patti Gregory (1960-2010)
Yesterday morning I learned of the tragic death of Danny Gregory's wife Patti. I only met Patti once 4 years ago, but was really impressed with her smile and energy. Danny is the author of Everyday Matters, a book of sketches and writing from the time following Patti's subway accident which left her paraplegic. I was just beginning this journey, which I call sketchbook art, and joined his Everyday Matters online art group in September 2005. Over the last few years, by following Danny's blog, reading his subsequent books, The Creative License and An Illustrated Life, and taking a "visual journaling class" with him here in NYC, I learned more about them and their son Jack Tea. My heart is breaking for Danny and Jack.
It is time for a little post about my obsession with bookbinding. I started by recycling books as watercolor journals and then progressed to make 12 watercolor journals creating my own book covers and the book size of my choice. While dye painting fabric for quilting, I wondered whether I could make my own book cloth from these fabrics and this week finished my 4th watercolor journal using my own dyed fabric as bookcloth. For anyone reading this blog for the first time, the progression can be seen by clicking on the "Bookbinding" category on the right side of my blog page.
My 4th Dye Painted Watercolor Journal:
I used Canson Mi Teintes paper for my end papers. It is available in many colors, is heavy enough so it doesn't stretch during the casing-in process, and is very inexpensive. Here is the end paper for this book.
Our Monthly Art Group learned how to make adhesive-backed "fun foam stamps" from Pat last month and at the end of the afternoon, we each used our stamps to make everyone a tag from our designs. Pat does extraordinary work with her stamps and colored ink pads, We will do this again and I explored making a "pocket artist's book" to keep all of the tags together. The instructions came from Gwen Diehn's book Books For Kids to Make.
This month we are going to make very small "folded" artist's books (as seen in the link to Pat's blog above) and arrive prepared to "decorate each page." Then we'll make a small envelope for the book. Here is a website that demonstrates the folding process. Our books will be made from a standard size sheet of paper (8.5 X 11").
http://myhandboundbooks.blogspot.com/2007/11/secret-fold-notebook.html
I decided to play with the techniques even before our meeting next week and created the following tiny book and envelope. During the last two months I sketched a pregnant model at the Society of Illustrators figure drawing sessions and decided to feature her in my book. I reduced the size of each image to fit the page and collaged the printed reduced drawings in place. I made a fun foam stamp from one of the images and made the cover and the envelope.
Two Pages From the Book:
The Front Cover - with Stamps:
The Envelope for the Artist's Book:
I went to the Morgan Library and Museum last week to see the current exhibits - and sketched a demon from the illuminated manuscript called the Hours of Catherine of Cleves (15th C.). It has a very interesting history and the borders on each page are amazing and never repeated. I sketched one of the demons (which appeared on the corner of the border of page 94 and was enlarged in a photograph as part of the exhibit.)
It is worth looking at the facsimiles on the webpage in my link to the exhibit just to see the quality of the painting and the brilliance of the colors.
Donna posted drawings today that she did with her new Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. I agree with everything she says about the pen and ...
I decided to upload this drawing today in order to demonstrate that on my Fabriano Artistico 140 lb soft press paper, the ink that comes in the cartridges with the Pental Pocket Brush Pen is watersoluble. The gray color of my demon is just ink pulled into the drawing with plain water. I allowed the ink to dry for 15-30 minutes before "painting it" with the water. I know that others don't have this problem, so I assume it is paper-dependent, since we have compared pen product numbers, etc, etc.
I love the drawings of Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) and today joined my friend Melly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to draw some of them for the second time. My first drawings were posted here. The exhibit ends April 18th. so I will even have time to return for more. All of the drawings were done with a Caran d'Ache aquarelle pencil (Mahogany).
Study for his painting Jealousy - and for me More Hand Drawing Practice:
Head of a Young Woman - and for me the challenge was getting the correct angle for the head:
Study of Crossed Legs - and for me lots of crosshatching for shading
We took our 6 year old grandson Henry to the 3rd Young People's Concert in this year's series at the New York Philharmonic and a fabulous Spanish guitarist was the soloist with the orchestra. We were sitting too far away for me to see his hands, so I sketched him from one of his website photos for my daily sketch. His hands really were in that position, but it reminded me that I need lots more practice drawing hands. I am slowly drawing each letter from photos on an American Sign Language website and I decided that it was time for J and K. Pablo Saenz Villegas was drawn with my water-soluble Pilot Varsity pen and then brushed with water.
American Sign Language letters - drawn with a watercolor pencil from photos on a website.
Even though I appear to have the same pen as other members of EDM, my pen ink runs when I add a watercolor wash. These two drawings dried for 15 and 30 minutes respectively and you can still see where my wet brush touched the ink. It might be due to the Fabriano soft press paper that I use, but since I don't plan to change paper, or the way I work with ink and watercolor, I will just have to accept this!
Drawn from a book of Picasso "One Liners"
Drawn by pausing the fantastic polar bear video that was shown during the Olympics.
I love watching the Winter Olympics and spent large blocks of time glued to the coverage. Probably because of my lifelong interest in dance, and specifically ballet, figure skating is one of my very favorite events. As I was getting ready to watch the Women's Short Program, I was surfing the NBC Olympic website and found this photo of Mirai Nagasu. I fell in love with this perky, skilled, 16 year old while watching her skate at Nationals several weeks before. Although she was being considered the US hope for the future, she appeared to be in a group with other world class skaters already. I loved the entire coverage of the Women's event and have never been so impressed as I was with Kim Yu-Na's free skate on Thursday evening. But I was even more thrilled that Mirai finished in 4th place!!
I made my 3rd watercolor journal with another piece of fabric that I dye-painted - this time striped using corn dextrin resist with procion MX dyes. This is a 6 X 8" watercolor journal containing Fabriano Artistico 140 lb Soft Press paper - 6 signatures with 2 folios each. The bookcloth was prepared by fusing my fabric to Thai mulberry paper using Wonder Under - see more about the method here.
I used color-coordinated MiTientes paper as end papers.
There is still one more piece of fabric that I made in this first batch, and since I'm now using a big roll of Fabriano Artistico paper, I will make a 4th book to gain more experience handling the big pieces of paper instead of the usual 22 X 30 inch sheets. There are 48 single pages in each book so will have enough watercolor journals on my shelf to last 5-6 months!
I still enjoy completing the EDM Challenges because they take me out of my comfort zone and help me decide what I should draw/paint for at least one of my daily sketches each week. However, I regularly complete them 1-2 weeks after the challenge was published, as I try to settle on a specific image. This time it was Challenge # 259: Draw a view from your pet's perspective. We don't have a pet!
Challenge #258: Draw your closet
I sketched one half of my clothes closet. We live in an apartment building in New York City - with the types of closets that were popular in 1926, i.e. no walk-in closets. However, we are luckier than one of our sons who lives in a house from the late 1800s in Capitol Hill, Washington DC. They have only a single closet in the original house and rely on armoires as in the past. Here is my sliding door clothes closet (part of a post-1926 renovation), with only half exposed.
Challenge #259: Draw a view from your pet's perspective.
Although we don't have pets, I realized that my 5 month old grandson spends his days being moved from one place to another by the grown-ups in his life. And he has a limited view from some of these spots, much like a pet. It took me longest to decide how to answer this challenge. Here is 5 month old Zachary's aquarium view when he is in his bouncey seat.
Challenge #260: Draw your suitcase packed for a trip
This is my small suitcase that I take away for short train or car trips, but it is not yet packed for my March trip to Washington DC.
Challenge #261: Draw an Olympic Event
Although the ice skating events are my favorite, I really love the "soaring" ski jumpers, with their extremely clean lines.
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 Fabriano soft press watercolor paper and consists of 6 signatures with two folios in each. I'm thrilled to complete another one.
The Book Cover - made with blue and purple dyes.
The End Papers
Australian Reversed Piano Hinge Journal
I made a second watercolor journal this week - using Gwen Diehn's instructions for a sketchbook with removeable pages. EDM Members can access these instructions in a file on the message board. This looked like a fun technique to know - even though I like working in journals that can be numbered and stored on a shelf.
Exterior of 5 X 7.5" Book: Made with Fabriano Artistico (8 folios in 4 signatures) and TexLibris bookcloth.
Open Book - showing the spine: The watercolor paper was used as end papers to insert the page block into the cover, so only one of the folios in each of those two signatures are removeable.
The Concertina and Flat Hinge:
There is supposed to be a peper hinge which goes through the concertina tunnels to hold each folio in place. I just happened to be in the New York Garment District, and saw the perfect size "bones" to use instead. Here is a photo showing the bone passing through 3 concertina tunnels and fixing the folio. Each folio makes 4 pages in the book.
My opinion of this pen is still open, I find it impossible to draw with but easier to use after I have done a quick pencil sketch. So in my daily sketches, I'm trying to periodically use it instead of the Sakura Pigma Micron or Zig Millenium pens.
I copied another Rembrandt drawing, in pencil first, because he achieves so many line widths in his drawings. My biggest discovery was - this is watersoluble ink in the Pentel pen. So now I know it will never be my regular pen for pen, ink, and watercolor wash drawings.
I then decided to use it on one of my own sketches, instead of practicing from Rembrandt. While my baby grandson was asleep I sketched the top of the NYC Soldiers and Sailors monument - which can be seen out of my son's apartment window. Zachary is a master of 30 minute naps, so I knew that I had limited time to do the pencil sketch and then complete it with the Pentel pen. It was fast, loose, and fun. But I had to be very careful adding a little watercolor because the ink is not permanent.
I thoroughly enjoy my monthly figure drawing sessions - and last evening one of the two models was the lovely pregnant woman from my last session. The fast, i.e. 2 minute and 5 minute sketches are the most fun for me, probably because I get bored during the 20 minute poses when I think I should add faces and hands. Feet are rarely an option because I can't see them from where I sit.
2 minute Pose
2 Minute Pose Left and 5 Minute Pose Right
5 Minute Pose
5 Minute Pose Left and 10 Minute Pose Right
I realized that I chose to upload only the drawings that I did of the pregnant model. (there are always 19 total) She is just glowing - with a beautiful calm face and lovely smile.
Several practice journal pages from this week:
I am having trouble getting used to the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and decided that I should sketch a few Rembrandt drawings in pencil and then quickly draw them with the Pentel. I wish that I could control it better, but here they are for all to see. I tried to copy line for line from the Master from his very quick sketches.
I really liked the exercise described by Joanne last week on the EDM Message Board and finally found a full frontal magazine ad. My favorite drawing pencil is a Mahogany color watercolor pencil and unfortunately it doesn't scan very well. But I was pleased with the exercise and will continue to look for more photos.
I haven't scanned the last 3 EDM challenges, yet.
EDM Challenge #255: Draw the Person Sitting Next to You on Bus, Train, Airplane
The best I could do was to draw the person sitting across from me, at the Society of Illustrators, waiting for the live figure drawing session to begin. He was reading and therefore didn't know I quickly sketched him.
EDM Challenge #256: Draw Something Bubbly
There was a huge Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim, and I was inspired by one of his paintings to draw these bubbly-looking circles.
EDM Challenge # 257: Draw a Houseplant
This bamboo plant was a gift from students to my husband, and I'm amazed at how big these plants can grow from this tiny ceramic container and only water.
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 would make fun book covers for my art journals and remembered a blog entry about "paper-backing fabric as book cloth" by Roz Stendahl. I made 4 different pieces of cloth to try and decided to make a completely experimental journal - one that I wouldn't grieve over if it didn't meet my expectations.
I used Fabriano Artitico to make my watercolor journals with 140 lb soft press paper that was grain long - and could use full sheets to make books that were approximately 5.5" X 7.5". I love this size because it fits comfortably into a small leather backpack, is portrait format, and and the pages are just big enough for my drawings. However, last year Fabriano Artistico paper was changed to grain short and I could no longer make that size book from 1 1/2 sheets and with 2 full sheets, there was considerable waste. So this experimental book was redesigned to be 7.5" wide and 7.3" high. I never worked in a square format, so this was a perfect time to try it.
I followed Roz's instructions precisely (I thought), but was unable to glue (PVA) the fabric to the Thai mulberry paper without bubbles. I allowed it to dry and then carefully peeled it off and then tried option #2. In her blog entry Roz describes book cloth made by someone in her classes using Stitch Witchery as the fusible. I used Wonder Under (another polyamide) in machine applique since it was marketed in 1986 - and remembered a scientific study done by Drs. Evenson and Crews, of the International Quilt Study Center, at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, in which they studied "selected quilting products containing adhesives" (Quilters Newsletter, March 2004). Stitch Witchery and Wonder Under were comparable in their lightfastness tests and artifical aging experiments - both were proved acceptable for quilts intended as heirlooms to last less than 100 years. At 100 years of artificial aging, there was slight yellowing. Since I have no guarantee that my family won't put my sketchbooks in terminal storage considerably before 100 years, I considered this an acceptable risk!
Here are photos and a journal page celebrating my new, beloved, watercolor journal. The fabric was made with green and blue procion MX dyes and corn dextrin resist to make the squiggly lines. It was then ironed onto the paper using Wonder Under and handled just like book cloth to make my journal cover. I'm in love!!
Book Front:
Book Back:
Standing Book - the dark green is the metallic end paper
My Happy, Happy Journal Page:
We were in Washington DC over the holiday weekend visiting our grand daughter Annabelle. When she was born, I decided to keep a separate watercolor journal just for my daily sketches during the days I was visiting her.
This journal page shows the helicopter magnetic puzzle - the smallest Christmas present that we brought in her big, full Christmas gift bag and a window seat that houses her toys in a group of storage baskets.
Some of Annabelle's clothes that I wanted to remember - and her special infant backpack - that she put on and took off repeatedly over the weekend.
On Sunday morning we went to the Air and Space Museum at Dulles - an amazing place with an incredible number of planes, helicopters, missiles, and space vehicles. Annabelle loves to run through the gigantic hangar, so this sketch was done from a photo that I took as we ran with her.
On Monday morning we took the Metro to the Commerce Dept - and the National Aquarium. It is a lovely, small collection of tanks - and I was captivated by the seahorses. Their tails were so much longer than I had imagined and were wrapped around the tank plant holding them all in position. Annabelle wasn't nearly as interested in fish as she was in airplanes!
As I started 2010, I finally overcame my block in the chapter 2 exercises in the Bert Dodson book Keys to Drawing, and now I'm working on Chapter 3. This is a great set of exercises re: measurement since I often have trouble fitting figures onto the page.
Here are two figures drawn by marking the top, the bottom, and then the midpoint. Then a quick drawing was done and the actual midpoint measured by sighting before working further on the drawing. This is very different than my usual technique of starting with the head and then hoping that the feet fit on the page!
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 a tonal value strip and then using it to reproduce a black and white photo from the book. I know that I should make quick value sketches, but never do. And almost everything I draw or paint could be improved to increasing the darks and lightening the lights. I also really don't enjoy working with pencils (except watercolor pencils) for a finished drawing.
But I was motivated to get over my block and move on, because I really, really do want to work on the other chapters of this book. I did all of the other Dodson exercises in my daily sketchbook, but probably should have done this exercise on smooth drawing paper. Oh well! It's done, as is Exercise 2F and more experimentation with all of my pens and inks doing the same head over and over, and all of my pencils using the same figure over and over. These changes didn't change my preferences - and I discovered that I CAN'T draw with a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and I still hate charcoal and Conte pencils because of the scratchiness!!
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 a few of the 19 sketches I made - all were done in graphite in a 9 X 12" sketchbook.
This is one of 10 two minute sketches:
These are 3 of the 4 Five Minute Sketches:
This is one of 2 ten minute sketches:
You can probably tell that I was sitting in a place where I couldn't see the models' feet. But my skills sketching hands and feet are so weak, that is OK with me for the moment. I'm still concentrating on drawing the basic position - head, shoulders, and hips.
There were 3 twenty minute poses - but I don't like my drawings as much as the shorter, less overworked poses. I just purchased a new figure drawing sketchbook that will take water media and may try to draw with a watercolor pencil and then add water for shading during the 20 minute sketches in the future.
My days were full the month before Christmas, with Holiday preparation and activities, and Kate's wonderful Artist's Journal Class. I still love completing EDM Challenges, but had enough art to do each day without them. So here are 4 that I wanted to post before the end of the year (#250, 251, 253, 254). The only one I completed during the week it was assigned was "Draw a Pine," (#252)and that was possible because I brought home a pine bough from the Christmas Tree lot where we bought our Christmas tree.
EDM #250: Draw Something You Got for Free
I received a Christmas t-shirt last year when I made other purchases, and this is the embroidered design on the front.
EDM #251: Draw a Perfume or Perfume Product
This is my absolute favorite body cream and I need to use it daily during the winter months.
EDM #253: Draw a Sock
This is one from a pair of Christmas knee socks which I haven't worn in more than 15 years. Why do I still have them??
#254: Draw Something Joyful
We had almost 11 inches of snow last week and my husband and I walked into Central Park by 8AM to enjoy it. I love to be out in the snow and couldn't wait to bundle up and explore our area of the Park. This drawing is of my husband in his sheepskin coat and mittens. I still draw and paint family members from the back ONLY! And I love how recognizeable they are!
Yesterday I took care of two of my grandchildren in the morning and then went to W57th Street area to see the fabulous Bergdorf Goodman Holiday windows. They are really not to be believed! This composite page has the reindeer design from Zach's pjs that I put in his Christmas stocking and one of the very small paper cutouts from a Christmas window in the jewelry display.
I took my daughter and my grand daughter Sydney to the Nutcracker Ballet at Lincoln Center on Wednesday night to celebrate her Dec 20th birthday. The evening fulfilled all of my expectations - it was magical in every way. She watched every single minute of the ballet, with rapt attention, but loved the Snowflakes dancing in a blizzard on stage and especially the Mouse King the best. I now need to find a photo of the Mouse King to add to my journal for her. If anyone reading this has a photo of the Mouse King from the NYC Balanchine production, I'd LOVE to have a copy!
Sydney - looking very grown up - for her first night at the ballet. Loved the rhinestone headband! And the silver bracelet from her great grandmother (on my last blog page) was a big hit!
On Monday we bought our Christmas Tree and I picked up a pine bough for EDM Challenge #252. I was able to really study the way that the needles grew from the branch, and on this one there were 5 long needles from each little knob along the it. Fascinating!! I used my rigger brush and both tube watercolors and paint removed from the tip of my watercolor pencil.
Two of my grandchildren have birthdays this week, making the holiday schedule even more complicated. Long time readers of this blog may remember our frantic dash to London when Callum arrived 6 weeks early - and one day before Sydney's 2nd birthday.
Tonight I'm taking my daughter, and Sydney to their first NY City Ballet production of The Nutcracker for her birthday. My mother, Sydney's great grandmother, gave me a a small silver bracelet to give to her to wear to Lincoln Center. We are very excited!
Saturday we took our 6 year old grandson, Henry, to his second NY Philharmonic Young People's Concert. At Kidzone, an hour before the concert, he was able to try playing a cello and a harp, compose a bar of music which was then played by a violinist, and watch Instrument Village play compositions by young composers. While he listened to them for 10-15 minutes, I sketched a few of the musicians.
On Sunday morning, the Meet-Up Central Park Drawing Group met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to sketch. We started in the Greek and Roman Galleries with two 30 minute sketch sessions. I drew 3 statues with watercolor pencil, and may still add water.
We then moved to the American painting exhibit - and I sketched a painting by Everett Shin, using watercolor pencils to add color. Only pencils and pens are permitted in the Museum, so I surreptitiously added water with a Niji waterbrush, to paint it as we left the gallery.
In Kate's "Artist's Journal class" we are exploring various media that we own or have never used and this week I sketched my whole repetoire of pens and the 3 watercolor triads that I use for mixing colors. After documenting what I had, I decided to make a trip to NY Central Art Supply today to learn about nibs for dip pens and to bring some home to try.
Here are all of the sample pages done as over the last 3 days:
Here are two EDM Challenges from several weeks ago. One of my art goals for 2009 was to draw the EDM Challenges weekly, but I'm not as diligent as I was in years past. I never did several of them, and seem to be late posting them more frequently.
Here is my husband's lock for his gym locker and I think the only "coffee pot" among many in our apartment that I haven't drawn and painted previously. This is a one mug Melitta coffee filter - which makes an acceptable cup of filtered French Roast coffee.
Now on to #250 and 251....
This is a very busy week in our household - my husband and I do all of the cooking for family and friends on Thanksgiving (20 adults this year) and we're not getting any younger. This year, we moved the venue to my daughter Rachel's apartment, but that meant that we were caterers - a new challenge. But we didn't need to set up the apartment which was a wonderful help. It was the year when all 3 of our children and their families were with us. We have several hours of champagne with 7 hor d'oeuvres, then soup, salad, turkey, sausage stuffing, fresh baked bread, etc, etc,
Tuesday: I bought great carrots to use for our soup and decided to sketch them while cooking.
Wednesday: I used fresh lime juice for a recipe and cut up all of the mushrooms for soup - and sketched and painted both of these while taking a break from cooking.
Thursday: The day was a whirlwind, and after the guests left and the children were asleep, I sketched and painted my 2 year old grandson's stuffed flamingo. He loves flamingos and entertains us constantly by assuming a one-legged flamingo pose and flapping his wings. When my daughter came in the morning to pick us up with all of the food, he was hugging the flamingo and shared it briefly with me. I would like to make this into a Christmas ornament this year for his stocking so none of us will forget this great stage.
Yesterday my husband and I went to our grand daughter's pre-K class to talk about our ancestry. All of our parents were born in the United States. All of my husband's grandparents were born in Belorus and emigrated to the US from 1900-1908. My grandparents and 5 of my great grandparents, were born here. But my great grandmother, the only one I knew, was born in County Armagh, Ireland and moved here alone, following her fiancee, in 1887. She was a really cute, very elderly woman when I was a child - somewhat deaf and never without her black cane.
Here is a picture of Annie Ballance which was taken upon her arrival in New York City. When I researched our family, I found her passenger list, which recorded 2 pieces of baggage - both of which I now own.
This is a picture of Sydney standing near the largest of her steamer trunks, which is in our apartment. I scraped off the paper cover and stained both trunks 50 and 30 years ago - and have moved them from place to place since then. This trunk has a wallpaper lining and glass top filled with family photos. All of the quilts I made that are no longer in use are carefully folded inside.
I was delighted to finally paint both trunks as part of my journal page from yesterday - reflecting our visit to Syd's class.
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 already been added to the lamposts for Christmas.
When I carry my sketchbook and pencil case, I also carry this artist grade travel set of watercolors by Daler-Rowney, but half the time I draw when I'm out and then paint using my regular Winsor-Newton palette at home. I plan to replace these paints with my palette, but never do...maybe next year. The size and shape of this travel set is wonderful - and the mixing areas include the flat areas and 4 deep end wells.
I am currently taking Kate Johnson's "Keeping an Artist's Journal" on-line class, so I will probably upload daily journal pages more frequently to my blog because I need to also upload them to our class Flickr pool to share with Kate and my classmates.
Tueday: Busy Day, so I sketched my lecturer at the New York Public Library Tuesday evening. I did have paints with me, but felt very conspicuous the way the seats were set up. I decided not to finish painting her as I experiment with different ways to compose my artist journal pages.
Wednesday: Melanie Testa and 3 other art buddies played with Melanie's method of tracing images from our journals, painting them, painting a background on WC paper in our journals, and then gluing the two layers together. These were sea gull images from my summer vacation journal - and a link to the original journal image from my blog in June 2009. Her method is described in an article she wrote in the May-June 2009 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors.
Thursday: Two leaves I picked up from the sidewalk when walking home from nursery school with 4 of our grandchildren. They were sketched and painted when I came home from babysitting last night. I have no idea what kind of trees they are, but every autumn I find a few of these gorgeous patterned leaves on New York sidewalks!
Last night was my 3rd figure drawing session at the Society of Illustrators in New York City and I came home with 19 sketches, even though I really didn't like one of the two models. This was a new experience and I had to convince myself that I didn't need to like the model or their poses - it was all an opportunity to practice drawing.
The standard format is 10 two minute poses, 4 five minute poses, 2 ten minute poses, and 3 twenty minute poses, with breaks, over 3 hours. I'm posting one from each group.
This is the other model - small, really skinny, shaved head except for a circle of bright yellow short hair in a circle on the top of her head. However, it was the contorted positions that she took which I didn't like, except this one.
I loved the setting, really enjoyed the live piano and double bass music throughout the evening, and appreciated the glass of red wine while sketching.
EDM Challenge #246: Draw a Pair of Gloves:
I love my black shearling mittens, especially when it is really cold in New York City. But they just looked like two black blobs on my journal page, so I sketched my black leather gloves instead.
EDM Challenge #247: Draw Something Creepy
Approximately once each year our local TV channel shows footage from surveillance cameras in fast food restaurants - and after the restaurant is closed, the camera captures the image of rats in the kitchen. It really creeps me out - and also makes sure that I never visit that fast food chain - because of course I can't remember which branch it was in this big city.
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 of New York during a visit there this week.
The following day we took care of our newest grandchild and I sketched his "lovey" - a British Jellycat animal called Scrumpty Elly. My daughter-in-law takes his picture with this animal every month to see Zach's growth. I sketched him with my non-permanent Varsity pen and then just wet the elephant to create the color.
I made two new codex watercolor journals this week, and while I had my bookbinding equipment out, I made two watercolor pamphlet style journals with waste watercolor paper from a few recent recycled books. One of them is a gift for a friend, the other may be the perfect watercolor booklet for my grand daughter.
Today we took our oldest grandchild to the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concert and I had approximately 10 minutes before the lights went down to quickly sketch the stage. Henry and I talked about the colors so I could remember them until I got home.
Here are 3 more journal pages - I'm on a roll!
I love watching Project Runway and periodically like to sketch the winning design the evening that I watch it. Here is the oversized sweater and paper-bag waste pants by Althea that all of the women judges wanted to wear, right then.
The following day I thought alot about my own love of design and specifically two outfits that I made when I was a senior in college. The one on the left is a suede suit that I made with 5 skins that my boyfriend of the time gave me for my birthday. I had enough suede to make the skirt and front panels of the jacket. The jacket sleeves, back, and front button panel were made from a wool-silk tweed blend that matched the suede. The dress on the left was made as a final exam in a semester long flat pattern design course that I took (after my premed requirements were done and I was already admitted to medical school). I selected a dress from a NYTimes newspaper advertisement and made the pattern and then the dress from a green wool tweed. The top was a blouson style and the skirt had a deep inverted pleat and slant pockets. I don't have photos of either design - amazing now that I have 10 photos of everything with my digital camera.
Yesterday my husband and I went to the Fall Impressionist and Modern Previews at Christies and Sotheby's Auction Houses in New York City - one of our favorite semi-annual activities. We start at Christies, then have lunch at Dos Caminos and end at Sothebys - and in the process see well over 500 pieces of art that will be auctioned on Nov 3rd and 4th. I loved a work on paper by George Grosz and sketched a detail from it - a man's head.
Six years ago, when our first grandchild was born, I bought a very small Halloween book from the holiday table at Barnes and Noble. It is shaped like this pumpkin, outlined in black, and the front cover is made from very soft velour and then stuffed. It is a favorite with each one of our grandchildren - probably based on size, texture, color and a very simple story of children "trick or treating." It remains in our book cabinet all year and is enjoyed by them regardless of the season. The bat, witch's hat, black cat, and ghost are images I sketched from the book illustrations. The vertical black lines are another experiment in varying the backgrounds of my drawings
I don't know what number this EDM Challenge is - #245 or 246 depending on whether the Free Choice last week was assigned a number.
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 in my first sketchbook (2003) based on exercises derived from the Gwen Diehn book The Decorated Page, but have not done it since. My daughter found a new leather pencil case for me and I wanted to draw it with one of each category of tool I carry in it. To make the background more interesting, I decided to prepaint it, let it dry, and then proceed with my drawing.
Anatomy for Action Figure Drawing: Angela Gair and Anthony Colbert, in their book The Sketchbook Kit, recommend that you "amuse yourself by drawing little sketches that show how the skeleton moves, in order to understand how the joints operate." I love this concept and finally tried drawing their little skeletons, just in time for Halloween.
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 made this batch two years ago and put them away to use again. But for a variety of reasons, I haven't dyed another piece of cloth since then - and forgot about them.
I'm off to the Houston Quilt Festival tomorrow morning, to learn more surface design techniques and have a mini-vacation. This is the 35th anniversary of Festival and my 25th year as a registrant. My sketchbook will go with me and hopefully I'll at least have some sketches of conference participants in their colorful clothes when I come home.
I went to my second figure drawing session last evening at the New York Society of Illustrators with my friend Istar. On Tuesday evenings the models are nude, on Thursday evenings the models may wear parts of costumes. I wanted to experience both - and liked both evenings equally well. The setting is wonderful and there is live music during the entire 3 hours. I came home with 9 two minute, 4 five minute, 2 ten minute, and 3 twenty minute sketches. I'm just going to post examples of each.
The models posed with multiple hula hoops - the male model in yellow harem pants and the female model in a red bra and black leggings. The addition of the hoops made the 2 minute sketches more difficult, but fun.
Two models and a hula hoop even made 5 minute sketches a challenge.
I wanted to remember the costumes in this 10 minute sketch and colored parts with watercolor pencils - but the paper didn't take water well and buckled slightly. For this pose, he put on a black hat and soft ball necklace and she put on an umbrella hat. And she really did have dyed shocking pink hair!
A ten minute pose, with one sitting and one standing - and in different costumes:
Both disrobed, but the male model wore his black hat and brown boots for the final 20 minute sketch. I continue to have trouble fitting everything on the page when I'm working quickly (just one more thing to work on in 2010!), so you can't see his boots.
I love to copy drawings from the Masters when I find one in a museum exhibit that really speaks to me.
I have a book of Delacroix pastels and love his drawings/pastels/watercolors from Morocco. When I saw several originals in a recent exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I decided that I needed to visit the New York Public Library to see the book Delacroix in Morocco (which is out of print and really expensive). While there, I sketched this figure, took a digital photo of the print in the book, and then painted it at home.
I loved a drawing by Dutch artist Jacob Backer (1608-1651) which hangs in the current Vermeer exhibit at the Met and returned for a second 30 minute visit just to do this sketch. The small original is on light blue paper with black and white chalk, but I did mine in sepia watercolor pencil, in case I decided to "paint" the drawing at any time.
Tonight I am going to my second figure drawing session at the Society of Illustrators and did the following 90 second posemaniacs.com drawings as a warm-up. These figures are computer generated and are frequently in tortured positions, but they change randomly every 90 seconds so I can't think much about what I'm drawing which is great practice.
I was very lazy about doing EDM Challenges last month and even worse about uploading them to my blog. I finally decided to post them all at once - and catch up. One of my annual art goals is to complete each weekly sketch because it:
1. Gives me a subject for one of my daily sketches each week.
2. Stretches my drawing and painting skills.
EDM Challenges #238 - Draw Your First Aid Kit - and #239 - Draw What Has Scared You
My husband and I are both physicians so we have First Aid items in random places in our apartment. When thinking about this challenge, I immediately remembered my Aircasts - one for my right ankle and one for my left ankle. I had two very serious ankle sprains due to mis-steps and the use of an aircast allowed me to walk within 24-48 hours and continue to heal during 3-4 months each time. I live in a City where walking is really essential - my car is parked 3 blocks away from our apartment and the nearest bus and subway stop are both one long block away each. I was really scared after my first serious ankle injury after moving back to Manhattan, because I realized how easily I could be apartment-bound.
EDM Challenge #240: My Favorite Pencils
EDM Challenge #241: Draw the View from Your Kitchen Window
This is my usual view - a beautiful stained glass window approximately 15 feet away, with lovely concerts that I can enjoy when both of our windows are open.
This is my current view. There is work being done on our apartment building and there is a scaffold below the church window and a board protecting it. I miss it!
EDM Challenge #242: Draw a Favorite Tchatzkah
I could find nothing around our apartment except my figure drawing mannequin. I collect books and fabric and try to keep tchatzkahs to a minimum.
EDM Challenge #243: Draw a Pillow
I love fabric and frequently bring back an interesting piece when we travel. This is a pillow that I made with a piece of Fortuny fabric that I bought in Venice. The fabric has an overall design of lions - only one of which I sketched.
We visited our youngest grand daughter, Annabelle, this past weekend and I added more pages to the watercolor journal I dedicated to our visits with her. Previous pages are visible by clicking on the Washington DC category.
I rarely sketch my grandchildren because it never looks like them. Annabelle is much cuter than I made her in this drawing. The small sketch shows her running around the Natural History Museum with us on Friday.
Saturday we had breakfast at Eastern Market and enjoyed the many flower vendors - everything was so bright and fresh.
We then went to Oktoberfest on Barrack's Row, the highlight of which was the childrens' petting zoo. There were two very small goats there with their Mother that all of the children loved.
The goat on the left was drawn with a Pilot Varsity Pen, but the watercolor paper in the Cachet Linen Journal was too absorbent and it was difficult to wet the ink to shade the goat. The one on the right was painted with a neutral gray watercolor wash.
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 of Kings College. We are a Columbia University family and Kings College was the original college which became Columbia University after the Revolution.
I was gvien an applique pattern that was drafted from a photo in a NYC subway book, but decided that I wanted to make my own. I photographed many of the mosaics which run along both the uptown and downtown platform walls trying to find one that wasn't too damaged by age.
I drew and painted the mosaic in my daily sketchbook, to try to familiarize myself with the complex design before making a new pattern and selecting fabrics.
I just completed the applique square - which required more time than any single 11 inch square I ever made - mostly because I decided that I wanted to applique every stone of the building on individually!
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, or 5 minute figures from one of two nude figure photo books for artists that I bought. I'm very glad that I did the prep work over the last several years because I never felt overwhelmed last evening.
I met my dear friend Istar at the Society for Illustrators so I would be with someone who knew the location and process. The setting is lovely - very open space, live music, a small bar for a glass of wine during the 20 minute break, and hundreds of inspiring illustations lining the walls on all floors. We had two models - one short and full figured, the other tall, thin, and beautifully coifed. I frequently couldn't see below their ankles, but on the short poses, I didn't even have time to worry about it.
The 3 hours flew by - and I did all 19 sketches - 2, 5, 10, and 20 minutes in length. I'm just so thrilled to finally sketch live models that I'm uploading a total of 7 to this page. All of the sketches were done with a Koh-i-noor Progresso 6B pencil on 8 x 11" paper in a Working Class Studio, bound, sketchbook that I bought for half-price at Barnes and Noble. I have no idea where I got the pencil, but it was smooth and wonderful on the paper.
Two of Ten 2 minute sketches:
Two of four 5 minute sketches:
Both 10 minute sketches:
Two of three 20 minute sketches:
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 after a gray rainy Saturday
There were two turtles on a rock in the green-brown water - and I could just see their silhouettes. In front of me, at the edge of the rocks were purple flowers that I had never seen before. I spent most of the first hour watching for more turtles.
'
Aprroximately 5 minutes before we met to share our sketchbooks, I quickly sketched and painted the lovely woman sketching in front of me.
During the second hour, I moved to the other side of the rocks, faced south, and sketched the Central Park South skyline. I was very happy that I brought my watercolor pencils with me to quickly block in the trees.
I'm really enjoying the Meetup Sketching sessions. Although you can work on one thing for the entire time, the goal of the session is to sketch quickly in several different locations - which both sets parameters for space and time. And it is so much fun to see the work of others - who may have had different tools and paper sizes, but had the same scene to observe and document that you did.
National Academy Museum: I visited the National Academy Museum for the first time this week to see the current exhibit "Reconfiguring the Body in American Art." The Museum and School of Art are in a wonderful building on Museum Mile in New York City, just north of the Met and Guggenheim. I loved this bronze sculpture and sketched it with a watercolor pencil.
Cricket in Times Square: Our oldest grandchild came for an overnight visit before starting school this week and we finished reading The Cricket in Times Square, by George Selden, a book from our library from his mother's childhood. We read 1-2 chapters right before bed each time he stayed overnight and he remembered the characters and plot better than I did. After he went to bed, I sketched the main characters, based on the illustrations by Garth Williams. Henry loved seeing the journal page in the morning and suggested that I do another page inspired by the Goodby Party that ends the book!
Statue of Liberty: We told Henry that he could choose what he wanted to do the following day and he requested a trip to the Statue of Liberty. Like many New Yorkers, my husband and I had never been there. We passed it on boats many times, but never landed on Liberty Island to see the Statue up close. We had a fabulous time (in spite of long security check lines) - great boat rides to and from on the top deck, a visit to the Museum, a walk up 156 steps to the observation deck on the top of the pedestal, and a walk around the base. We had 10 minutes before we caught the return boat and I sketched Lady Liberty very quickly and painted her at home.
I continue to practice figure drawing even though I have yet to go to a Figure Drawing class. There are many drop-in places in New York City, so I have no excuse now that I'm retired and have more time to just play!
In these two journal pages I sketched hands from ads in the New York Times Fashion Magazine and then started to work my way through photos showing American sign language letters. The drawing was done with a watercolor pencil and then water was applied.
Yesterday the Meetup Group met at the Alice in Wonderland Statue at the Conservatory Water (we call it the Toy Boat Pond) in Central Park.
I was anxious to get home to our newest grandchild (Zachary), his brother Robbie, and Annabelle who came to meet her cousin Zachary this weekend. Therefore, I only stayed for two rounds of sketches with the group. The weather was wonderful and the Park, as I walked past the Boathouse and Bethesda Fountain, was wonderfully crowded.
For my first sketch, I did the Mad Hatter that is on the right front of the statue and painted him while there.
I then sketched Alice, from the right side of the statue, while drawing and sitting on a bench in the shade. Only the mushroom was painted then - and I'm not sure whether I will add color. My heart wants to dress her in a blue dress with a white apron like the children's book character instead of bronze!
My last drawing was of the White Rabbit and his pocket watch - again painted in bronze colors.
My grandchildren have climbed on this statue many times over the last few years and it was great fun having the inspiration and time to really get to know it through drawing.
I took a few photos when we visited Zachary in the hospital and used them as references for these paintings. It will be fun to see when my figure sketching skills have improved to the point where I can sketch him better. So far I sketch my grandchildren from the back because I can't capture their facial features.
Zachary's Baby Quilt: My daughter-in-law brought me nursery crib linens when she finally found some that she liked. We decided that I would use a star pattern, like I did for Zach's big brother Robbie's baby quilt. Robbie's quilt was yellow and blue with an all over star pattern.
I selected fabrics from my collection, including 3 fabrics that were in his parent's wedding quilt and Robbie's baby quilt. I love the continuity and did the same for my daughter's wedding quilt and baby quilts for her 3 children. This was my journal page for the day when I planned the quilt and started the process.
Racing to the Finish: I needed to speed up the quilting when Zachary arrived one week early, and spent two full days finishing the quilting of the border triangles and attaching the binding. It is hard to speed up the hand quilting process, it just requires marathon quilting sessions for me while watching old movies on TV!
The Finished Quilt: I delivered this quilt to my son and his new son Zachary yesterday and it looks wonderful in the baby nursery! I always feel as if I am wrapping up each and every grandchild in my love - in ways that just add to our bonds.
Annabelle and her parents just arrived from Washington, DC to meet her new cousin. She is too young to realize that she is not the family baby any longer!
In Manhattan apartments, there are whole organizational systems created for under bed storage. But we've resisted so far and I have only 2 items under our bed.
My First Briefcase: I bought this brown leather briefcase at Frost Brothers department store in San Antonio Texas in the late 70s and used it for many years while traveling back and forth to the Hospital. When we moved to New York City in the early 90s, I found that a large leather bookbag with shoulder straps made it easier to walk between our apartment and my car, so my briefcase remained in my office 99% of the time. When I retired in July I almost gave it away. This was a great opportunity to create a memory drawing. For now it will remain under our bed in a storage container.
My New Papercutter: When I took a bookbinding class last year I worried about my ability to cut Davey board at home without the wonderful commercial papercutter that was in the Studio. I traveled around our neighborhood - from places like Kinkos to Staples - trying out their copy center papercutters on my sample of the book board. This X-acto paper cutter was the winner. I have used it to cleanly cut book boards for 10 watercolor journals and keep it under the bed in its original box for safety and storage.
We lived in San Antonio, Texas for 18 years before returning to the Northeast and New York City and one of our very favorite dishes was green chicken enchiladas. We had friends and family here for dinner last evening and before I started cooking, I sketched and painted the main ingredients for the sauce: tomatillas, onion, garlic, and jalapenos.
I realized that I had never included any information about my dear friend Paula Nadelstern's current Art Quilt exhibit at the Folk Art Museum as she and I were talking during dinner. The EveryDay Matters art group has many art quilters and this morning I decided to add links to her fabulous work for them to see.
Paula's website has a link to her current museum exhibit - and a gallery section with photos of many of the art quilts that are all based on kaleidoscopes. For those close enough to NYC, the exhibit also contains kaleidoscopes from some of the major artists for you to see.
I joined the Central Park Sketching and Art Meetup Group this Spring and finally attended my second session. Although they usually meet monthly in Central Park, today's session was held at the newly renovated Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village.
I arrived a few minutes early and did a quick warm-up sketch of cone flowers in one of the many flower beds in the Park I sketched it in pen, took a photo, and painted it at home this evening.
It was a very hot day in the City and for the first 30 minute drawing session I sat on the ground in the shade under Washington's Arch and sketched. The first sketch is of George Washington as Commander-in-Chief of the Army - one of two statues on the north side of the Arch. The Park and the Arch underwent major renovation (2007-09). This was my first visit since the Arch scaffolding was taken down.
While I was sketching George, a 4 man doo-wop singing group began performing with a bass accompanist and I had just enough time to do another sketch.
During the second 30 minute sketch I went off to find the Speed Chess players that are usually playing at the Southwest corner of the Park. I was immediately attracted to one in a geometic black and white printed shirt with a white scarf on his head. I did the drawing with my Pilot Varsity Pen and then spread the ink around the drawing with a Niji waterbrush.
The group will meet again in two weeks at the Conservatory Water (Central Park at 72nd St entrance).
I finally added watercolor to the remaining drawings from our recent beach visit with Annabelle. Early one morning, when we were finishing our beach walk, a plein air painting class was just beginning on the deck of the Snack Shack at Cooper's Beach. Most appeared to be oil painters. I watched them for several minutes, then took pictures and used the photos to recreate the images.
This was the first time that 1 year old Annabelle saw the ocean and she was very wary. But my husband and I were able to take her for a little walk at the edge of the surf. Her father, our son, took this picture and provided it for me to sketch for my journal page. Someday I will need to collect together all of the sketches I've done of my family from the back. It would be a unique portfolio....
We just spent several days in Southampton with our youngest grandchild, Annabelle. Our other 4 grandchildren live in Manhattan and spend lots of time with us. Annabelle needs to figure out who we are and reestablish trust with each visit. These are the first 3 journal pages from our visit.
When we arrived the pink hydrangeas at the house were finally in bloom and we brought one flower in to brighten an otherwise rainy Sunday.
This is Annabelle, on arrival in Southampton, sitting so nicely next to the pink hydrangea. The circle to the left of the picture is one of the bubbles being blown as she plays with her cousins.
The following day Annabelle played with her cousin Sydney's flip-flops and I decided that these may be the only butterflies that I would see all week. So this is my entry for EDM Challenge #235 - Draw a butterfly.
We had beautiful sunny days and after a morning walk on the neach with Annabelle, we took her to the village park and children's playground. Wen we arrived these 4 "friends" were clustered together on the dock and I was able to rapidly sketch them before they swam off.
EDM Challenge #234: Draw Something That Belongs to Someone Else
We gave one of our grandchildren the Vtech Kidizoom camera last week for his 4th Birthday. It is a robust point-and-shoot digital camera made for children and he took 600+ photos during the first 24 hours! I set up a folder for him on my computer and we saved a few of the first pictures. Now I need to decide how I can take our 4 oldest grandchildren on a "photoshoot" in Central Park with their children's digital cameras.
We made our annual visit to see friends near Kenne, NH last week and here are two daily sketches. The family has two yellow labs that accompany them to the lake house each summer, and even though I have lots of photos of the dogs, this is the first time that I sketched them. This is Buffy - awake and asleep.
The rains that are plaguing us this summer began midway through our second day - making me nervous that we wouldn't be able to drive out the dirt road the next day. Thus my sketch was of a sunflower that was in our guest room.
Challenge #232: Draw The Last Thing You Bought:
I am not a shopper, unless I'm in a book or fabric store. The last things I purchased were books. Two weeks ago I bought childrens' books from the Cat in the Hat Learning Library series: Clam-I-Am! and I Can Name 50 Trees Today for our grandchildren. This week I bought two summer books for me to read on our travels.
EDM Challenge #233: My Favorite Drink
I love coffee and enjoy my first quiet hour of each day, when I drink several mugs of filtered coffee, and plan the day. This is so important to me, that I must be able to make coffee in hotel rooms so it is ready as soon as I wake up and even before I shower and get dressed. During a Christmas visit to London in 1988, I bought myself a present at Harrods - a Russell Hobbs filter travel coffee pot. I have enjoyed it on many trips since then.
Our guests returned with us to New York City after "beach week" and we spent the afternoon at the Met. I did a quick sketch of Sara and Renee while they were looking at some of the exhibits in The Pictures Generation Exhibit.
The 3 of us then went to the Model as Muse Costume Institute Exhibit while our husbands went to the Art of Afghanistan Exhibit. Since I've already sketched in the fashion exhibit several times, I concentrated on accessories.
We spent last week in Southampton with friends that we have known for many years. Each morning our group of 6 went for a two mile walk along the beach, enjoying the beautiful weather, watching the activity of the gulls, and collecting "treasures" to be sketched. There were very few shells, in contrast to the same week last year. After our walk, we sat at the Snack Shack, had breakfast, and sketched our Still life of treasures.
Clockwise: Gull feather, skate egg sack, moon snail, crab claw, and small crab shell.
This is the inside of the junk drawer in my bedside cabinet - SIMPLIFIED! In the basket on the left front one pen represents about 50, one highliter about 12, one emery board about 6. On the right front are individual packets of yearly Filofax calendar pages from 1993 through 2008. The black leather zipper case in the back contains some information about renting apartments in Europe. The compartments on the right back are in a plastic silverware drawer insert and contain much more stuff in each section. On the far right back is an old Altoids tin and a pen case full of fountain pens that I love but no longer use!
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 and we were extremely lucky to have her moving around her enclosure and for a short while sitting on a ledge directly in front of us. As she jomped from rock to rock, frequently jumping up another level in the process, you sensed what powerful animals they are.
We ended our sketching in the Tropic Zone - a huge enclosure that is so full of tropical birds and other animals that you need to pay attention to see all but the most brightly colored. Here are two of those. I can't look at a Toucan without conjuring up a Fruit Loops box on our breakfast table.
Yesterday I met 4 "Art Buddies" at the Central Park Zoo for our own mini-sketchcrawl. I was very unsure about my ability to sketch moving animals so when I arrived 20 minutes early, I did a 10 minute sktech of one of the animal sculptures on the Delacorte Clock and then a 10 minute sketch of a mother standing in line with a double stroller and backpack. These were my warm-ups!
When everyone arrived, we went to the Penguin House, where the Chin-Strap and Gentoo penguins were being hand fed. It was difficult to sketch these frisky guys. I took some photos to make sure that I remembered the coloration, and finished them at home.
There was also a tank with several tufted puffins and ducks in the Penguin House and I sketched them from an angle where I could see above and below the water line. They were never still long enough for me to see the effect of the water line on their images, so I ignored the refraction error. But I also took no photos so adding a watercolor wash at home this morning was difficult.
The polar bears were very cooperative - Gus slept the entire time and we couldn't see him very well. Ida stayed in several positions long enough for all of us to sketch her.
I still have 3 more pages of sketches to paint at home, including the newest member of the Zoo - the snow leopard. It was an amazing day - sunny, cool, and lots of fun to be with 4 other women who all were equally challenged and enjoying the experience.
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 driving 10 miles against rush hour traffic in the City took me almost 40 minutes from door to door. Of course I first needed to walk from my apartment to our garage - stopping at the fruit and vegetable vendor on the street to get fruit for breakfast. Then I always stopped to talk with the Garage supervisor about her newest baby. At the other end, I walked several blocks from the parking garage to my building - checking out the flowers that were in bloom or following the progress of autumn leaves or new buds in the Spring.
I love drawing maps and started each of my 3 London sketchbooks with ever more detailed maps of the area in Chelsea where my daughter and her family lived.
We just returned from a Family Holiday at the Beach - and I need to scan and post at least one sketchbook page from our visit.
The few days surrounding Retirement Day were so busy that I'm finally able to post EDM Challenge #229 - Joys of Summer - just as we leave Manhattan for a "beach weekend." For those in the US, have a wonderful, safe Holiday and draw and paint lots for all of us to see. Be back next week with more journal pages about our long, early morning walks on the beach.
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 King's College which later became Columbia University. We are a Columbia family - with 6 undergraduate and graduate degrees among my husband and children. I went down to the Chambers Street IRT station to see and photograph these old platform mosaics and then sketched and painted one as I planned my quilt applique square.
My husband and I went to the James Ensor exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art on Saturday. I knew very little about the artist, and enjoyed seeing his paintings. But of course his sketchbook and drawings were the highlight for me. Since the sun was out, and we were so tired of daily rain, we sat in the Sculpture Garden where I sketched Picasso's She Goat and my husband did the Saturday NY Times crossword puzzle.
Today I retired, almost exactly 40 years after I graduated from medical school. During that time I worked at the University of Chicago, The University of California at San Diego, The University of Texas in San Antonio, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In those 40 years, the number of women increased from <10% of each medical school class to slightly more than 50% of each class. There was no day care when my first child was born, and 3 year olds were only "supposed" to be away from their mothers and in nursery school two mornings each week. I loved my career, but my greatest joy was my 3 children and now my grandchildren. I feel fortunate that I have so many active interests that I will never be bored. I sketched my work suit from today to my bathing suit for the beach on Thursday!
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 the night and Sydney brought 6 beautiful peonies. While she was using her new paints, I sat with her at the table and painted the peonies - one of my very favorite flowers.
After dinner and before bed we watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and after they went to bed, I painted Harry and Hedwig. I had book 1 for several years but waited to read it until I had a grandchild old enough to read it at the same time. For the past month my daughter read it with Henry and promised him the movie when they were done. We loved it - although Henry thought the end was really scary. On to the second book in the Harry Potter series over the next month.
Our youngest Grandchild spent the weekend with us in New York City - we don't see her nearly enough, so it was our first opportunity to see her walking. On Saturday morning her sneakers and my son's sneakers were next to each other, requiring a quick sketch and journal page.
She played wonderfully by herself when all of her cousins weren't surrounding her in a whirlwind. The wooden peg set that we bought in Zurich and that her father loved as a child was the biggest hit. My son took a photo of her squatting, and carefully placing two pegs back into the board!
This is a drawing of my tote/book bag that I use for work. It is made of a heavy canvas and has one zipper pocket and two mesh side pockets - one of which always contains my umbrella. It is black and I decided to draw it with a Pilot Varsity pen and then brush water over the non-permanent ink. I just felt like playing!
Tuesday was my birthday. I spent the day in New Jersey with my 90 year old mother and then returned to Manhattan to have dinner with my husband and oldest grandchild. Henry graduated from kindergarten last Friday - and came to stay with us -across the Park - for a few days because his siblings were still in pre-school each day. We had a wonderful dinner at Naples 45 and then as we were walking back to the entrance at Grand Central Station, I took a photo of Henry and my husband carrying the left over pizza.
After getting Henry into bed, I only had enough energy to sketch some 90 second pose maniac figures - this time in different colored pencils,
The next evening I sketched from the photo.
I am currently doing a countdown until I retire - 40 years after I started my first full time job! I have only 7 more work days - scattered over the next 2+ weeks!
As a Grandmother of 5, ages 1-5, sticky to me means lollipops or melting ice pops. This was one just waiting for Callum to want/need it. I'm told that Dylan's Candy Bar in Manhattan is amazing!
My husband is a Do-It-Yourself guy who can fix anything. It was really easy for him to produce screws of almost any type or length for me to draw.
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 a long day, with two hats out next to my bag on the bed, I decided that I was only capable of getting these two hats sketched and painted. The colors really also clash in real life.
Real life schedules got in the way of daily posting again this week, so I have 3 days of journal pages being uploaded this morning.
I made lemon squares for dessert on Tuesday right before bed and was too tired to draw anything except the small, very fine strainer that I used to add the powdered sugar on top of the squares.
No time to even consider something more than a 5 minute figure drawing sketch at bedtime. When will I learn how to guage the size of the paper, or scale down my drawing even more? It is really hard to make ballet "turnout" convincing in this position unless you can see the position of the back foot!! Another lesson learned. This was sketched with a watercolor pencil and then "painted" quickly with a waterbrush when my timer rang at 5 minutes.
A full day at work yesterday and then to the theater to see Jeffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon to see "Exit the King." I planned ahead for my daily journal page and doodled during a 90 minute morning meeting. I usually don't leave drawings unpainted, but it was fun to sketch in pen (without a quick pencil sketch) and I wanted to remember my graphite-free page.
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 the North Woods. I have never been more surprised. Even the woods that we visit in New Hampshire each summer aren't this dense.
Anyone who has followed my blog over time, knows by now that landscapes definitely do not excite me when I'm looking for something wonderful to draw or paint. But I thought I should at least post photos from the walk today for anyone who has never been northeast of the Central Park reservoir. These specific photos were selected because they show the wildness and density of the trees and foliage. I don't know the person who happens to be standing at the waterfall.
Since I didn't even pull out my sketchbook on our walk, tonight I used the Virtual Sketch Date photo for June as inspiration. I needed some figure drawing practice anyway this week - and note that in 2009, I am brave enough to put faces on my figures.
This morning we went to the Boat/Duck Pond (officially called the Conservatory Water) in Central Park for coffee. While I sketched, my husband read the NY Times. The refreshment stand is open this year and there are tables, chairs, and umbrellas on the patio. There were owners and dogs at tables adjacent to ours, so I quickly sketched them and then my husband's cap above the newspaper.
Then I discovered the ornamental poppies that were in bloom - and they were so magnificent that I had to draw and paint one bloom and one bud before we came home.
We love holiday weekends in New York City - because it is relatively quiet - emphasis on the word relatively. It never seemed like fun to join the masses escaping this island on Friday afternoon and trying to get back on the island on Monday evening. This year we decided to explore some of the areas of Central Park that we rarely visit. Today we walked up the Eastside of the Park to the Harlem Meer which is at the Northeast Corner. While my husband did the Saturday NY Times crossword puzzle, I did a sketch of the Dana Discovery Center - an educational center where children can also participate in "Catch and Release Fishing" in the Harlem Meer with rented poles and instruction and bait provided by the Center.
I painted the front entrance to the Center but somehow made it much more squat than it really is.
Did you know that Central Park (843 acres) is the first major public park built in America? A competition for the design was held in 1858 and it took 18 years to build it in accordance with Frederick Olmstead and Calvert Vaux's plan. There are 50 miles of pedestrian paths, so we will never run out of new pathways to explore.
We picked up my grandson from nursery school, had a picnic in Central Park, and then went into the Met to see the newly reopened American Wing. Before it was closed for renovation, my grandchildren learned about pennies and fountains in that space and we really missed the pool.
There is a newly designed pool in the same place, this time with two fountains. This is a quick sketch of the back of the Frog Fountain - done while my grandson was throwing pennies. There are three frogs spewing water around the base - but I had no time (or space) to sketch them on this visit.
The sketch was done with a watercolor pencil and the water was added later at home.
I did a 5 minute pose figure drawing (i.e. I set my timer for 5 minutes and sketched a nude figure photo) after my Book Group left late last night. I drew with a medium wash graphite pencil because there were very dark shadows on the model, but it was darker than I expected.
I saw a small oil painting of 2 rows of lipsticks at the Contemporary Art Auction at Christies (Wayne Thiebaud), and wondered how many lipsticks I had in my drawer. Tonight, I found 2 empty lipsticks and 3 "almost gone ' lipsticks to sketch.
My schedule is currently out of control and I'm trying to catch up with posting. These were quick sketches from May 18th and 19th.
My Flash Drive - the amazing thing that allows me to carry all of my files from home to the office and back. On Monday I was preparing the final med student exam and used this little guy all day!
EDM Challenge #224: A Pitcher
This is such a cheerful rooster pitcher that I keep it on a kitchen shelf. I'm not sure that he has ever been used!
Yikes - my book group is arriving in 20 minutes to discuss The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips.
I spent this morning at the new "Model as Muse" exhibit at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was a seamstress most of my life and love to see construction techniques and elegant fabrics in couturier clothes. I was less interested in all of the information about the supermodels, but some of the large photographs were wonderful. The lighting for the exhibits was great, but it was almost too dim in front of each to sketch.
The entrance to the exhibit is a display of Dior's dress for Dovima as immortalized in a photo by Avedon.
I sketched a few other garments that I liked, and imagine that I will return to draw some of the other exhibits, especially all of the mannequins in one room that are hanging from the ceiling.
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 attended, and in spite of the earlier rain, the time there was delightful.
This group selects an area, everyone sketches for 30 minutes, and then gets together to put all of their sketchbooks next to each other for everyone to see. It is wonderful to see what others choose to sketch - and how many interpretations there are of the same spot.
I sketched a fountain during the first period, and may still paint it.
The flowers in the gardens were wonderful, and irises were a topic on several blogs this week, so I had to paint one.
During the 3rd and final period I sketched a large fountain with three dancing girls - overly ambitious for the time period we had. I did finish a pencil sketch, but it didn't scan well and is on a double page spread with a wide shadow on the scan over the center fold. Although I could work on the scan in Photoshop, I'd rather return to the garden to draw them again over the next few weeks.
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 like. After several days, I realized that one specific tape I made for my original old Sony Walkman got me through many long airplane trips and could still relax me instantly.
We took our children to see the musical Cats the first year it opened on Broadway and I loved Rum Tum Tugger's performance by Terrence Mann. Several years later we saw Les Miserables where he originated the part of Javert on Broadway and sang the song "Stars". Then he made another performance in Scarlet Pimperal and was the first Broadway Beast in Beauty and the Beast. I love his voice and recorded his songs from these show albums for my Walkman.
I stopped using my Walkman in the last few years, mainly due to the extreme limitation on size of carry on luggage (especially when we were traveling back and forth to London in 2006-07) and my need to carry my camera and charger, and art supplies, sketchbooks, etc in my carry-on bag. I'm not someone who wants an iPOD in my ears all day long so I never spent time trying to recreate this music selection. It may be time for me to learn about "itunes".
The last few days were so busy that I am just finally uploading my journal pages from yesterday and today.
Yesterday was Grandparent's Day at my grand daughter's Pre-School and while she was making a foam picture frame, I was drawing her project and a cartoon figure of her. She insisted on a "big smile" and drew on her mouth herself.
Tonight I took 5 minutes to draw a figure for more practice. I select a photo, set the timer for 5 minutes, and then sketch with a watercolor pencil.
We visited MoMA today with old friends and I sketched details from a few paintings while walking through the permanent exhibit. It gives me an opportunity to learn a little from the drawings of masters, and allows me to create a journal page to remember the visit.
My Feet
I'm delighted to put away my winter tights and heels and pull out my sandals - finally. Katherine Tyrrell reviewed Bert Dodson's book the Keys to Drawing, and I thought that it looked the perfect project-oriented art book for me to study this Spring. I have his book Keys to Drawing with Imagination too, but that one has never looked as interesting to me.
Dodson's Project 1A is to draw your feet, something which I have done several times before. I wasn't supposed to paint them, but couldn't resist. I also wanted to document the nail polish - last week I was the only one walking in my neighborhood, in sandals, without a fresh pedicure.
I had a very quiet day at home today, so I did "figure drawing practice" for my daily drawing. It has been weeks since I painted from one of my friend Bunny's India travel photos, and I was attracted to the quiet pose of this seated woman.
EDM Challenge #222: My Favorite Art Tool
I 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 containers, but never felt completely confident that I could paint in my sketchbooks in the living room, bedroom, or friends homes. I was an "early" convert to the Niji waterbrushes and now even use them with watercolor pencils in the museum - where only pencils are allowed. This year I found the large flat one which is perfect for painting large areas - and not getting too fussy in small areas.
I'm so nervous that I might lose one, that I have a new set of 4 waiting for me with my art supplies at all times!
We were at a wedding this weekend, so both of my journal pages are from the event. The wedding was held in a church and the reception in a wonderful hotel conservatory - full of beautiful flowering plants. Just before the cocktail hour I was able to make a quick painting of one of the many floor to ceiling trellises.
This morning I painted one of the roses that I brought back to our hotel room last night. The red-orange-salmon color was spectacular.
This is a double page spread and the grey line down the middle is the center fold.
This is my 3rd year participating in this challenge. I already complete one journal page per day, but I only upload a small number of those pages to my blog. Shouldn't be a surprise that I don't upload drawings and paintings that I don't like. This challenge forces me to upload each and everyone for 31 days - the good, the bad, and the ugly. At the beginning of the month, this makes me a little more careful about choice of subject and may even make me less spontaneous. Midway through the month I can usually overcome these feelings.
Here is my journal page from yesterday May 1st. We eat dinner at a restaurant in Grand Central Station before going to the Broadway theater - and almost always have Ceasar salad, a thin crust sausage pizza, and a glass of chianti. Last night the play with Matthew Broderick got a bad review, so we savored dinner even more.
Here are several journal pages to finish posting from April. The first is from a Gauguin drawing that was a study for his Dancing Girls of Breton. The Morgan Library and Museum had the 5th installment of the Thaw collection drawings and I loved this one! The second is from a reading at Barnes Noble by Arthur Phillips - author of the Egyptologist. My book group is reading it this month. He read from his new novel, but it was still fun meeting him. This image is from the book cover - the colors are mine.
EDM Challenge 221: Hand-held game
I'm not a game player, but have a basket of cards from my children's childhood, occasional games of solitaire, and "War" with my grandchildren. This set of cards has a figure skater from the 1984 Olympics, so at least drawing it game me practice with unusual persepctive with the skater body.
I fell in love with the concept of recycling old, "ready for the garbage", books. Most of the ones I've used cost $1.00 and were on the cart that was ready for disposal. This gives them a completely new life and provides me with a fun watercolor journal to use for daily sketches. I recycled 7 books, previously posting a detailed set of instructions and photos on my blog,and then took a short bookbinding workshop to make my own watercolor journals including the book cover.
Here are all of my blog posts re: both recycled and non-recycled books I made:
http://www.paperandthreads.com/bookbinding/
Here are my instructions for recycling my books:
http://www.paperandthreads.com/2008/03/recycling_an_old_book_as_a_wat.php
I used my Michaelangelo Sonnet book for figure drawing practice, and then one called Painting Made Easy. Last month I made my 8th recycled book as my 3rd volume for figure drawing practice and this one is called The Illustrator.
I use a 5 hole, modified coptic stitch to stitch the signatures together and then glue the spine using paper and mull - a technique I learned in my bookbinding workshop. But there are still small gaps using 140 lb watercolor paper that I can't avoid, although they are so much smaller that I don't cover them with strips of the endpapers as I did previously.
When using book covers from old books, you have a fixed size for the pages and some waste watercolor paper. I decided to use the waste piece for the first pages of my new recycled books and used these slightly smaller pages for some 90 second figure drawing using Pose Maniacs.
I love the freedom of selecting a size for my watercolor journals when I make my own covers, but as a book lover, I also really love searching for a book with an appropriate title and/or theme and giving it a new life and prominent place on my bookshelf.
I have 1000s of digital photos and not a single photo of the Moon. As I contemplated whether I would see a moon over the buildings here in Manhattan, I remembered the song from the movie Arthur and the phrase "between the moon and New York City." I painted the skyline around the World Financial Center and a moon - and hopefully can now get the song out of my brain.
The weather here was magnificent this past weekend. There are fabulous tulips everywhere I look and I took a small art stool outside Saturday to paint several of the orange red tulips that are in huge tulip beds and around the trees in planters along the avenue.
On Sunday morning we left the apartment at 9AM and walked to the area I call the Duck Pond or Toy Boat Pond. This year the concession stand is open again and the patio is a wonderful place for morning coffee. We really missed it last year. While my husband did the crossword puzzle, I drank my coffee and sketched and painted a cropped version of the cafe counter.
Here is an earlier journal page I did while sitting in the same place.
I periodically practice figure drawing in preparation for the time after my retirement this summer when I can go to a drop-in figrue drawing class at one of the many sites available here in New York City.
I set the time on Pose Maniacs for 90 seconds and sketched the following 5 figures. I try each one that appears although some of their figure positions are so wierd that I can only imagine how a real body could achieve it. They were sketched in watercolor pencil and finished with a watercolor wash.
I also have Mark Smith's book of nude photos for artists and had my husband select some photos and put "stickies" on them. I then set my timer for 5 minutes, opened to the first sticky, and did a 5 minute sketch of the figure in watercolor pencil. I then quickly brushed them with water in a Niji waterbrush.
EDM Challenge # 219: Draw a Window
Today several of us who met in Danny Gregory's class had another sketchcrawl in New York City. We met in Grand Central Station and while I waited for them I sketched a ticket window for this week's Everyday Matters Challenge.
The weather was wonderful, so we walked over to Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library, and thoroughly enjoyed the wonderful flowers that were all in bloom, and the hundreds of chairs that are set up around the park for all to enjoy this fabulous area. There were thousands of tulips, daffodils, pansies and hyacinths in flower beds and urns. I was immediately drawn to the beds of pink tulips.
The Empire State building is visible above buildings on 41st St from the Park and we all did a sketch of the view. In my sketch it is impossible to realize how tall it is behind the foreground buildings and trees. I'll have to return to the scene and try again someday.
I ended the morning sitting in front more flowers - to document again the joy of sketching in the sun, on a warm Spring day, enjoying the company of Annie and Kathleen and surrounded by flowers in this fabulous urban setting.
We really enjoy visiting Paris and since 1970, one of our regular stops in the City is Dehillerin kitchen supplies. The old Les Halles was still across the street when we first visited and Pied du Couchon was still a modest restaurant with fabulous onion soup. Over many years and many visits, we purchased some of our favorite kitchen tools at Dehillerin. Here are 3 of the knives we bought for ourselves. During one visit. we also bought each of our children one of the big chopping knives.
This is a picture from our recent play time in Central Park with 4 of our 5 grandchildren.
My journal page is my attempt to paint one of the Magnolia blossoms that was partially opened and photographed from above.
I clearly need to learn how to achieve the sense of depth in the center of the flower- although I really did observe and paint the shadows as they appeared in the photo. Painting the bloom in person was not an option with 4 under the age of 6 running around.
Our two youngest were in strollers with my husband and I pushing them out of the Park and Syd (age 4) and her 5 year old brother Henry were walking in front of us. Suddenly she reached over and took his hand - and they walked all the way back to 5th Ave holding hands.
This is a link to a similar journal page that I did of them in Hyde Park London more than 2 years ago.
http://www.paperandthreads.com/2007/01/edm_challenge_draw_a_landscape.php
Our weather is currently bizarre, with April showers, several snow showers, and teaser days for Spring. We just returned from a morning of play in Central Park with 4 of our grandchildren and while they have quiet time, I thought I would try to upload a few journal pages from one week ago.
While two of my grandchildren painted and colored at our dining room table last Friday, I played with my grand daughter's Sargeant watercolor pencils - obvioulsy hoping for lots of tulips before long. The magnolia blossoms were partially open this morning and I see tulip buds in the huge beds of tulips in my neighborhood.
Last Sunday there were beds of daffodils blooming in Central Park - and they still looked very fresh this morning. My 2 year old grandson doesn't understand why I won't let him pick all of the pretty flowers he sees!
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 to deal with. I feel as if I’m fooling myself when I try to create a person to blame.
My critic likes perfection and can make me unhappy every time I make mistakes. This puts emphasis on product, not process, and I have to remind myself over and over that "play" is an important component of creativity, and perfection should NOT be my goal. Mistakes are a wonderful opportunity for growth to occur.
I also deal regularly with "fear of failure" and it is sometimes strong enough to keep me from trying something new. I think that working small, in a sketchbook, and everyday helps me overcome some of the doubt. But I have to really work hard to step out of my comfort zone and create tricks to get past the Internal Critic in my brain.
What does my Internal Critic look like? Half of my brain? A really small part of my brain? If so, where? Maybe I should have sketched a really small person and put her on my head - as if she were in my brain. When I try to picture her, I see a "bag lady" if I see anything - someone with an incredible number of opinions but no creativity, passions, skills or products of her own - just a mouth, thick frame glasses, and a bag of scripts. The major scripts that she repeats over and over are the ones listed above.
I really haven’t made much progress changing my perception of my creative abilities. I’ve read enough about creativity, the origin of creative ideas, and how to stimulate creativity - so I am developing skills to deal with my critic. And every once and a great while I do something that even I feel is original.
Last week I was immersed in Khaled Hosseini's book A Thousand Splendid Suns for 2 days. The story is set against 30 years of war in Afghanistan and when I chose my daily sketch for each day, I was inspired to look for something that would capture some of the images from my reading. I searched news articles and photos of mujahideen and sketched one of the members of a group photo.
On the second day I searched for photos of women walking in the streets in their burqas and painted one of them.
As I post these, the US is increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan and I can't imagine what the next phase of life is going to be like for these people, especially the women.
I'm still enjoying my friend Bunny's photos from her recent trip to India and using them for inspiration for my figure drawing practice at least weekly. Here are 3 more paintings. In the first one, it appears as if this young boy was posing for a single photo. The second one appears to be a market. The vendor has two children playing on the ground next to her. The 3rd is one figure from a group photo. I was very drawn to this image as I was in the middle of rereading Khalid Hosseini's second book A Thousand Splendid Suns and the two women in the story were in burqas whenever they left their home. Although this is not a classic burqa, I was drawn to this figure walking along the street and just had to draw and paint her image. Next week - mujahideen and women in blue burqas from Afghani photos I'm collecting from the web.
I need hand drawing practice so much, that I did two drawings of hands with thumbs. But I found myself smiling much of the time, remembering that my 4 year old grand daughter Sydney called them "flums" not very long ago. We all took every opportunity we could to have her say it, especially her 5 year old brother Henry who thought it was adorable because she was so earnest.
I still love doing the EDM Challenges 3+ years after joining. They always take me out of my comfort zone in some way, and at least give me a fun project for one of my daily sketches each week. We were away during challenge #212, which somehow always means that I fall further behind. But now I can post the last three weeks and begin anew.
My Washington DC grand daughter and her Mommy
My very uninteresting microwave. Our kids think we were the last family in town to buy one when they were growing up and this was recently passed on to us by one of them when our last one died.
I started quilting when we lived in San Antonio, TX almost 30 years ago. There was a resurgence of interest in quilting right after the US bicentential, and I was working full time, had 3 small children, and loved to make things. I always worked with fabric, so it was the perfect "new passion" for me - allowing me to carry around small pieces of a big project and make otherwise boring soccer practices, swim meets, or car pool waiting more enjoyable. They loved the quilts and pillows that I made for them and now I'm making them for their children. These are the tools in my basket as I hand quilt (belatedly) a wedding quilt for one of my sons.
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 end of this month - and we don't see enough of her!
Saturday afternoon we went to the new Capitol Visitor's Center to see the space. We didn't have time to look at Exhibition Hall, but the main area is wonderful! There are many statues, but the cast of the Statue of Freedom which sits on top of the Capitol Dome is the most important one. Here is her head - and an eagle logo found on many of the items in the Gift Shop.
Annabelle pulls herself up on everything and is cruising an entire room very quickly. These are quick sketches of her in her PJs.
There was alot of snow when we woke up on Monday morning. We kept Annabelle home from Day Care to play with us while my son and daughter-in-law went to work. She loves playing with the Noah's Ark and animals that she received as an early birthday present, so it was immortalized on this page.
We all love her really warm winter hat and she looks really cute in it. We're sad that it probably won't fit her next winter.
I am still inspired by the India photos from my friend Bunny's recent trip to India. This is a photo from the bus of 3 men sitting on a bench in Jaipur, in front of an open side building.
Today I had 5 minutes to sketch between my haircut and picking up our grandson at Nursery School. I sat on the base of a wall, in the sun, and sketched a turret on the Southwestern corner of the Natural History Museum - using pen with a watercolor wash. It is really fast and really, really loose.
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 next to my end of the couch in our library.
My daughter bought an amazing light fixture for her children's playroom several years ago and it is a constant challenge for me to draw one of the objects suspended from the structure. I was with two of my grandchildren last week when I decided to try to sketch the biplane yet another time. I am looking up at the plane and can never convince myself that I can tell which wing is on top and which is on the bottom.
We had a full day of family activities last Saturday. In the morning we had a brunch to celebrate our youngest grandchild's first birthday - several weeks early because none of us would be in DC on her actual birthday. In the evening, my husband and I and our 3 children and their spousese took my mother out for dinner in Manhattan for her 90th birthday. In the afternoon, while the youngest children took naps, 4 year old Sydney spent two hours on an art project and while she was busy painting and decorating little jewelry boxes, I sketched her supplies.
She had glitter glue (the tube on the far left) and used her finger to add it to my journal page. All of those dirty little dots are really sparkling!
I'm constantly torn between practicing some art skills and keeping a visual journal. So far I've divided my daily sketchbook pages between the two, but it is a constant mental struggle.
One of my goals for 2009 is to continue to sketch/paint at least one face and figure each week. I was delighted when my friend shared all of her photos from a recent trip to India and I'm having a wonderful using them for inspiration. I think this might be a snake charmer - at Amber Fort - but there is no photo of a basket and snake.
This is one of several camel carts in a procession in Jaipur on the road to Ranthambore. The photo was taken from a bus window as they passed. I'm not sure that I have sketched a camel before and couldn't wait until I found a photo taken at just the right angle. This was painted across two pages.
As always, thank you Bunny for your wonderful collection of photos. The wonderful animal photos from the National Park can even be another series of practice drawings.
I fell in love with Seurat drawings during the MoMA special exhibit in 2007 and learned that there was a local source for the Michallet paper that he used.
Arches MBM Ingres (Michallet): Originally designed by the mill for the artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, this type of paper set the standard for charcoal and pastel drawing and has been duplicated by many other mills around the world. The letters MBM refer to the owners Morel, Bercious, and Masure who introduced the first mouldmade machines in 1883 (Info from NY Central Art Supply website).
Last year I bought a sheet at New York Central Art Supply and copied 3 Seurat drawings to try to learn the technique. Then I used a photo of my son-in-law and two grandchildren to draw "in the style of Seurat" using a Derwent Ivory Black drawing pencil to try to develop the method for myself. Today I used a photo of my 2 year old grandson with his elephant that we took Saturday to do Challenge #211.
During the Medieval period, women wore only long shifts (chemises) under their clothes. Pantaloons and pantalettes were worn under dresses, especially in France, by young girls, but it wasn’t until the 1830s that women regularly wore bloomers with tight ankles and two legs attached at the waist with a draw string.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, bloomers were shortened as skirt lengths rose and by the 1920s women were wearing short panties with wide legs, called step-ins or boy shorts. They were still commonly made of two legs which were attached at the waist.
During the 1930s and 1940s, women wore girdles and then by the 1950s panties as we know them. From the mid-20th Century to the 1990s, granny pants became hipsters, then bikinis, then thongs.
The transition from bikinis to thongs, especially worn with cropped shirts and low waisted jeans, has resulted in more visible thong underwear and bare skin among my women medical students than I care to see. My kids call this sighting a "whale tail." What will the next fashion trend bring?
I'm still thoroughly enjoying my dear friend Bunny's photos from Jaipur India and this week sketched one face and 3 figures. The man was photographed at Samode Palace, now a luxury hotel.
The women were working at the Amber Fort carrying pieces of rocks from place to place on their heads.
When this challenge was posted, I began a search for a shadow photo that I vaguely remembered among my huge collection of family photos - and finally found it. My husband and I were taking our daily one hour walk along the beach, when our shadows spread out in front of us, over several wet footprints, and I snapped a photo. I have no idea why our shadows are so bulky!
I also had a recent photo of my granddaughter Syd, in the snow in Central Park, that showed a great shadow in the snow. I wanted to paint this photo anyway, so it is a smaller representation of a shadow.
Raphael to Renoir: Drawings from the Collection of Jean Bonna
January 21, 2009–April 26, 2009
Galleries for Drawings, Prints, and Photographs, 2nd floor
This is a wonderful new exhibit (120 drawings - spanning 500 hundred years) and a wonderful opportunity to study masterpiece drawings. I thoroughly enjoy trying to copy the lines in these beautiful works, and will probably return to draw and learn from a few more.
Here are the two drawings that I did last weekend.
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666) was called Il Guercino - the squinter - because of his crossed-eyes. I first saw his drawings at the Courtauld Gallery in London and was mesmerized by his beautiful figures. The original was done with pen and brown ink, I used brown colored pencil.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) At the entrance to the exhibit are three drawings of girls heads by Greuze- one more wonderful than the next. The original was done with conte - I used colored pencil.
We picked up two of our grandchildren from nursery school and walked them back to our apartment through Central Park. There was a recent snowfall and Robbie (age 3 1/2) and his cousin Sydney (age 4) were having a fabulous time making and throwing snowballs and our progress was really slow. On a bench, on one of the paths in the middle of the Park, we saw a beautiful pair of brown leather cowboy boots, a new red and black backpack, and an open bird watcher's book.
We regularly watch Law and Order, so my husband and I looked at each other suspiciously and for an instant wondered whether we would next find a body. There were no people anywhere in sight - in any direction. I took a photo so I could show a Park staff member when we passed one of the them on the second half of our journey. We never heard more about the event and hopefully the tourist who left them there was able to retrieve their stuff when they returned.
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 my figure drawing practice. This year, as I practice, I will continue to add faces to my figures. Older readers of this blog may remember that I sketched figures or faces, but never together, through much of 2008.
View from the Bus - Delhi to Jaipur Road:
Man in Village Next to Samode Palace:
Jaipur - Elephant Ride to Amber Fort:
I still have several more figures that I would like to paint from Album #3 - and then 12 more albums to go! Thanks again Bunny.
I'm so happy that I brought a few of my favorite shells home from the beach this summer. I sketched and painted many when we were taking our morning walk, but our grandchildren played with most of them and I saved very few.
One of my dear friends and her husband spent at least a month visiting their son and his family in India. I know we will never be there on vacation, so I asked her to share all of her wonderful photos with me. I plan to slowly look at all of the digital photo albums she shared and to draw and paint some of the people. Here are my favorite photos from the first 2 albums.
Dehli:
Learning more about drawing figures and faces is still a primary goal for me in 2009. One of the members of Everyday Matters (EDM), the online art group that I belong to, posted links to out of print figure drawing books by Andrew Loomis and I'm working my way through the first chapter of Figure Drawing For All Its Worth.
Here are journal pages that I did of ideal male proportions - trying to embed these landmarks in my brain. The anatomical drawing is a piece of an end paper in this book I recycled. My angst re: gaps between signatures using 140lb watercolor paper can be seen here.
I love drawing and painting ballet dancers - all from photos because I'm still not able to sketch moving bodies. This was drawn from a photo in the NY Times last week. Obviously, I shouldn't have tried adding facial features in this tiny little face - but I'm posting the disappointments as well as the pages that please me. The drawing inspired us to get Ny City Ballet tickets for February, to brighten an otherwise cold, dreary winter.
I still had to do a daily journal page the other evening, and this painting, on a postcard from a local Manhattan gallery, was sitting right next to me. I love trying to learn from other artists by copying their lines and painting styles - oil to watercolor conversions. I didn't know anything about Jean-Pierre Cassigneul, but subsequently learned that he was born in 1935 and is a well known French artist - with a painting in the upcoming Christie's Impressionist and Modern Auction. Here is my fast copy of his beautiful oil painting.
I usually drink Diet Coke from bottles, but painted the soda can that I could find. I'm fascinated with the bold words "New York" which appear several times around the rim. Do cans sold in other cities have a city-specific name?
We spent almost 4 months in the UK, in the aggregate, the year my daughter and her family lived in London. I was always learning new words for objects, but these remain among my favorites because the British word connotes something entirely different in America.
In the summer 0f 2007, we saw an exhibit of Leon Kossoff's drawings at the National Gallery in London. Although I didn't love the style of his Conte drawings, I was fascinated with his method of working as an artist. Kossoff was born in London in 1926 and is a prominent member of the School of London which also includes Lucien Freud. On the exhibit page, there is a link to one of his very rare interviews, actually done in his exhibit space. Kossoff never paints from photos and although he doesn't consider himself accomplished in drawing, he starts every painting with a fresh drawing and then takes his work back to the studio for painting. Since he was a child, he has drawn and redrawn many of the master works at the National Gallery, and in the interview he relays how he gets his inspiration from these drawings and every day wakes up saying that maybe today he'll learn how to draw!
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/leonkossoff/default.htm
I wondered whether drawing and redrawing a masterpiece that speaks to you would lead to some type of magical experience if you were in the presence of the masterpiece and drawing it over many years. So I thought I would try it when I returned to New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Last January I selected Cezanne's Card Players which I have always admired. It is prominently placed in the 19C galleries and actually has one of the few gallery benches in front of it in the middle of the room.
Using watercolors, instead of oils, was a challenge, but I really wanted my work to be more than just an ink or Conte drawing.
Here is the link to my drawing from Jan 2008:
http://www.paperandthreads.com/2008/02/museum_visits_in_new_york_city_1.php
Here is the link to the painting from from the 2008 drawing:
http://www.paperandthreads.com/2008/05/cezanne_card_players_painted.php
Yesterday I arrived at the Met when it opened and had 45 minutes during which I was completely alone drawing the Card Players in one of the 19th C. galleries. The Met allows pencils, but not pens or paints, so like Kossoff, I returned home to finish it. But I wanted to try to reproduce the colors, and worked from a photo that I took.
My 2009 Painting:
Cezanne made 5 Card Player paintings. The first one has 5 figures and is part of the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia. The Met has the second one which was painted in 1890-92. - which has 4 figures. The remaining 3 all have two figures.
I also thought that it might be fun to see how my style or skills change over the years - so far not much to my eye. But I wonder whether next year I might decide not to draw in ink, or perhaps to change the colors, or even to move to more of an abstraction. In the interview, Kossoff tells how he once went home from a National Gallery drawing session, and just painted the Rembrandt painting using his own style, without a predrawing on the canvas. He has no idea why his mind just wanted to do that!
I continued to paint Christmas trees this year throughout the holiday season - and now post #3 and 4 from my journal. I was disappointed to find that watercolor paint is absorbed so rapidly into Fabriano 140lb soft press paper that adding salt immediately didn't allow me to get a snow effect on a painted tree. However, I read all of Vivian Swift's book When Wandrers Cease to Roam on New Year's Day, and was inspired to use her watercolor technique to paint a small tree with the suggestion of snow.
Yesterday I was putting Christmas cards away and found another painted tree which inspired me to paint #4 in my daily journal, with a healthy amount of gold metallic acrylic paint added for a string of beads and stars.
It is currently snowing in Manhattan, and there are Christmas trees propped up against trees in front of our apartment waiting to be picked up for the City mulching program. They already have a wonderful layer of snow on their branches, giving me many trees to paint tonight if I want to bundle up and go downstairs!
We have had minimal snow in New York City since this challenge was posted, so I went back to photos from a February 2005 trip to Paris. It was the first time we were in Paris in the snow and it was a beautiful site. This drawing was made from a photo that I took from the window of an apartment that we rented on Quai de l'Horloge early in the morning.
One of my 2009 Art Goals was to finish the pages in my 2nd Figure Drawing Practice watercolor journal. I periodically sketch figures, faces, and hands from photos to obtain some fluency drawing the human body and experimenting with a variety of tools. I'm finally willing to put faces on my full figure drawings - a major accomplishment of 2008! Here are two figures that I sketched from photos during this wonderfully relaxing New Year's holiday weekend. The rest of the time I've been reading, quilting, and binding 2 new watercolor journals for the New Year.
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 2009.
1. Daily Art: Continue to complete one sketch daily, do weekly EDM challenges, and upload some journal pages to my blog at least twice per week.
2. Bookbinding: Make more ~6" x 8" watercolor journals for the year using Fabriano Artistico extra-bright 140 lb soft press paper.
3. More Sketchbook Drawing Practice:
a. Faces and figures - try self-portraits?
b. Continue to draw the Masters to learn how they make their lines.
c. Interiors of my current apartment for the "My Homes" series.
4. Current Projects:
a. Redraw and paint Cezanne’s Card Players at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the second year.
b. Finish myThemed Journals: Elizabeth I journal (London) from photos I took there in 2006-7 and my NY State Tax Report journal (New York City) for my 10 blocks from home series of drawings.
5. Retirement Project: I would like to develop a project for my first 6 months of retirement (July-Dec 2009). I love this city and never have enough time to explore it. I need to consider whether I can combine local travel by bus and subway and illustrated journaling of my days exploring specific sections of Manhattan.
6. Structured Learning: Read Drawing with Children by Mona Brooks
7. Find a Local Art Buddy: I’d love to have someone to do sketchcrawls with in Manhattan.
8. PLAY: I want to do more experimentation, trying new tools and techniques and loosening up - thinking only of process, not product.
It is hard finding time to do a daily sketch over the Christmas Holidays - Unless the journal pages are fast and simple.
Here are beautiful Christmas trees that are put up for a month along the Avenue.
My new favorite Christmas candy -
Another Toy Soldier from Rockefeller Center. I painted one last year and now should make this a tradition when I go down to see the fabulous tree.
The facade of the newly renovated Guggenheim is now visible again. We took our oldest grandson for lunch and then a visit last weekend.
Finally did last week's EDM Challenge. In our apartment, the children drink their apple joice from juice boxes or sippy cups.
The wife of one of my professors wrote this book for her 3 small children in 1978 when she was terminally ill, to share some of her memories from her childhood in Denmark. Her husband, Sam Refetoff, gave me a copy when my children were very young and I made Rice Mice for them. In the book every mouse is accompanied by a poem and my children wrote poems to capture their individual mouse's personalities.
Some time during the ensuing years I made two Christmas Rice Mice and every year they are part of our table decoration. They are approximately 5 inches high and filled with standard white rice.
I sketched them last year for my journal page on December 24th and then again last evening. This year's painting is more accurate because I took the time to put in the polka dots! Since I didn't post the journal page last year, here are both 2007 and 2008. This year I painted a shiny gold acrylic background around the mice - wish it could be scanned and look that way!
2007:
2008:
Several years ago I made Rice Mice (singular is Rouse Mouse!) for my 3 oldest grandchildren as stocking stuffers, using scraps from quilts that I made for them.
I think it might be time this morning to make one for each of the baby grandchildren for their stockings. Those for the children have embroidered eyes instead of buttons - which is not nearly as cute, but much safer!
It was very easy to find cookies at work this week for the EDM Challenge. And at home I made a fresh batch of Lemon Squares for our Book Group Holiday dinner. Yum!
Last Firiday the secretaries decorated the Department office and it was fun trying to decide what Christmas decoration to sketch for a daily sketch yesterday since we had theater tickets and a late evening. This is a Victorian St. Nicholas figure that is not as jolly looking as our fat American Santa figures. Of course I ran out of room and he isn't as tall and thin as he should be.
We have many staplers - and I have more in my office, but none as cute as this "antique one" which moved with me from NJ to Philadelphia, Chicago, LaJolla, San Antonio, and now New York City.
Here are two of my homework pages for Danny's Illustrated Journaling Class. Thie first is just a painting with writing, the second is a specific assignment to draw what I ate today.
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 boarding.
I took an early morning walk from the Moscone Convention Center area to Union Square and then Chinatown. It was beautiful sitting in the sun sketching the lamp post tops at the intersection of Grant and Pine while watching the area wake up.
Friday afternoon I met Jana and Martha (fellow EDM members) and we talked and simultaneously sketched St. Patricks church on Mission Street and then warmed up and exchanged our sketch books over a glass of wine in The View Lounge on the 39th floor of the Marriott. Jana already posted a photo of us, our sketchbook pages, and the lovely view we enjoyed.
During my meeting I sketched my neighbors across the aisle or in the lounge, trying to remain inconspicuous and to pay attention to the lectures.
I was afraid that I wouldn't have time to do my homework for Danny Gregory's Illustrated Journaling class while I was gone, but I did get one exercise done - drawing through a doorway. This was the bathroom from the hotel room entrance of my room at the Marriott.
In order to get back to New York City for our 5th class, I took the "red eye" home from San Francisco. At class the next evening, Danny brought fruit so we could create a journal page documenting "a transformation" while we were eating our piece of fruit. He really wanted us to mix our drawings with words that reflected the experience on the journal page. This was a fun exercise - and similar to many apple eating pages in Danny's journals.
My husband brought this 1.5 inch rubber lion back for me from Chicago when we were dating - 43 years ago. It probably cost 50 cents - but it has traveled with us from home to home and still looks as it did when it was new. I don't have any lucky tokens, but I would never think of throwing this lion away, and don't even show it to my grandchildren. So it comes as close as anything to being a lucky charm.
I'm off to a meeting in San Francisco tomorrow and will spend an afternoon plaing hooky and sketching with two EDM members - I'm thrilled!
Couldn't just draw one!
My husband and I cook a big Thanksgiving Dinner for our family and friends. It is a marathon of cooking all day Wednesday and Thursday. Over the last 15 years, the champagne and hors d'oeuvres portion has grown to 3 hours, followed by soup, turkey plus stuffing, veggies, rice, and dessert, for a total of 5-6 hours. We love to do it, but increasingly need several days to rest up afterwards.
This year we only had this morning to rest because two of our children and their families were moving. I went to my daughter's apartment and helped unpack the 3 children's bedrooms so they had someplace to sleep. My husband went to our son's apartment to help them hook up their TVs.
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 post which had fallen across the Avenue. Traffic was completely stopped and the fire engines had difficulty threading their way through the cars to reach the site. This fire truck was parked in front of our window for 5-10 minutes and it took me at least one minute to decide that I needed my sketchbook.
This is part of a homework assignment for Danny's Illustrated Journaling class. I already sketched my medicine cabinet for an EDM challenge, so I decided to sketch my art shelf in the library. This is where I keep my pencilcase (containing pencils, pens, and 4 waterbrushes), paints, and random art books of drawings by the masters that I use for inspiration and practice. When I learned that Danny was teaching his first class, I thought it would be fun for me to take it to "shake things up a little." I do a daily sketch already and just need a little boost and time for reflection about my Art Goals for 2009.
I have my annual grandchildren's cold that went into sinus congestion. This is my journal page documenting the event.
I routinely did the EDM challenges this year until I had to rely on photos for a baked potato or rope. Those are on hold. But I had no problem finding a remote - this is just one of 3 cable remotes from Time-Warner in our apartment. And if I wanted one less complex, I could even have sketched the one for our window air conditioner. That one baffles me!
This is a huge volunteer weekend for us every year as Goddard Riverside Community Center sponsors their annual Book Fair - during which new books are donated by the publishing companies in Manhattan and sold for half-price at Columbus and W.88th St. I am off to work as a voluteer at the cookbook table again in a few minutes, but wanted to upload these before the whole weekend is over.
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 in 1988. The wine glass is for the amount consumed by Hemingway and his friends in the "Lost Generation" and the wine that I drank during our discussion.
I crawled into bed at 10:45 and still wanted to fill a journal page - so my rocker next to the bed became my focus.
After a full day with my two 3 year old grandchildren, I sat quietly in my usual evening seat and painted the view in the room that I love. During the year that my daughter and her family lived in London, my husband and I decided to combine all Christmas, birthday, and anniversary presents to each other and bring home this lovely sculpture of a young woman reading a book. She remains very precious to me.
On Saturday, we took our oldest grandchild, now 5 1/2, to the Museum of Modern Art and he was thrilled and mesmerized by the children's audio that they have for multiple paintings. Here he is with the audioguide to his ear, listening multiple times to the wonderful information and music provided directly at his level. He first learned about Picasso's Three Musicians from the children's program "Little Einsteins." Also favorites that afternoon were paintings by Matisse, Chagall, and especially Rousseau's Dream.
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 I had trouble even getting a picture.
I'm always thrilled when I can draw a figure with a face. This was drawn from a photo in a magazine.
My friend sent me a book of Delacroix's pastels and this drawing was inspired by his pastel entitled Seated Arab in Striped Burnouse. I'm now inspired to search for Delacroix's Moroccan sketchbook.
I intended to upload these journal pages from the second part of my recent Texas trip much earlier, but life got in the way. The election results (which pleased me), full days at work and busy evenings all intervened. So I'm eating lunch and uploading 3 pages at work so I don't fall further behind on my self-imposed schedule.
I went to San Antonio for a work-related meeting and loved the logo on the bags that were given to us with all of the conference materials. We lived in San Antonio for 18 years and the design was very specific for the city.
The colors of San Antonio are very bright, reflecting the Mexican culture, dancers, and mariachis. The stage in the Convention Center was decorated with these sun umbrellas - that dot the restaurants along the Riverwalk - and I knew immediately that I was back in town.
One person was sitting at a table in the front of the meeting room on my last day and I was able to both draw and paint her without any comments being made by those sitting at my table.
This was a fun trip - part vacation and part business. My goal was to coninue sketching at least once per day and I did accomplish that. Now if I can just catch up on the EDM challenges, I'll be satisfied. When my life gets really busy, I'm afraid that one day without sketching could easily stretch to 2 or 3 - and that would make me unhappy....
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 as ever. A wonderful old friend accompanied me making the 4 days even better. I took classes, went to lectures, and wandered the entire convention center surveying new products and exceptional textile art. It was hard to spend a few minutes completing my daily sketch before bed at night, but I tried to make the pages a visual journal of my important daily activities. I used the sketchbook that I bound with Fabriano Artistico soft press 140 lb watercolor paper for the first time.
I inherited my husbands old iPod (and playlist) and took it with me to listen to on the airplane.
Festival opened at 5PM and on Wednesday evening I sketched a face inspired by one of the award-winning art quilts, tried to use a teeny silk screen for watercolor, and sketched the logo for the huge program of events.
On Thursday afternoon I took a class that was part of the Silk Experience series and painted a beautiful series of silk color squares that were in the room and the piece of layered silk that I learned how to felt using a manual felting tool. Hand dyed silk roving is gorgeous and I now need to decide how to use some of it in my projects at home. The painted square at the bottom right is made of layers of silk roving, silk gauze, silk Dupioni, and silk cord - all felted to a piece of silk batting. I may need to add small beads to it and make a decorative pillow.
On Friday I took two classes - Stitch-resist Shibori on silk in the morning and Stamps, Stencils, and Embossing (on velvet) in the evening. The top sketch is a poor-likeness of my teacher drawing the stitching pattern for our first piece of shibori. The bottom sketch is the pattern I made for my silk-screen and stencil work.
On Saturday I attended a morning session where 20 mixed-media artists demonstrated their techniques. Although I always use procion MX dyes for my surface design on fabric, I was interested in trying fabric paints to convert some of my sketches from paper to fabric. These are just paintings of the bottles of the primary colors and a 4th bottle where I painted the remaining colors, from the set of 8 that I purchased. I also love metallics mixed in and bought an additional jar of antique gold. It is good that I will be retiring next year so I will have the time to play creatively on paper and on fabric.
Early Sunday AM I flew to San Antonio. my old home in Texas, to attend a medical meeting and I will post those journal pages tomorrow.
I just returned from one week in Houston and then San Antonio, Texas. Yesterday as I walked into my building at work, I was overwhelmed with the changes in the trees that occurred while I was gone. Several years ago I collected fall leaves to use as inspiration for a quilted, silk wedding chuppah (canopy) that I made for the wedding of my son. I now find that I just can't pass up a beautifully colored leaf. So here is my leaf from yesterday. Nature did a much better job with the brilliant colors than I did!
Even though I very busy during my trip, I did do some visual journaling - and hope to post those pages this weekend.
Tomorrow I'm leaving for the International Quilt Festival in Houston, followed by a business meeting in San Antonio, so I wanted to complete this week's EDM challenge before I leave. EDM Challenge #94 was Draw a Spoon. This week it is Draw a Fork. I posted the two of them together because they are a wonderful pair of salad utensils - shiny silver that I still can't capture.
We didn't have any peanuts in our house - and I couldn't find anything to inspire me to do this challenge when it was posted - until yesterday. I then decided to learn more about how peanuts grow and looked at information and images on the web. This is a painting of a plant with its flowers and peanuts. I really didn't know that peanuts grow underground from shoots that arise from the above ground plants. Very cool!
I continue to practice drawing faces and figures from photos - and did these 4 during October. I selected this photo because of the foreshortened right arm and was happy with the arm drawing. Not so much with the eyes.
This drawing was done from a runway photo. I saw and loved a Klimt-inspired gown in the window of Oscar de la Renta's store on Madison Ave. This is the image of the dress from the runway - but I didn't even try to reproduce the fabric design.
Two faces drawn from magazine advertisement photos.
The Virtual Sketch Date photo was just perfect when I was deciding what to draw and paint for my daily journal page. I usually only do the EDM challenges, but this is the second month that the photo for VSD was irresistable.
I am very busy in Oct, Nov, and Dec - anticipating all of the Christmas sewing and quilting that needs to be done. So like Santa, I put out a call for reindeer help.
My son Jason had a pet iguana during college and most of medical school. We all grew to love Pablo as long as he was safely looking at us from his fabulous terrarium that was built by my son. This photo was an excellent inspiration and challenge for me - especially drawing a figure with a face!
My husband and I worked as volunteers all Saturday morning sorting books for the upcoming Goddard Riverside Book Fair and then spent the afternoon watching our grandchildren enjoy the Halloween Fun Fair that my daughter organized as a fund raising event for their nursery school. After carving a pumpkin with my grandchildren at dinnertime, we came home and collapsed. I almost didn't do a journal page for Saturday - and then picked up my sketchbook, a washable graphite pencil, and a photo of Lin's kittens and did a very loose sketch in the few minutes before bed. I try to sketch daily and rarely, if ever, will give in to being too tired or too busy. But some days, a 5 minute sketch like this seems like a huge accomplishment.
A hard challenge - and I'm not sure how or when I should reveal the full drawing....
I don't think that this should be very hard, based on the portion I chose to include, so I will post the full version as soon as there are a few comments.
Casey immediately saw that this detail was from a train engine - so I'm adding the full drawing today to finish the challenge. My daughter chaired the Halloween Fun Fair for the nursery school and one of the highlights was a train ride for adults and children in the New York City playground that was used for the event.
Here are 3 of our grandchildren enjoying the day.
I picked up this leaf and nut from the sidewalk in Capitol Hill, Washington DC, last weekend. These huge trees lined the street all around the park and there were multiple nuts that looked like acorns until you noticed that the caps were really spiculated - not at all like a traditional oak acorns. On the left is the inside of an empty cap and on the right a drawing of a cap with the nut facing up. The cap actually has the spicules covering it entirely.
The leaves were as long and narrow as I depicted, but the veins were actually symmetric - and I didn't manage to keep them that way when I painted the leaf. I have no idea how the leaves were placed on the branch or what the bark looked like. None of the tree identification web sites helped me identify this tree, so I'm hoping someone in EDM can do it. Lin?
We spent the Columbus Day weekend with our youngest grandchild in Washington DC. When she was born I started a Cachet Linen watercolor journal for our visits to DC - the same journal that I used for my 3 London travel journals for my other grandchildren. I try to do a visual journal page for each day of our visit,
We went to the annual Navy Day when we arrived Saturday, but Annabelle slept through it while my two oldest grandchildren, who were also visiting DC, had a fabulous time climbing on huge military vehicles. But she now loves her Exersaucer and while we were babysitting for her spent many happy minutes playing in it. Here is a cropped version from my position in a nearby chair.
Sunday morning we took Annabelle for a really long walk around Capitol Hill and saw Halloween decorations whereever we walked. One house even had pumpkin vines tied up to their wrought iron fence and many pumpkins in various stages of growth. I captured one of the bigger pumpkins and the vine in one of my drawings.
On Monday we took Annabelle up Pennsylvania Ave to buy some new books for her and then I visited Capitol Hill Books (in a row house across from Eastern Market) for the first time, to survey their incredible collection of used books. I found a book about the history of Chelsea - in London - which is where we stayed during our year traveling back and forth to London to visit my daughter and her family. It was a great read for the train coming back to NYC. What is not in my drawing are the stacks of books that completely obscure the front windows upstairs and down. Yet inside the collection is wonderfully organized over 3 floors. A must visit now for me for all subsequent trips to see Annabelle.
We were in Washington DC this weekend visiting our youngest grandchild. I took some great photos of floating vehicles at Navy Day in the DC Navy Yard, but when we got back to my son's house, I found this really cute Dr. Rubber Duckie among Annabelle's bath toys and decided that this would be my answer to the challenge. One duck - 4 views.
My three year old granddaughter Sydney loves to draw and color. She was exhausted last Friday evening - after running at least a mile through Central Park climbing the big rocks while we brought her to our apartment from Nursery School. After dinner she went to bed, and then about 30 minutes later carried out this fabulous lion drawing!
Yesterday I met a good friend between the New York Public Library lions and quickly sketched one to post with Sydney's lion. I used a watercolor pencil to do the drawing and then "painted" it to get the shading.
My daughter and granddaughter brought me a lovely bouquet last week and I managed to draw and paint two of the 3 types of flowers while it remained fresh. I have no idea what type of flower this is - it really was almost hot pink and I never quite achieved the correct color.
They mixed in many ornamental cabbages among the roses and the flowers painted above and these were really fun to paint. I used a watercolor pencil to add the purple veins.
We have flower beds around the trees on the sidewalk in front of our New york City apartment and the summer flowers are overflowing the space. It is getting cool enough that they won't last much longer and holiday greens will be spread over the area this month.
I love Margaret's doodles and especially how she frames many of her paintings. So this is an homage to Margaret who inspires me as I take this journey. I will never be able to share her patience doing fill-in pen work,, but would love to learn her use of color and composition.
Seemed very fitting to be drawing the back of this $10 bill while thinking about the historic House vote that hopefully will occur today.... Living in New York City, it is easy to see how lack of credit is going to affect the middle class as much as those that work in the financial district. I'm excited about the possibility of keeping Mayor Bloomberg for 4 more years - to skillfully navigate the decreasing budget available to keep this amazing city afloat. And I've never been one to endorse Republicans....
Re: the challenge: This was hard work. I was going to comment on how well Sandy had drawn both sides of a bill, when I looked at our new member's (Speck) drawing of many paper bills!
I saw Sherrie and Kathleen's Tree Peonies and just had to try one for my daily sketch today. I didn't know anything about the Virtual Sketch Date, but now have it bookmarked to see what photos are posted in the future. I need lots of practice sketching and painting reflections on glass, so this was a good challenge for me while I was trying to listen to the important news broadcast while painting.
This is a painting of my travel watercolor set - made by Daler-Rowney - and purchased on sale at Pearl Paints in New York City. The only other time I saw this set was in a similar drawing in The Creative License - page 57 - by Danny Gregory. I don't like the color selection as much as my palette of Winsor-Newton paints which I use at home, but I've learned to mix enough colors to make it workable - and it is small, light, and functional.
Although my sketchbook is in part a visual journal of my daily life, it is also the place that I practice drawing and painting. This year, one of my goals was to practice figures and especially faces, and I found that I could instantly make a toddler look like a teenage as soon as I sketched in a face. Yuck! I couldn't stand the page I did Friday so I tried again in pencil the following morning. So this shows my "old" child's face and a slightly more youthful child face in pencil along side.
Yesterday I went to the preview of the new Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night). I like to draw from the Masters, and like to do at least one sketch at art exhibits, Yesterday I chose an 1878 shaded pencil drawing that was in a glass case. It is such an early drawing of Van Gogh's that it isn't even included in the huge VanGogh gallery of drawings on the web.
He shaded in pencil, but I used gray watercolor to try to achieve the same tones. In a note included with the drawing, Van Gogh said that he loved buildings lit from within during the evenings when workers were at rest. I also love to walk by homes lit from within during the evening hours - canal houses in Amsterdam and brownstones here in New York City - so this drawing really resonated with me.
I finally had to skip the peanut challenge and move on. We don't have peanuts in our house and I haven't seen any around during the last few weeks. But we do have multiple packs of disposable razors - yellow for me and blue for my husband. I enjoy doing sketches from multiple angles so this razor was fun for me to draw.
I lived in a 3rd floor garret apartment in a private home (1965-1969) when I was a poor medical student in Philadelphia. The neighborhood was delightful, the house was on a bus route connecting to school, and the price was right. I made this sketch from an artist's pen sketch on a notecard, so I'm not sure about the details. The floor plan comes from my memory. Oh how I wish I had taken more photos when I moved from place to place! I lived here between college and Chicago - so it is out of sequence in the "My Homes" category on my blog.
Domenic left this message for me on the EDM message board and that led to our agreement to each sketch more figures and specifically faces by September 13th.
It was helpful for me to have the challenge because this was my usual fall back behavior when practicing figures.
I started the challenge immediately by sketching one figure with a face from a magazine photo, and then a face from an old master art book that I have.
But a real challenge for me was to sketch from the photo of a dancer, and actually feel confident enough to add a face.
Yesterday, while at the FIT Museum looking at the Gothic Fashion exhibit, I decided to even sketch the face of the mannequin when sketching a fabulous silk evening coat. Her eyes are wonky, but I could have resorted to my "blank face" and didn't. I love Margaret's frames that she puts around her journal pages - and quickly discovered that I'm not patient enough to do those fabulous frames, not even her dots!
This was a good mini-challenge for me. I definitely need to have a specific goal to keep me stretching my daily sketches. Hopefully Domenic hasn't forgotten and we'll get to see his figures from our challenge before long.
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.
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.
We have two ceiling fans in our apartment, but I sketched part of one for a previous challenge. This journal page shows multiple views of a battery-operated personal fan - and I have no idea where it came from. However, it was perfect on that very hot night in August 2003 when New York City and much of the East Coast had their last blackout. That was the very last time it was used, and I almost didn't remember I had it because it is so small (3 3/4 inches high) and inconspicuous sitting on a corner of my book shelves. The image on the bottom right is a frontal view when the fan is on. It goes so fast that I couldn't see the soft black "blades" at all.
This was a very difficult challenge because I immediately thought about "stuff." But the "stuff" I always wanted a decade, or a year, or a week ago, I either got or no longer want. I am extremely fortunate that I did get the big things I wanted. I have a fabulous husband , 3 grown children with wonderful spouses, and 5 grandchildren ages 5 months to 5 years. I have a medical career AND I am a wife and mother - something considered impossible/improbable when I was developing my dream. I saw many parts of the US and had an opportunity to live in several regions that partially shaped me: The Northeast, the Midwest, Southern California, and Texas - and now I live exactly where I want to be for this time in my life - New York City. And I have always had creative passions and the ability to move among them in cycles to keep me happy and to make things for those I love. So after a full week contemplating this challenge, and because I am surrounded by many people who have to learn to live with ill-health, I chose to paint my stethoscope and continue to hope that I have "good health."
There are fewer EDM members posting this challenge than most - so I think others must be struggling with it.
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 my daily sketchbook. I currently use a large Moleskine watercolor book, but really don't like the landscape format. However, I like the size and wanted to see if I could make a similar size journal in a portrait format.
I used 140 lb Fabriano Artistico extra-bright soft press watercolor paper. Each book contains 6 signatures - 2 folios per signature. The finished books are 5.5 inches by 7.5 inches. Here are photos of the covers, the end papers of one of the books, and the watercolor paper.
We moved to San Antonio Texas from LaJolla California and while my husband worked at the Army Institute for Surgical Research, I joined the faculty at the University of Texas Health Science Center. We initially intended to move on at the end of 3 years, but instead my husband joined me on the faculty and we raised all 3 children there before returning to New York City. We had a Texas ranch house built in the 1950s, with wonderful shade trees and lots of space for our family. This sketch was made from a photo taken during the winter - and our live oak tree still has leaves. When we moved to Texas I learned for the first time that live oak trees drop their leaves in the spring instead of the fall. We lived in this house for 18 happy years.
I still try to draw figures regularly, while regularly avoiding my 2008 Goal to draw more faces. Here is a quick soluble graphite drawing that I did this week. I was attracted to this magazine photo by the opportunity to also draw a horse.
My son and his wife in Washington DC have two cats - his and hers from before they were married. So this sketch was made from a photo of Sammy meeting baby Annabelle and her stuffed Jellycat Bella shortly after she was born.
I loved searching for shells on the empty beach on our morning walk. We usually arrived about one hour after high tide and on our walk one morning we found 3 very clean parts of a fish skeleton at the water line - a head, one large vertebra, and one small vertebra. My daughter and grandchildren were equally interested in examining the backbone and asked us to look for more for a collection. But none were found.
Another morning a Monarch butterfly accompanied us on our entire walk. Just before we left, I was able to take a photo while the butterfly landed briefly on the sand.
We loved having morning coffee after our beach walk on the back deck under the umbrella. My sketch is missing the bottoms of the 3 chairs across the table - it just got too complicated for me spatially.
Our final day - my masking fluid and tool for putting the mask on the paper, a beach rose, one of the seagulls immediately before flight, and my youngest grandson's sippy cup which was sitting in front of me while I was sketching.
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 next few days.
I loved the "Creative Matrix" idea in Dory Kanter's book Art Escapes and then decided to try it when Martha of Trumpetvine Travel posted hers as a calendar from her recent vacation in the woods. Here is the first page of mine.
The house lawns were mowed the first afternoon we arrived, and I was shocked to see fully formed mushrooms, that were twice as tall as the grass, appear the very next day. They were very delicate and disappeared completely by the following day. I'd love to know the type of mushroom - research must be done.
My husband and I walked two miles on the beach early each morning and collected shells and other "treasures." The road to the beach is on a narrow strip of land between the bay and the ocean and I loved a deserted, weathered, wood shell of a house that was up on stilts at the edge of the bay. It was possible to look right through the windows and doors that were not boarded up.
We occasionally met someone on the beach walking their dogs, but except for them we shared the beach with the seagulls. I read that there are 80 varieties of gulls and wondered about the three patterns of coloration of the gulls we saw. Here is one of the gulls and the shadow that he cast on the sand in the bright sunlight.
We were at the beach with our daughter and grandchildren for a week, and I finally found a bench I wanted to sketch. We had shrimp tacos for dinner at LaFondita in Amagansett, NY and the garden sculpture company behind the restaurant displayed this granite and wood bench on the edge of the pond. The wood was weathered like the traditional benches along the streets near the beach and the composition and balance between elements was extraordinary. If only I could have studied and painted the grain on some of the wood. The brown-pink painted square behind the bench is my painted background for the sketch.
The image that I kept returning to for the EDM Challenge "Draw Something Dangerous," was my precious little 3 year old grand daughter Sydney who can now ride her two wheel bike without training wheels! She rides it on a quiet street in front of their summer house with adults all around her, but she is soooo tiny on it!
My sketch doesn't show the joy on her little face, so here is one of many pictures taken while she whizzed by.
This is the next entry for my "Our Homes" series of sketches. I really wish that I had taken more photos of our houses, but this is something that I never considered while we were living there.
After several years in Chicago we moved to La Jolla, California to finish our training. I was pregnant with our first child and lived in a little cottage overlooking the ocean during the next 4 years. The house was small, but we had a fabulous brick patio built into the mountain behind us. The weather was so nice most of the year that it became the family playroom for our sons. All 3 of our children were born there (my daughter 14 days before moving day) and then we moved to yet another part of the country - Texas.
We just returned from several days with friends in their family summer home overlooking Silver Lake in NH. Anyone that knows my blog realizes that I paint very few landscapes, so I forced myself to upload a sketch that I did from their porch overlooking the lake. This year I'm trying to work on figures and faces, maybe next year I can work on trees in Central Park, NYC.
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.
I'm still drawing figures (mostly dancers) from photos to practice sketching their body positions. I take ballet barre once each week when I can (I hate all other forms of exercise) and then pick up a postcard advertising a dance program and sketch the photo while I have a cold drink. We pick up my grandson Robbie at nursery school at lunchtime, so I have some time to paint these while I'm still at the dance studio. I'd love to work live, but ballet dancers are in constant motion. I've made no progress on adding faces so far this year and their hands are still pretty awful, but I know that constant practice is important. Here are some of the ones that I sketched in July.
I also copied several more Seurat drawings onto the modern equivalent of the paper he used and here is the last one I did. I usually don't draw only in pencil, so using his drawings as inspiration and experimenting with the Arches MBM 105 grain paper and some of my pencils is fun.
EDM Challenge #180: I had a really difficult time with Challenge #180 - Draw Something in Your Favorite Color. I did a Color Project after being inspired by Laura several years ago and you can see both of our many entries by going to the category list on our blogs. How could I possible select one color when I love them all and don't consider any drawing done until I add watercolor washes. Then one evening my son sent me a photograph of my newest grandchild Annabelle's delicious pink feet. It was then that I decided that I had to sketch and paint them for this challenge in honor of both of my grand daughters. Sydney lives in a pink room with pink comforters and quilts and for years seemed to only want to wear pink clothes.
EDM Challenge #181 Draw a Trash Can: I couldn't find any interesting trash cans to draw until I walked around a corner in my office building and saw this behemoth - in a hallway where some room renovation was being done. I wish the colors were more interesting!
My husband and I were married midway through medical school, but lived in Philadelphia and Chicago until we graduated. Then I joined him for post-grad training at the University of Chicago and we moved into our very first "adult" apartment together. It was a lovely modern apartment in one of two buildings that sat on a landscaped island in the middle of E 55th Street. Friends used to call it carbon monoxide island because the two lanes of traffic on E55th Street separated to go around the apartment complex.
I have only a few photos from our years there - one taken during a snowstorm when the buildings were silhouettes and the other taken of just one corner of the building showing the architecture. I'm not pleased with my page composition, but know how I will position these images when I work more on this series.
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
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....
I gathered stuff from the beach during our walks and sketched them later. I also tried to sketch at the Snack Shack each morning when we were having our morning coffee in the nice cool breeze.
This is a sketch of the front doors to the food area - and the same man was in his chair reading the newspaper 4 mornings in a row.
One morning we sat at a table behind an artist who was painting the ocean view in oils. I'm not sure that he even knew that I sketched him.
Beach Treasures: Shells and Seaweed
Every morning the beach was different. We were amazed that the types of shells varied each day - and on our final morning there was seaweed for the first time and only smooth shell fragments and small rocks.
Seagulls and Terns kept us company on our walks. I took lots of photos of them with my zoom lens because they wouldn't let us get very close. The photos were used to create this page.
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 beach and quickly established a daily routine. Each day we took a long walk on the beach, picking up shells as we went, followed by morning coffee on the covered patio at the Snack Shack. Just as the beach was getting hot, we were able to move into the shady, cool ocean breeze.
A quick painting of the beach from the Snack Shack:
Shells and a sea gull feather found on the beach during our walks:
I wanted to continue figure sketching practice, but didn't have any ready models on the beach the first two days - so I sketched from an ad in a Hamptons magazine. We definitely didn't see her on our walk!
We walked into the Village during the afternoon and from an outdoor cafe I sketched the old Southampton Town Hall building which is now Saks Fifth Avenue.
We just returned from a long weekend, mini-vacation at the beach. I wanted to upload last week's challenge as soon as I returned home and then will more slowly post some beach sketches.
My husband and I were walking to our grandson's school in London to pick him up when I saw this wonderful row of 4 phone booths. Usually they were single or in pairs in neighborhoods we visited - so I had to get this photo to later play with perspective. And I never did! That is my husband in the red baseball cap - waiting for me to catch up! It was a nice challenge for me to draw this and I listened to Danny's recent Podcast while I sketched and painted it. A good quiet Sunday afternoon.
Our children were all in New York City several weekends ago to celebrate my birthday, Henry's 5th birthday party, and Father's Day. Annabelle, just barely 3 months old, met her 4 New York City cousins for the first time and we tried to get yet another picture of all of our grandchildren together. This is always a hilarious event - with 3 cameras flashing and the other adults jumping up and down to make them smile. Sometimes the out-takes are so funny that we print them as a series. NOT A SINGLE PHOTO is ever near-perfect. There are many funny faces, closed eyes, fingers in mouths and noses - and the youngest one usually starts sliding sideways sometime during the event. For the second half of the photo-shoot Callum had his thumb in his mouth and elephant in front of his face - thereby eliminating half of the 50+ photos that were rapidly taken.
Our daughter has 3 children and my sons each have one. From left to right: Callum (1 1/2), Henry (5 yrs), Annabelle (almost 3 months), Robbie (almost 3), and Sydney (3 1/2). Like most grandparents- we adore them and spend any available minute with them.
I'm always happy when I can post an EDM Challenge before the next one is announced. These exercises are great for me to do and I try to stretch my skills a little with each one.
We were on vacation when the "Sparkle Challenge" was posted and I really wanted to try to capture the light of a gem stone. I'm not very good painting reflections and I kept looking for a big stone. I even took a photo of the Hope diamond when we were in DC. But then I decided to just draw a Bulgari bracelet from an advertisement and move on.
I also took photos of cute little Capitol Hill houses with flags blowing in the breeze on our trip to DC because I knew that ! couldn't draw a moving flag. Then, at the end of my taxi ride to Union Station following my meetings, I looked up and saw the facade of the station. I grabbed my camera, took several photos and headed inside for my train back to New York.
I loved the Seurat Drawings Exhibit at MoMA NY and was especially fascinated with the paper (click on the Conservation button). This is especially interesting because I don't even sketch with Conte or charcoal. I looked up the Michallet paper and learned that the modern day equivalent is available at NY Central Art Supplies. I bought a sheet while I was there on Saturday just to experiment with it. I ripped it into smaller pieces and now will play with it, using Seurat's drawings as my inspiration. Here is #1 - done with a 1/8th sheet and a Derwent Drawing pencil.
Here are 3 more faceless figures from the month of June: three Parisiennes from a 19th C photo, a sculpture of Marilyn Monroe in a Washington DC hotel, and a sax player from the Tin Pan Blues Band that I sketched in Central Park while my husband watched our grandson Robbie feed the ducks. If you "google" the name of the sculpture and sculptor, you can see what Marilyn's face looked like.
I still work on faces, hands, and figures some days each month. Here are 3 of the journal pages I did in June. These came from the NY Times Sunday Magazine and a Bloomingdale's catalogue. I'm still waiting for the day when I can add a face to a full figure. Somehow, I sketch grotesque faces when working this small or make them comic book simple. Oh well - maybe 2009!
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 multiple trips to London to visit our other grandchildren when they lived there. The 3 London volumes are part travel sketchbook and part grandchild visual journal because lots of the drawings are of their toys, or experiences in their lives.
I printed my previous sketches of Annabelle's house, the US Capitol, and two facades of Eastern Market (before the fire) on plain paper with an ink jet printer and collaged them on the first two pages of this DC journal as an introduction. Those drawings can be found in the Washington DC category on this blog (see category list on right hand side of the webpage). I completed 5 pages during our first visit with her and most are already posted. I did the following drawings this weekend.
I asked my son and daughter-in-law about their favorite newborn toys - and painted both their favorite rattles and her new crib mobile. They think her favorite animal on the mobile, based on the kicking and cooing of a 3 month old, is the donkey, so he has a portrait by himself.
On Sunday afternoon we took Annabelle on the Metro in her stroller to the National Museum of Natural History. At the end of our brief visit, they went to feed her and I stayed in the rotunda to draw the elephant to document her first visit there and the fun we had on our adventure.
I sketched and shaded the elephant with a Derwent light wash pencil and then blended all of it with my small Niji waterbrush.
We were visiting Annabelle, our newest granddaughter, this weekend in Washington DC. She and her Daddy had their first pool party together the day before we arrived. And during our visit we walked to the childrens' playground in Lincoln Park. A quick sketch of her bathing suit (you can't see the cute ruffles on the back), her hat, and two of the toys in the park were sketched together for last week's EDM Challenge - Summertime. More sketches from our visit to follow.
A basket of cloth napkins that we keep on a shelf under our side table in the dining room.
My daughter and her husband gave me a book containing every entry to my blog from its inception through the Canada map on the first day of our recent Quebec vacation (almost 2 1/2 years). I'm thrilled with this 250+ page book and will treasure it. As the active mother of 3 children ages 4 and under, she outsourced the formating through <blurb.com> You can see the same dust jacket on their website for the next day or two at:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/259206
The last two days I took a 10 hour case-in bookbinding class at Studio on the Square in New York City. Two of us requested this special wc journal class and left with lots of knowledge and a beautiful book. Although I recycled 7 books for watercolor, I wanted the option of making my own bookcovers and now I can! The finished book is 7.25" by 11" and has handmade marblized paper for the endpapers. Will it be too precious to use? I hope not!
I was able to photograph and sketch a small foot bridge in Central Park, New York City. Landscapes aren't "my thing" so I need to be forced to consider trees and bushes.
I missed several EDM Challenges when I was on vacation in Quebec. This sketch of an inuit piece of jewelry was finished this week from memory. The background pink color was my addition - the Inuit pin was just the ice cubes, figure, and base.
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. I have connected with old friends and new friends planning to visit Quebec Province this summer and even received emails from EDM members who are just planning a trip. Because Domenic started a thread on the Every Day Matters Message Board re: sketching while traveling with a non-sketcher, I tried to add some notes about when and how I sketched during this trip - bottom line = FAST. That means that nothing would ever be considered a finished painting, but I have wonderful memories of a fabulous, relaxing vacation in two cities that I only previously read about.
I sketched Pointe a Calliere from the steps at Place Royale while my husband was at the hotel gym late one afternoon and painted it from photos back in the hotel at night. It was the most challenging architectural sketch I did - and there was lots of erasing before I was satisfied. This point along the St. Lawrence River is the site of the original settlement of Montreal and the History and Archeology Museum was constructed on the site. Archeologists are still actively "digging" underneath to identify the original buildings and to save artefacts in the Museum.
Our last night in Montreal we returned to Modavie, a restaurant on rue St-Paul that has live jazz. I sketched the singer and the band quickly while we waited for our food - which was lucky because they took a break that didn't end until we were almost ready to leave. The singer returned from break with her jacket on so I sketched her a second time while finishing my coffee. They were painted using my small travel paints and a Niji waterbrush while we were at the restaurant. A double page spread didn't fit on my scanner, so this is a photo.
On our last morning in Montreal we took a final, very long walk around Vieux Montreal, following a lovely walking guide I purchased at Point a Calliere. We saw most of these streets and buildings previously, but the Pierre du Calvet House was a new, wonderful discovery. I sat on the front of Marche Bonsecours to sketch it while my husband went in for a few minutes. When he returned, he took a photo of me finishing the sketch.
I used Arches and Fabriano 140 lb watercolor paper in this sketchbook and I'm disappointed in the yellow tinge to the background of the scanned sketches. The backgrounds on the Fabriano 140 lb extra-white CP paper are almost white, but I didn't like using the CP paper as much as the HP. I'm most familiar with this scanner and my Moleskine watercolor paper - and I couldn't take the time to investigate my scanner settings this week if I wanted to upload the travel sketches before my vacation is over and work beckons.
It was fun to share my sketchbook with the EDM members who inspire me with their world-wide travel and art. Thanks again for your blog visits.
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 of the lobby floral arrangement while we were sipping our wine.
The following day we walked all the way to rue St-Catherine at rue Guy to see the Central area of Montreal - and then back again. We were in search of hockey jerseys in childrens' sizes and princess clothes for our grandchildren - making it a fun walk past all of the stores on St-Catherine. But we were happy to re-enter Vieux Montreal and I stayed outside a few minutes to sketch the door to the lobby of the Hotel Nelligan.
I sketched flowers during our first evening Happy Hour and from a seat in the lounge sketched the bar during the second. There is still a lot I have to learn about establishing 3 separate planes in a sketch - but this is all about practice!
Suzy, an EDM member from Montreal, suggested that we might enjoy seeing the Avmor Art Collection and I made an appointment with the Collection Director for a private tour during our visit. Mr. Morrow started an industrial cleaning product company on rue St-Helene in Vieux Montreal in 1948. In the 1960s he commissoned an artist to do a drawing of the building for the company Christmas card - starting what would become many commissions by many different artists in many mediums. They now have nearly 400 works of art, all inspired by and depicting the Avmor business headquarters. They have since moved the industrial part of the business to Laval, but retain 445 rue St-Helene for the Avmor Collection. The hours that we spent touring the extensive art and memorabilia collections were among the most pleasureable of our entire vacation thanks to Marie. We walked by the building the day before our visit and I did a sketch before seeing any of the Collection. I thought this might make other artists' interpretations even more meaningful to me.
After a walk and some gallery browsing, we stopped for lunch at an outdoor restaurant with jazz. While waiting for our lunch, I quickly sketched both musicians and was then surprised by the sudden appearance of the keyboard player at our table to see what I was doing. We were across the courtyard from them so I had no idea that he even saw me sketching. He was really nice and even agreed to sign the sketch. As he returned to play the 4th set, he stopped by to tell me that now I would have time to add faces!
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. The gazebos along Terrasse Dufferin, on the top of the cliffs, provided wonderful shelter from the rain and allowed me to sketch and my husband to do one of his New York Times crossword puzzles. I sketched what I could see from inside of the gazebo and painted it while we were there. The color squares map our walk that morning. I decided that I don't like Fabriano CP watercolor paper, but had to forge ahead and use these few pages.
When we got too cold to sit any longer we went in search of onion soup gratinee and salad. I sketched the following "oldest house in Quebec" (Maison Jacquet; built in 1675-76) in the sun the afternoon before while my husband was at the gym. It is now a lovely, cozy restaurant named Aux Anciens Canadiens in honor of a book written by Philippe-Aubert de Gaspe who lived in the house from 1815-24. So it was a perfect place for lunch.
During lunch I sketched one of many figures on a large carved wooden picture above our heads - and then used artistic license to add color to her. I also sketched my husband's soup bowl after the thick layer of cheese was consumed. The painting was done later during a quiet moment.
One of the buildings near Place Royale has an enormous fresco painted on the entire side of the building - depicting all of the historical figures important in the settlement of Quebec City. The figures are life-size as drawn - and it is a challenge to take a picture while students aren't posing at the bottom amidst the famous folks.
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 I quickly sketched a few items in gallery windows that we passed (sketched in pen quickly and painted later). We spent time in multiple galleries and found some new contemporary Quebec artists that we liked. On rue Sault-au-Matelot we visited an Inuit Art Gallery to learn more about the "Dancing Bear" sculptures in the window and then visited Musee de la Civilisation to learn some Quebec history. My sketchbook page from the museum visit has more writing than sketching as I learned about Quebec (page not included).
The following day we walked through Parliament Hill area to the Musee de Beaux Artes where we discovered two Canadian artists.
Alfred Pellan has many imaginary beasts in the permanent collection, including the large garden sculpture sketched here and a children's exhibit and workshop. All of the sketches on these two pages were done in pen as we walked through the exhibits and painted later.
Jean-Paul Riopelle created a massive, haunting mural (Homage to Rosa Luxemburg: more than 30 huge paintings all strung together) in which he uses spray paint and stencils for many, many types of birds on Ile de Oies. It was beautiful, but also upsetting as I thought about dead Snow Geese and other types of birds being used to create so many images.
We also learned more about Inuit Art touring the Museum's Brousseau Collection and I sketched a few more Inuit sculptures at the Museum and several whimsical dancing bears in the window of a gallery on our way to dinner (we were 10 minutes early for our reservation). These bears were all sculpted from serpentine rocks and then highly polished by Inuit artists in Nunavik (Quebec Province).
There were many performers in Place D'Armes and around the entrance to the Funiculaire. I took photos of some of the more interesting ones and later used two to sketch this artist and musician. It would have been difficult for me to sketch them without being very conspicuous - even the photos felt rushed. I had time in the early morning to sketch from my photos on our laptop so this worked well and allowed me to practice quick figure drawing (one of my Art Goals for 2008).
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 "Everyday Matters" about keeping a travel sketchbook when traveling with non-artists. I will try to mention how I did some of the pages as I post them. But the most important advice is sketch fast and take reference photos to finish the pages later in the hotel or when sitting for coffee, wine. lunch, dinner etc. And have a spouse who enjoys seeing what you are doing as long as he doesn't need to sit for more than 15-30 minutes total.
I recycled a Will and Ariel Durant book called Lessons in History for this vacation and used wonderful paper depicting French postcards for the end papers.
There are 36 watercolor pages and 8 pages for collage. I will fill the entire book after I sketch the Hockey jerseys we brought back for our 3 grandsons and the princess clothes for our 2 grand daughters on the last 2 pages. I sketched in pen while walking through museums with my husband, just capturing a few of the most interesting pieces. I also did fast sketches (15-20 min)in pencil while my husband did crossword puzzles or went to the gym - and then finished the pages later. I hope to post representative pages over this next week as I continue my vacation at home.
We flew on an American Eagle flight from LaGuardia to Montreal and then took the train (VIA) to Quebec City. I sketched in both the airport and train station to pass the time until departure.
Our hotel in Quebec City was the Chateau Frontenac and I could have sketched only this magnificent building, which dominates the skyline, for the entire 4 days. My husband sat with me in the main area of Terrasse Dufferin while I did this pencil sketch of one of the turrets. I went back to the same spot to paint it while he was at the gym late the next afternoon.
This next sketch was made and painted over two days - early in the morning - from the window seat of our hotel room. It is the back side of the roof of the major central tower of the Chateau. Most of the artists have sketches of the Chateau Frontenac for sale in the
artist's alley (Rue du Tresor) and after sketching this I realized that everyone of them was of the front side - which is slightly different.
Tomorrow - Part 2. The Musee des Beaux Artes and Inuit Art.
We are in Quebec City and Montreal for vacation - see everyone in June. The first page of the recycled book that I made for this trip is a map of Quebec Province and I hope to really play and have fun on every page!
May 20th: Another Matisse contour drawing from my book of Suerat to Matisse French Drawings. Matisse did the contour drawing self-portrait, and I copied it line by line and then added the color.
May 21st: Long day at work and we're getting ready for vacation this evening. I removed the sharps from my carry-on bag and did my fastest sketch ever. One more day of work and then a relaxing trip to Montreal and Quebec City where I hope to fill a specially prepared recycled sketchbook.
A quick sketch tonight for EDM Challenge #171: Draw Ice Cream
I love ice cream and had this photograph mounted as part of a storyboard collage that I did for a project about me.
We met our son and grandson at the Toy Boat Pond this morning in Central Park and I had time to sketch and paint this lamp post while waiting for them to arrive. I actually sketched one of the Park lamp posts once before, but didn't have a bench perfectly positioned to see a symmetrical globe and cover. There was sun when we arrived but the clouds rolled in over the next hour and it is again raining!
Today my husband and I went to the Peter Blum Gallery in Soho to see 80 prints by Goya from his Disasters of War collection. These are amazingly powerful and I sketched a detail from two of the prints ( "With or Without Reason" and "Dead Bodies"). Afterward we had a glass of wine in a wine bar on West Broadway in Tribeca where I filled a second journal page. The logo of the wine bar is a medieval woodcut that the owner found in an old text. I sketched only the top half and reversed the colors.
May 15th: Last week I bought a book entitled Seurat to Matisse: Drawing in France at the Strand book store in Manhattan. It was an exhibit book published by MoMA in 1974 and part of a big batch of unsold books that now were for sale and just being shelved. It was $3.95 in 1974 and $0.48 for me! I love sketching from Master drawings and just did my first one from this book. Matisse did a very simple line drawing - I added watercolor washes.
Here is another recent drawing that I did from Egon Schiele's painting of his sister Gertie. The styles are so very different and yet I had fun doing both of them.
May 16th: Another ballet class and another in my series of dancers. After class I pick up post-card advertisements for upcoming performances from the ballet studio for my inspiration and quickly sketch the dancers while I have a Diet Snapple Tea and kill some time before I need to pick up my grandson at nursery school.
There is a new Superheroes Exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art - part original movie costumes and part fashion from the major designers inspired by the Superheroes. My grand daughter Sydney and I saw it Saturday morning when we went to play with the Museum computers in the Education Center and she loved Clark Kent who morphed into Superman - and then back to Clark Kent, so we had to go back with brother Henry the next morning. They were so cute - such little people in that big Museum. All of my grandchildren learned how to walk better in the Temple of Dendur and regularly throw pennies into the pools there and the fountain in the new Greek and Roman Galleries. This is one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to spend time with them when they are staying with us during really cold or awful weather in the city.
I moved from my second childhood home to a college dormitory. This is the 3rd in my "My Homes" series. I lived in this specific dormitory for two years, an adjacent identical dorm in the same quad for one year, and then up on the hill in a modern dorm for my 4th year. We had to live in the dorms or at home and had very stringent curfews. No boys were allowed beyond the living room. When my children went to college both sexes shared bathrooms and had rooms on the same floor - quite a change.
I drew the bottom of the dormitory facade before I realized that I didn't leave any room for hedges - or the tree - and my transparent watercolors couldn't possibly fix my error. Only the first floor had an interesting floor plan and I lived on the second and then third floors, so I stopped here.
This is my year to practice drawing faces - and I alternate between photos and works by other artists. Yesterday was complicated - with Grandparents' Day at nursery school for 3 of my grandchildren and then work. Because of an evening program at work I didn't get home until 9PM and while watching the last episode of Medium for the year, I turned to Leonardo for inspiration. This drawing is in the Uffizi (and on my postcard!). The face is too long, but before I started sketching daily in Jan. 2006, I probably wouldn't have even tried this sketch. I am putting all figure and face sketches in my second recycled book which is dedicated to this 2008 goal. The first book for figures and faces was a recycled Michaelangelo sonnet book in which I incorporated some of the original pages of his drawings. This is a book entitled Painting Made Easy. The original pages left among the watercolor paper folios don't provide the same inspiration!
EDM Challenge #169 Draw a Piece of Cake: This loose interpretation of the challenge was done the last day of April and never posted because of the Every Day in May Challenge which started the next day. So I uploaded it now with EDM Challenge #170.
EDM Challenge #170 Draw a Zipper: This is a still unused Swarovski crystal zipper. Each zipper tooth has a rhinestone set into it creating a single line of rhinestones when the zipper is closed. I wish I could have captured the sparkle in paint, but that is totally beyond my skills!
We had a weekend filled with grandchildren - all 4 who live in NYC on Friday and my daughter's 3 children for the whole weekend. When the two oldest are here overnight (ages 4 and 3), we try to have at least one movie night to allow them to stay up late and see a favorite classic movie from our children's childhood. This Saturday night it was Pete's Dragon - released in 1977. Elliott, a flying dragon, helps children in trouble. In the movie he protects the orphaned Pete and helps him find a new family - tranforming the town of Passamaquoddie in the process.
Yesterday was so busy that I made two really quick drawings on small pieces of watercolor paper I keep for "emergencies" in my purse notebook, painted them at home this AM, and collaged them into my sketchbook. The fish was one of a line of small, wall-mounted, fountains in a restaurant and the chandelier was one of several in the lobby of the theater. Since I sketch every day but usually only post several sketches per week, you're now seeing all of my journal pages - the good, the bad, and the ugly - in order to participate in Every Day in May.
I had time after my ballet class this morning to sketch/paint before I picked up Sydney and Robbie at their nursery school. The ballet studio has many advertisements for dance programs and classes and I usually manage to find one photo that inspires me. While I type this, Robbie (2 1/2) is taking his nap and Sydney (3 1/2) is watching our videotape of the Mary Martin Peter Pan Broadway show for the umpteenth time. But when I pulled out my sketchbook to scan the pages, she asked if she could watch Peter Pan AND paint at the same time! She will be here with us for the next two nights, so I think we'll do lots of painting and coloring.
I had a wonderful relaxing day and can add my daily sketchbook page today when it was done rather than waiting to upload it tomorrow. Today my sketchbook is more a visual journal because I had a leisurely lunch outdoors across from the Jefferson Market Courthouse between ordering a camera at B and H and browsing and buying art books at The Strand.
I had a long day at work, followed by Book Group at my apartment, so this sketch was done in 5-10 minutes while I made morning coffee in my office. Commiting to a daily sketch since January 1, 2007, I frequently have to do something really quickly in the morning. Most weekdays I sketch during my quiet time at home in evening. The brass pig has been with us for more than 20 years - maybe closer to 30, and I can't believe that I've not sketched him yet!
I did another 2 page journal spread in my House series for my sketches yesterday and today. My father built this house with the help of my mother's brothers and some friends - in a rural community approximately 20 miles from New York City. We moved in one week after I finished 3rd grade and I lived there until I graduated from high school - plus 4 college summers. As I was writing this I realized that I have lived in my NYC apartment longer than I lived in my childhood home - a surprising realization.
I left out the trees on the front lawn because it wasn't possible to see the house. Maybe next winter I'll resketch this house from a winter photo and add the bare trees. Snow and trees are still challenges for me!
Next I plan to sketch the college dorm where I lived for 2 of my 4 years.
Martha, of Trumpetvine Travels, spent the day with my husband and me in New York. Christies and Sothebys, the big auction houses, are previewing the art for the Impressionism and Modern art auctions next week and there is fabulous art to be seen at both places. Martha and I wandered all of the galleries sketching small pieces of paintings and sculptures - just creating journal pages to reflect our experience. Over lunch we shared our most recent sketchbooks and then returned to my apartment for wine and a little watercolor painting.
The only picture of us, as we set off on the subway, is blurred because I had the flash off in preparation for the galleries - but it is better than nothing:
I'm constantly amazed how people from all over the US - and the world - are meeting to sketch because of the EDM community. These are the four journal pages that I filled while walking through all of the galleries - the first two at Christies and the second two at Sotheby's. Martha said that she would post her sketches when she returns to California.
This large tin rooster is one of many sold at the Eastern Market Weekend Flea Market in Washington DC. The vendor says that they sell as soon as he gets another one from the artist in Mexico. I saw it early in the morning when walking through several weeks ago, but it was sold by the time I went back to sketch it. The following week my son emailed me a photo of the rooster proudly guarding a home on the lawn on 12th Street. They have so much character - rusted tin and all!
When linking to my previous "Museum Visits" posting I realized that I never uploaded my painted version of the Card Players. I will plan a return visit to the Met to sketch it again in January 2009 (paints not allowed).
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 and I had to force myself to remain free in my choice of subject each day instead of worrying about "a published piece." I finally decided that it might be good for me to again post each day's journal page - they certainly are reflective of a very eclectic art interest and maybe I can break through the "performance anxiety" a little more.
Yesterday I painted a sketch of a townhouse that I love. You can see it from one of the upper floor exhibit galleries on the north side of MoMA - and it is breathtakingly beautiful nestled among two rather plain and uninteresting buildings. I sketched it from the MoMA gallery window earlier this year in my daily Moleskine watercolor sketchbook and posted it with sketches from several museum visits. But I wanted to have a sketch in my NYC "travel" sketchbook as well. The first sketch was done "live" and very quickly. The second was done from several photos that I have.
I periodically love to walk and sketch random things - in ink - building up a sketchbook page. Last week I did several pages like this - just for quick fun and memories.
The first page was done while I wandered through many bead stores in the Garment District with a friend. I loved some of the designs.
We picked Robbie and Sydney up at Nursey School on Friday and took them to the Central Park Toy Boat Pond to play. There were many remote control sailboats on the pond so I sketched one as it passed by. Sydney found a one inch rubber charm of a summer "flip-flop" and she played with it for part of the afternoon.
I couldn't do a serious sketch of our newspaper, because I never read it. The New York Times is delivered to our apartment by 6:30 each day and I dutifully bring it inside for my husband. However, I have many things to do that are higher on my personal priority list and I get my news from the WNBC Early Morning Show, WNYC NPR radio during the day in my office, and the Lehrer news hour in the evening. So with this challenge, I bring you a charming paper hat made from the front page of yesterday's newspaper!
My husband gave me this antique gold Elgin ladies' pendant watch as a wedding present. When very pregnant with our first child, I sat down for a cup of coffee and the watch, which was hanging down over my big belly, plunged into the cup. Ever since then watchmakers have been puzzled by the rust on the movements and no repair has lasted very long. I still wear it to work and use it to attach my required ID - not to tell time. It has a wonderful patina and still has great sentimental value.
In the mid-60s my husband sent me a series of 12" by 16" animal cards and we matted them (couldn't afford framing) for the baby's room when our first child was born. They remained in the boys' bedroom for the 4 years we lived in LaJolla, California and then they were put away with some other prints for safe-keeping. Last weekend, and two homes later, I found them and decided to sketch and paint all 5 animals - the first 3 across a double page spread in my Moleskine watercolor journal and the last 2 on separate pages and subsequent days. These were from a commercial card company and the back half of the cards with the publisher's trademark are long gone.
This is one fish from an entire row of fish (face to face and back to back) in a stone wall that forms the entrance to the main door of the Ukrainian Institute at 5th Ave and 79th Street in New York City. It was much more difficult to sketch than I thought because I kept getting lost in the flourishes. I also wasn't able to show the 3-dimensionality of it as much as I wanted because I needed to keep the stone lighter in color than the background. I decided to post it anyway and then sketched and painted 3 of my favorite fish designs just to be colorful and playful. This image was taking from a small area of the background on a Tibetan painting at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York.
Finding something to sketch every evening is sometimes hard. I feel like Danny Gregory when he said that he sketched everything in his apartment. Sometimes I work on faces and figures. This week I also painted animal faces from my reference photos. Here are my giraffe and rhino! I specifically wanted to work on watercolor glazing, although I'm really impatient and don't always allow layers to dry properly!
I still practice sketching a few faces and figures each month - and try different pencils, pen, and watercolor washes as one of my goals for 2008. Although I am still doing one sketch/journal page per day, my sketchbooks are really eclectic and I only have a few pages like this to upload each month.
The next two figures were sketched using photos in Mark Edward Smith's book The Nude Figure: A Visual Reference for the Artist.
These 3 sketches were made from photos in a small Yoga book I bought just for this purpose - to make quick, loose sketches/paintings in many different positions.
I found this challenge to be really hard because of the perspective that I chose. There is much too much detail on the facade of my brick and granite 16 floor New York City apartment building and decisions needed to be made about how detailed I wanted to make the sketch. I definitely chose not to make the upper section bricks part of my sketch. I'm in awe of artists who can sketch and paint entire brick facades!!
I share my house with many other families as I live in a 16 floor New York City apartment building. In Manhattan parlance, these buildings are either "pre-war" or "post-war," i.e. WWII. Our building was built in the late 1920s and I was able to locate advertisements for it in the archives of the New York Times. Our architect, who was doing bathroom renovation, also found a piece of a newspaper that was buried beneath the bathtub in the master bedroom bathroom, so we have proof of the date when it was under construction. I also located and printed the 1930 census pages for the building and now have several very interesting pages about the occupants at that time. At the same time I printed out the 1930 census for the building 2 of my 3 children live in - showing Babe Ruth living there with his wife's family.
I will have to try it again from across the street so I can sketch it straight-on and concentrate more on the actual structure. My stimulus for this might be to make notecards that I can use for the notes that I never get around to writing!
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 had one more just waiting for a special theme - and I decided that it would be my travel sketchbook for Washington DC and my visits to see Annabelle. When we arrived Friday evening I had just enough energy before bed to sketch a few flowers from the bouquet from her greatgrandfather and the tiniest cutest little pink socks I ever saw..
On Saturday morning I held her on my lap after I finished feeding her, and held my sketchbook up in one hand while sketching her little hands and feet.
The edges of these 7 X 10 pages don't scan very well.
We took her out for fresh air Saturday and visited Eastern Market where I always find something fun to sketch and paint. The tin rooster I saw in the morning was already sold, but there was a ceramic one that worked just fine! And I loved the cute lion face on a batik wallhanging made by another vendor.
On Sunday I sketched her new "lovey," a Jellycat stuffed animal called "Miaow Bella Mocha." This was a gift from her cousin - before anyone knew her name. Now Annabelle has her cat Bella. It is customary in our family to take a picture every month with a specific stuffed animal to see changes in my grandchildren's size and development during the first year. My daughter and other daughter-in-law have been so creative that these are among my favorite pictures of our grandchildren. Bella will be used for those photos with Annabelle.
My two oldest grandchildren started to show an interest in my point-and-shoot digital camera just as they turned 3 (because I take so many pictures of them)! I taught them how to hold it carefully, focus until the green light came on, then shoot. They LOVED taking pictures and when unsure what we could get them for their birthday, we bought each the Fisher-Price children's digital camera. It is very simple, but can actually take reasonable photos. We recently took our cameras around the neighborhood, and my granddaughter took one photo - straight ahead- for every 10-12 steps she took! I had to delete a few from the card so she could capture the building at the end of our walk, the external facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I uploaded their JPEGs to their own folders on my computer and each got to select one for a 5 X 7" print to take home. The only down-side of these cameras for them is battery use!
My daughter brought me tulips on the 18th to celebrate Spring. I tried to be really loose sketching and painting them.
Last Friday my daughter brought Callum to stay with us for 5 days - I love having my grandchildren here alone with us. After he had his bath and went to bed, I sketched his really cute little shoes. Without sketching and painting them, I'm not sure that I would have ever really noticed they are blue gray and lime green. These 7wide little feet have certainly grown beautifully since he was born 6 weeks early in London one year ago.
When Callum's cousin Annabelle was born on Saturday, I decided to sketch and paint the bear that I made to celebrate her birth. Tomorrow we will go to meet her and visit my son and daughter-in-law for the weekend and the bear will take her first train ride. I love watching my children become parents - they are all so much in love with these little guys!
Annabelle Miriam was born today at 3:54 PM to our son Jason and his wife Shannon. Mommy and baby are wonderful and Dad - a Pediatrician - says she's just perfect. I sketched and painted the waiting nursery when I visited several weeks ago - and took her the new babyquilt and matching musical pillow. This week I made her a really soft pink bear and will take it for our visit next weekend.
There is a music box in this shadow applique pillow.
This bear is so soft - I hope she loves it!
We don't play cards - and the only deck that I could find in the apartment came from a Benefit Dinner for a Health Care non-profit organization that we attended. Loved the joker - so that was good for sketching. The individual cards each had a single Medicare fact printed on the face side. Wish I had something more exciting!
I got behind last week when I was working on my blog entry re: recylcled books. Here finally are the last two challenges: Body lotions that smell good and my Breakfast.
I still try to practice faces and figures as much as possible since this is one of my goals for 2008. Here are a few that I haven't posted previously.
This was a traditional photo that I tried to stylize in the sketch.
A watercolor sketch from another magazine advertisement. I tried to minimize the amount of ink in the drawing and to work on mixing watercolor skin tones.
When I was shopping for more watercolor pencils at Pearl Paint, I found the eye, nose, and mouth sketch on the left on the "test pad" hanging on the cabinet containing the pencils. I had to rip it off to test my pencils and since there was no longer anyone around, I brought it home for my own practice. I'm in awe of someone who could quickly dash these off - and tried to do the same.
This was a bad experiment! I wanted to try the Mars Lumograph black pencil and my Cretacolor white pencil on a scrap of brown sketching paper. The brown color is just too dark to really see the sketch, so I'll go back and buy a lighter tan for more experimentation.
This is the wonderful used book store where I find my perfect-sized $1.00 books for recycling. It is a lovely bookstore - well organized and cozy. There is a cafe and tables for browsing and reading - and 3 carts always loaded with their oldest and most unloved books for $1.00. All proceeds go for AIDS research and support. My favorite that I purchased this week was Parnassus on Wheels - a short novel by Christopher Morley - complete with lovely ink illustrations. Of course I had to read the entire book as soon as I got home.
Gill at Journal Craft Inspiration has several "Floor Plan" drawings on her blog for inspiration and I thought I would give it a try. My first home, from birth through 3rd grade, was a second floor apartment in this house in Clifton, New Jersey. I had no problem remembering the floor plan and had fun making the memory page. I am an only child and had my bed on the living room couch. When I was sick, my blanket and pillow remained there during the day giving rise to the concept of a "sick bed" which I always created for my children on the family room couch when they were home from school. Now my daughter and oldest son do it for their children.
This barely qualifies as an award, but I couldn't find the quilt ribbons I received many years ago, and I've been thinking of sketching it anyway.
In July 2005 I reconfigured my job description and gave up clinical medicine and training of young physicians - retaining my role in the medical school 3 days per week. I wanted to have more time to spend with my grandchildren and just have fun. My hospital colleagues presented me with this lovely clock which now sits on a shelf in our apartment library. I tell everyone that it is the wristwatch commonly given to men at retirement!
Saturday I received the Kind Heart Award from Mellanie - and the award is so pretty that I wanted to post it here and thank her.
I don't know where the award originated, but appreciate the kind sentiment. EDM is a wonderful community of fellow artists - all working hard to improve their skills, and support and inspire others. I am grateful for the advice so freely given on our message board and the comments left on my blog that spur me on. I'm hoping that everyone who sees this on the EDM Superblog will realize that it is a really big thank you from me to the active members of EDM.
L
This past Wednesday I was completely free to play - no work or other scheduled activities. So I headed off for Soho for a visit to Pearl Paint and some of the galleries in the area. I only had several items on my art supply list, but I always love browsing at Pearl. It has one below ground floor and 5 above ground floors. This trip I purchased watercolor paper for my next recycled book and several pencils, but seriously wondered if I should begin to invest in some 5ml tubes of Schminke watercolor paints since there seems to be so much enthusiasm for the brightness of their pigments. Each 5ml tube (1 tsp) is $12-15 so I would only start with 3 primary colors - but then I wondered if they should be cool or warm primaries since I use both to mix colors with my Winsor-Newton paints. So I didn't get any.
Gallery-hopping is always one of my favorite activities in Soho, even though many/most galleries relocated to Chelsea and on Wednesday I was not disappointed. I discovered several new artists and saw lots of "eye-candy."
This sketch was done from a photo I took of Pearl Paint from the other side of busy Canal Street. It is much too cold right now in NYC to work outdoors - especially in my shearling mittens. It is on "rough" watercolor paper which I now know I hate! But when I recycled my NY State Tax Book last year I filled it with many types of paper so I could decide what I preferred. It didn't take me long to settle on HP 140lb paper.
There are many, many museums in the city and I love to visit the art museums to see the exhibits and sketch from the Masters. We saw a Leon Kossoff drawing exhibit at the National Gallery in London and I was impressed with his return visits to sketch the same few works by Masters many times during his career. I thought it might be fun to try this, in part to see how my art skills evolve and how my familiarity with the painting may change my drawing over time. The Galleries for 19th- and Early 20th-Century European Paintings reopened on December 4th after renovation - so on my first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008, I sat in front of Cezanne's Card Players and sketched it. I am concentrating on sketching figures again in 2008 - with faces - so this seemed like a good painting to revisit again and again. Please don't let them move the bench from in front of the painting! Pen and paints aren't permitted in the Met, so I took a photo and plan to paint it soon.
We visited the Museum of Modern Art with out of town house guests several weeks ago and while my husband toured the 5th floor Painting and Sculpture I exhibit with them, I spent 25 minutes sketching. I love the view from a window in the Picasso room on the 5th floor of MoMA of the top floors of a townhouse across W54th Street - and have many photos of it that I took during previous visits. This time I spent 15 minutes sketching it - again in pencil because of museum rules. Yesterday I found a full charcoal drawing of the same house in Drawing magazine (Winter 2008). Artist Anthony Mitri wrote that his drawing of the house and surrounding buildings took 6 months! I will redraw this house soon and try to do it justice.
After sketching from the window, I did a quick sketch of Cezanne's painting "Turning Road at Montgeroult." I love views of rooftops and always was attracted to this painting in the permanent exhibit. I painted it at home in several sessions trying a yellow underpainting and mixed complementaries for the color of the houses and roofs. Watercolor and oil paints give very different results, but I had fun with this and I think learned a lot from copying his composition.
This week I made a quick visit to the Morgan Library and Museum to see their current exhibit entitled Michaelangelo, Vasari, and their Contemporaries: Drawings from the Uffizi. I chose a simple drawing by Baccio Bandinelli to copy and except for the tilt of the head managed to capture the rest of the lines and the type of shading used. This drawing was a study for his Hercules sculpture that is opposite Michaelangelo's David in front of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. There were many other wonderful drawings, but it was crowded and I had to select one that I might copy quickly enough while standing and trying to manage sketchbook, pencil, bag etc.
I have two favorite kitchen tools. My 36 year old Kitchenaid was posted on this blog in 2006 when I was doing my color project during yellow month. So this time I sketched my 30 year old Cuisinart! They are very reliable machines and have been used regularly for many years. We don't cook as often anymore, but the Kitchenaid was used twice recently when Sydney, Henry, and I baked cookies.
This was a really, really hard challenge for me. I'm not sure that any piece of my popcorn has "volume" and due to the lighting in my favorite painting place, I also don't have shadows. At least the popcorn-eating was enjoyable.
While I was sketching Uno's photo from his win as Best of Breed on Tuesday night, he was winning Best of Show at the Westminstrer Kennel Club annual show in Manhattan. It was the first time in the 100+ year history of the show that a beagle ever won Best of Show. In film clips on the news he was the perkiest, cutest thing - and I'm not especially a pet person!
This sketch was inspired by a photo of my grand daughter after a bath. The blue and white puppy towel probably belongs to one of her brothers, but on this night it was hers. Unfortunately I am not good enough to make the sketch look like her. Maybe next year! For now I can just be happy that I am putting faces on my figures - a huge accomplishment for 2008.
I am really enjoying the recycled books I made (originally inspired by Jan Allsopp - and now made with Martha's methods) and was ready for a new one. My recycled Michaelangelo Sonnet book is completed - full of my "figure and face drawings" - so I was looking for a good replacement. This 1960 $1.00 book purchased on the final sale cart at Housingworks in Soho was a perfect candidate. The cover measures 5.5" X 8" and is really sturdy. I was able to put 4 signatures of 140 lb Arches hot press paper inside. Each signature contains 3 folios of WC paper, one folio of brown Canson paper for sketching, and one folio from the original book. The end papers that hold the page block in place are anatomical drawings.
The spine is not glued so it opens very flat, but this means that in spite of tight stitching there are small gaps between the signatures. I therefore put a thin strip of the anatomical drawing paper over each gap for aesthetic purposes. Martha paints the inside of her Moleskine cover spine black instead.
One of the joys, for me, of recycling old books is being able to include pages from the original text - the cover page and at least a few others. Here is an example of one of the pages, with an illustration that I selected.
I need to overcome new journal angst as quickly as possible or I might not ever want to use the book for fear of ruining it. I immediately added both a figure sketch and a face sketch - and hopefully I'm on my way to a new adventure.
This is my Italian hero sandwich, purchased at a local market for lunch last week. My favorite sandwich is a prosciutto and mozzarella panini - but I don't have a good local source! The cherry tomatoes were added at home for color - and challenge - when sketching and painting my sandwich.
Today I had an hour to go back to the Eternal Ancestry exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to sketch the wonderful faces on these Reliquaries. They are 1-2 feet in height - some are full figures, but most are just heads on a standard base. They are mostly earthcolors with some gold, bronze, silver, and even feathers.
I walked through with my Moleskine watercolor notebook and walnut brown Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil and just sketched pieces that I really liked. The digital photo image below shows all of the faces across a double page spread in the Moleskine. I originally intended to add water, but then started using the pencil for small details meaning these strokes would be lost if I painted over the pencil.
Here is the first page in more detail (scanned):
Here is the second page in more detail (scanned):
I wasn't at all sure what would happen if I sprayed these pages with Fixative, so I sketched another page with another mask and tried it. There was no running or smearing of the color - and in fact I couldn't get the pencil to rewet so I could add color.
The exhibit doesn't close until March 2nd, so I hope to have time to sketch more of these beautiful 19th and 20th C. sculptures from Central Africa.
Two journal pages from my Figure and Face practice. The nude is the on the last page of my Michaelangelo sonnet recycled book. The Beefeater is sketched from a London photo and was done in my recycled Elizabeth I book.
New York City Brownstones are really red-brown and have wonderful, decorative columns and porches for their front stairs. This sketch was made from a photo that I took in the East 80s during the spring (hence the flowers blooming so nicely).
On Fridays when I take ballet class, I have time to have coffee and sketch before going to pick up my grandson at nursery school. I try to use this time to practice figure drawing of dancers from photos in ads in magazines.
Here is my painting from today.
EDM Challenge #154: Draw a Lemon
I wanted to try to capture the moist cut surface of the lemon and used Masking Fluid to create the appearance of membranes. I need to learn to use even a thinner application tool ! I love lemon flavor and wish I had time to make lemon squares with this lemon before bed!
I had a completely free day on Wednesday - no work or family activities - or required errands. For a full week I've been planning a slow leisurely trip to Pearl Paints on Canal Street in Manhattan. Since I have not carried my recycled NY sketch book with me recently, I brought it and no other paper,
As soon as I got off the subway I decided to sketch a roofline and water tank - one of my favorite NYC icons. Then I browsed all 6 floors of Pearl Paints - picking up art supplies for my grandchildren and small new items for me (they have open stock Albrecht Durer WC pencils I can't resist). I think I was in there more than 3 hours! At lunch at Pain Quotidienne in Soho, I sketched a few of my new supplies and then a wall unit facing me in the restaurant. What a wonderful day - full of inspiration and needed mind clearing relaxation.
The map that is on the edge of each page is a piece of the end paper that I used for this recycled book that I used to cover the gap between the signatures. The two pages were actually sketched on two different types of wc paper - I'm growing to love HP, tolerate CP, and hate rough!
More face sketching practice from magazine advertisement photos. Unfortunately there is a piece of dust on the scanner and visible on two of the faces, but I'm too tired to go back and rescan them!
The scan really shows a difference in the pupils that is not as apparent on the sketch. I will definitely need to work on these.
Four lemon-scented soaps in a clear plastic bag, purchased during our October 2005 visit to Sorrento, Italy:
I need to spend time working with reflections - more now than ever! It took me several days to find something to sketch and paint - and then I could see the reflections on the plastic, but just couldn't make them sparkle. I know that these areas should be bright white, and the next time I try this I will mask the areas and try that.
I'm enjoying drawing figures and faces and hope to upload a few of my practice sketches each week.
Both of these sketches were from photographs and each was done with watercolor pencils. I wet the figure and left the face dry.
We keep salted white pistachio nuts in a hand blown glass bowl on our coffee table (when the grandchildren aren't there) or on the fireplace mantle (when they are). There is no relationship between the size of the nuts on the napkin and those in the bowl - I just wanted to sketch some bigger.
One of my Goals for 2008 is to learn how to draw faces. In preparation, I purchased two complementary books which I read and now will use as references as I work myself through a series of photos to understand the basics.
Carrie Stuart Parks. Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces: The is portrait drawing as taught by a forensic artist and she covers every part of the face individually.
John Raynes. Drawing and Painting People: This is a more complex book, covering drawing and painting faces, facial expressions, and poses.
Here are a few of my first practice pieces. I really do need to learn how to sketch with pencil without smudging it all over the page! I wanted to have a reasonable number of baseline sketches so I can redo them at the end of 2008 to see if my concentrated effort will improve my skills.
I came down with a head cold at work on Thursday and in the evening this photo for a spa advertisement looked very tempting and soothing. So I sketched it.
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 many facets of this question in the Eric Maisel creativity exercises that I'm doing. At the moment I can say: 1. I've always liked to make things; 2. I love to preserve memories; and 3. I want to say "I was here, this is what I cared about, this is who I was."
My other major passion is sewing/quilting/textile surface design and I should have a 2007 Progress Report and 2008 Goals for "works in textiles" as well as "works on paper." But I don't. Each year these two circles of interests intersect a little bit more and this year I did calligraphy with acrylic inks on canvas fabric, painted a Santa Claus with procion dyes on silk, and converted a few quick dancer sketches into a silk collage - which still has to be quilted. I also made quilts, pillows, and gifts for my grandchildren.
My 2008 Art Goals:
1. Continue doing a daily sketch and a weekly EDM Challenge. These are the "morning pages" and "artist date" equivalents for me (which I also continue to do since 2003 when I worked through The Artist's Way - which then led in 2005 to sketchbook drawing and watercolor painting). My goal is still to post a blog entry twice each week: the EDM Challenge and 1-2 other sketches done during the week.
2. Work in Progress:
a. Continue my figure drawing in the Michaelangelo Sonnet recycled book - I only have a few more blank pages.
b. Continue to play and experiment with images from my London photos for my recycled Eliz. I book.
3. Focused Project: Fill up my 1929 NY State Tax Report recycled book. I have lots of NYC sketches in my Moleskine journals and I'd love to return to the same sites with my New York journal.
In the NY recycled book I want to:
a. Continue to work on my "10 blocks from home" series.
b. Create a travel sketchbook as if I were wandering the city as a visitor.
4. Finish all 52 weeks of the Maisel Creativity book. I'm on week 31 and I have no idea where this work will lead - but it is fun! and enlightening!
5. New Skills:
a. FACES: Last year I decided that I needed to learn how to draw figures better. It was great fun to spend time in the Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and sketch dancers and nude figures from photos. But now I really need to spend time drawing faces and bought a fun book for myself to work through over the next year.
b. TREES: Even urban landscapes have trees and I have paid little attention to sketching and painting the trees in my world. Even though we live right in the middle of the city, I have several dozen trees that I can see from my second floor apartment windows and many of them are beautiful flowering fruit trees each spring. I also live several blocks from Central Park. Can I make myself sketch/paint more trees?
c. LEARNING FROM the MASTERS: I really enjoy recreating works from the masters as a way of learning how they made their works of art. I always sketch at least one piece from each new exhibit I attend, either drawn "live" or from a postcard from the exhibit. Yesterday I sketched one of Lucien Freud's portrait etchings at the current Museum of Modern Art exhibit. In 2008 I will continue to do this and perhaps even purchase a few more books of drawings from specific artists for inspiration.
6. Bookbinding: I bought another unloved book from a curbside "old book" table this fall - this one is square. Instead of filling it with many different types of watercolor paper, I will try to settle on one brand and type of paper to fill it.
7. Attitude Adjustment: I love books and therefore imagine that most of my art work will be small - and in sketchbooks. But my daily sketchbook has become more of a visual journal and I find that I'm not willing to take big risks - and be really playful on those pages. Yet I do want to keep a more traditional artist's sketchbook. There are 4 of Seurat's sketchbooks in a glass case at MoMA as part of the current Seurat Drawing exhibit and every page has been digitized for review. I love them and want to develop that same sense of experimentation in sketches. My solution for next year is to carry my large Moleskine watercolor journal for my daily journal pages and to carry loose sheets of sketchbook size paper for PLAY! I can then date them and just throw them into a folder - maybe never to be looked at again. I have 4 Conte pencils that I want to sketch with and this may be the way to get myself to really play with them.
I look forward to continued inspiration and learning from the art community at Everyday Matters and extend wishes for a Happy, Healthy, and artistically productive New Year to each EDM member.
I am enjoying documenting my annual handmade ornaments - and still have lots more to sketch. My plan is to continue sketching the collection in the week before Christmas again next year when I sit down after busy and joyful days to do a daily sketchpage. Over the years each has been photographed individually and on the Christmas tree, but never painted.
EDM Challenge #150: Draw a Candle
I love candles of all shapes and sizes. But we only burn candles that are in globes of some type in the apartment to prevent fires. I have two of the above Simon Pearce handblown glass candle globes that are always on my dining room table and they are used constantly. It was very difficult for me to capture the sparkle of the flickering flame against the beautiful clear glass - but I just knew that I wanted to try.
All of my sewing is done, the apartment and tree were decorated with help from my 3 little elves (Callum is still too young), the gift bags are packed, and dinner preparation for tonight is underway. In addition to Christmas preparations this week, two of my grandchildren had birthdays - with more preparation and birthday parties. I managed to continue to sketch daily and followed the lead of Sandy and others and stayed with a Christmas theme - one ornament that I made in the past was sketched per day. My handmade Santa collection is already on my blog and a photo of this year's pigs also appeared. Here are more from my animal menagerie!
We have a short broom to sweep the fireplace hearth - and I'm not sure that we use it as much as our grandchildren. Normally it is kept in a copper pot with kindling, but I like to sketch at night in our library, so here it is resting on my leather ottoman. I found that drawing bristles is hard!
I just remembered that I sketched the fireplace almost two years ago when this blog was less than one month old. Here is a copy of that drawing with the copper pot - but no broom.
I just returned from 6 days in Atlanta, where I was attending an annual meeting of my medical society. It comes each year at such a horrible time - but the cities I visited during the last 30+ years are all gorgeously decorated for Christmas. When I arrived last Thursday, I did a sketchwalk (as discussed by Mari Le Glatin Kreis in her recent book) and filled the whole 2 page spread of my Moleskine watercolor journal.
From left to right across the two pages: The American Airlines logo from the airplane, the antique Celtic pin complete with a sharp dagger on the bottom which was in my carry-on (by mistake) and picked up by TSA (they let me keep it!), one of the many Poinsettia plants in all areas of the Georgia World Congress Center, the top of the Westin hotel which was visible from the Congress Center, and a view of the entrance to Olympic Centennial Park as seen from my hotel - the Omni at the CNN Center.
On the second day, to get a head start on my Art Goals for 2008, I sketched one of my friends who was giving a 30 minute lecture. My son, who is also a member of the society, thought there was a likeness, so I was pleased.
On the final day of the meetings I sat in the Omni Hotel, listened to Christmas music which was playing in the lobby areas, and sketched 3 beautiful Christmas ornaments. The gold and silver gouache doesn't show up in the scans, but the beautiful metallic reflections attracted me to these 3.
EDM Challenge #146: My two favorite foods are good bread and ice cream and I could have both for supper and call it a wonderful meal! This is a Skinny Cow mint and chocolate fudge ice cream cone that I sketched and painted really quickly before I ate it.
EDM Challenge #147: Draw Something Wood
This small wooden box has inlaid black marble squares and one brass square on the top.
EDM Challenge #148: Draw Something Soothing
This Christmas Door Doll, that is 20 + years old, is wearing a Tara Aromatherapy Neck Wrap that was given to me by my daughter last weekend as an early Christmas present. It gets heated in the microwave for 2 minutes and then provides at least an hour of moist heat to your neck muscles - relieving all computer strain.
One of my Art Goals for 2007 was to sketch more figures. These are my journal pages for November.
Gesture Drawings: Passenger in airport terminal, an actor in a one woman play about Elizabeth Blackwell, and a ballet class member warming up. I find it really difficult to sketch almost constantly moving figures!
Dancers: Only one dancer sketch from a photo this month - done in the Cafe after ballet class.
Nude Figures: from my Artists' Visual Reference photo book:
Several Faces as a prelude to ART GOALS 2008: The first is from the front of my edition of Madame Bovary - my Book Groups' November book for discussion. The second are two faces I did from my Cezanne Basel Sketchbooks.
While my husband and I were preparing dinner for our 15th Annual NYC Family Thanksgiving holiday, cousins were balloon handlers for the giant Snoopy balloon in the Macy's parade. This sketch was taken from a photo on the front page of the New York Times yesterday - showing the Kermit balloon floating down the Avenue. We learned that it is really hard work!
Yesterday my 88 year old mother and I took the 5th Avenue bus down to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas decorations and the annual tree. Although it won't be lit until Wednesday night, the lights are already on the tree and the entire area around the skating rink is beautifully decorated and full of visitors. This sketch was made from a photo that I took of one of the 3 soldiers on the north border of the rink. It was really cold and outdoor sketching just wasn't going to happen!
I love the Christmas decorations in New York City - and even don't mind the crowds. My, mother, who hasn't been in NYC for the holidays for many years, had a wonderful time. She's amazing and kept up beautifully!
I'd rather sketch 10 buildings - or many figures in motion rather than sketch and paint a tree. So this was definitely a stretch for me! I love the gold-orange-red trees of autumn so I take many photographs on my walks. This tree was on the sidewalk across the street from my son's house in Capitol Hill in Washington DC. I had no time to sit outside this week and paint, so I was happy to have my recent photo.
It was difficult for me to find something square in my apartment. I have a kitchen timer and a square alarm clock, but I kept looking for something else. Then I found an old 3 1/2" computer disk and disk holder - near my stash of transparent tape which is in a square red package. In this age of CDs, DVDs, and flash drives, I haven't carried computer files on a diskette in more than 2 years, so I sketched the diskette as a ghost.
I still take occasional ballet classes at Steps on the Upper Westside of Manhattan. Then I have coffee in the Barre Cafe at Steps until it is time to pick up my grandson at Nursery School . While there I sketch and paint dancers from magazine photos for my daily sketch and for more figure drawing practice. I could never sketch dancers in class and photography isn't permitted in the studios.
I had a few minutes on Tuesday after my meeting at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington DC ended and walked up Connecticut Avenue to the National Zoo to see and sketch the Giant Pandas. More than 20 years ago, I sat with my young daughter and sketched a Panda eating bamboo - and it didn't move for 20-30 minutes. The Panda Habitat has been recently renovated and there is a baby that was born in July 2007. I was able to see Mom, Dad, and Baby (who appears fully grown) and they were all in perpetual motion!
Here are a few quick sketches that I did when they stopped for 30 seconds!
There are 3 cameras in use at all times to track the pandas and volunteers (working in 3 hour shifts)move the cameras around continually to keep the Pandas in view on the screen. If you Google Panda cam you can see the 2 from the National Zoo and the 3rd that is sponsored at the zoo by Animal Planet.
I still love watching them - and was thrilled to have the time to walk up to the Zoo.
I was playing with Photoshop and my scan of the "Hopper" house painting I did one week ago at the National Gallery of Art - and suddenly this appeared! I have no idea what I did, but it looked alot like a Halloween haunted house. Happy Halloween to everyone. I'm off early tomorrow morning to International Quilt Festival in Houston and then a meeting in Washington DC, leaving my husband home to be with our grandchildren for Halloween "trick or treating." After one week away from my computer, I will have a full week of catch-up to do.
EDM Challenge #142: Draw Something Hot:
When I looked for something "hot" all I had to do was look at the small burns on my fingers. I toast English muffins and bagels in a toaster oven daily - and as often as I remind myself that all parts of the appliance are HOT, I burn a finger or two!
EDM Challenge #143: Draw Spices or Herbs
I love cinnamon, even mixed in with my vanilla ice cream. And I love anise - and the fascinating shape of star anise. So it wasn't very difficult for me to quickly find spices for sketching.
Last weekend we visited our son and daughter-in-law in Washington DC and went to the Edward Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery East Wing. It is a spectacular exhibit - including etchings, watercolors and oil paintings. I was incredibly impressed, once again, with the contrasts he achieved between light and shadow and decided to copy the master. This is taken from an oil painting entitled Captain Upton's House. The exhibit is excellently captured on the National Gallery website
We have accumulated many unused Virgin Atlantic travel toothbrushes from our trips between London and New York last year. They are all in the cabinet in our guest bathroom in case one of our guests forgets a toothbrush. I love the many colors - and the toothbrush was always accompanied by travel socks and one pen in the same color in the travel pouch.
I continue to sketch figures - a few each week. All of these dancers were drawn from photos. I still don't draw any faces, but feel more comfortable with dancers bodies than I did at the beginning of 2007. Wonder when I'll be be brave enough to try a whole person?
Bad planning on my part, so I wasn't able to fit all of the dancer on the page!
We took our grandchildren Henry and Sydney to their soccer class last week and I sketched these soccer players from photos on their brochure.
During our year of London Travel, I filled 3 Cachet Linen spiral watercolor sketchbooks. I love having the envelope in the back of Moleskine notebooks and quickly realized that I needed to find and buy large envelopes to glue on the inside of the back cover of these sketchbooks. As we traveled around London, I collected a few postcards from Museum exhibits so I could have inspiration for future drawings. The postcard that I laid across this envelope, on the inner cover of London #2, is from the Royal Academy of Art Rodin exhibit.
Here is my sketch from the postcard. The writing on the page from January 7th says "sketched on a 747 somewhere between London and New York."
I still try to do occasional sketches of Manhattan, as if I am a tourist in my own town. While waiting to meet my daughter and grandson one rainy day this month, I sketched the National Academy of Art - which is just north of the Guggenheim Museum on 5th Ave. I also did my first sketch of the Status of Liberty - from a poster - using a Juniper Green watercolor pencil. The head and the uplifted arm had to be redrawn.
This is a ship lantern that we purchased on Rue Jacob, Paris, in an antique store specialing in nautical objects. Many times over the last 2 years I almost sketched it just because I like it so much and see it every day. This challenge made it the perfect choice. We had it hanging in our home in Texas, but it now just sits on a surface in our dining room in our New York apartment.
I continue to sketch figures - from many different types of images - for practice. Some are inspired by famous artists, others are from photographs in current periodicals. The only thing that can be said is that I probably am not destined to work in a series anytime soon! My tastes are too eclectic and I like to try a little of everything.
Picasso One-Liner: Taken from a small book of his that I covet.
Contour Drawing of a Fashion Photograph as I work on Contour Drawings for exercises in a Charles Reid book [The Natural Way to Paint]:
Yoga Photos: I'm still working from photos in the very small second-hand yoga book that I bought last year.
Inspired by Donald Hamilton Fraser's series of Dancers that I purchased at the Royal Academy of Art in London:
Fashion Sketch: Taken from a Bloomingdale's Newspaper Ad to try these techniques and proportions.
Leonardo and Venezia: Copied from a set of cards that I bought from Palazzo Grassi in Venice. These were sketched in my Michaelangelo Sonnets recycled book so some of the Michaelangelo sketches are included on the paper that I glued in to cover the gap between signatures. These were some strange, but interesting faces!
My Feet: My only drawing from life!
Roman Statue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
I'm interested to see what October brings. My choice of subjects on nights when I do my daily sketch is very spontaneous - and fortunately I have collected some images that I keep near my sketchbook so I can play with them.
This is a child-size, really soft, light blue bear - really gentle and cute in spite of the scarey face I seemed to give him. Between grandchildren visits to our apartment, he sits in a little car that we gave Henry (now 4) for his first birthday. When Henry outgrew it, the car came to our apartment for all of our grandchildren to use. I take them for walks around our busy Manhattan neighborhood when we don't need to have a stroller with us. It is a perfect toy for an urban baby!
There is nothing that I appreciate more than my programmable coffee pot. The coffee is ready every morning when I wake up and I thoroughly enjoy my first mug of coffee of the day while slowly waking up and planning the day's activity.
I try to practice sketching figures whenever possible and love to use my recycled Michaelangelo sonnet book (1948) for inspiration. These were all done from museum sculptures or photos using a Derwent medium wash pencil (gray) or Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil (walnut brown).
We took our grandchildren Henry (just 4) and Sydney (2 1/2) to the Central Park Carousel this week. We arrived just before 10AM so we were able to see it before it started running. I even took Sydney to see a nice little horse - but there was no way this otherwise adventurous child was going to get on that horse! So grandma had a ride on a big horse, all alone, hoping to change her mind - but no. "When I'm bigger" was all she said! Henry was also very cautious and rode in the cart behind one of the horses with Grandpa.
Tonight's dinner salad. I really did have to sketch and paint it before eating. I wasn't looking forward to this, but like most EDM challenges I'm glad I did it.
I recycled an old book on Elizabeth I, encorporating many kinds of watercolor paper for experimentation. Since we returned from our last visit to London, I periodically play with the image of Big Ben from countless photos I took during our visits and use this recycled book.
Big Ben, even just a silhouette, is as much an iconic symbol for London as the Empire State Building is for New York. I posted Big Ben #1 on May 24th. Here are Big Ben monthly entries #2-5 from my Elizabeth I book. I'm curious how far I can take this - since I'm not someone who has even been able to work in a series.
This is our mahogany library ladder unfolded. The bottom step folds under the second step and then both together fold under the top step. It always takes me two attempts to get it open and closed. It seemed like a great challenge to sketch the perspective in this angled view.
I finally painted our "2006-2007 London Home" at 25 Royal Ave, Chelsea. We were so fortunate to have 6 wonderful trips to visit our daughter, her husband, and 2 children and even were there when their 3rd baby was born prematurely in December. We spent a total of 3 months visiting - approximately 2 weeks every 2 months - except when we rushed over one week early in December for the baby for a total of 3 weeks. They have moved back to New York and we don't know who is living in this lovely home now. We will always have wonderful memories from the time we spent there.
This was painted on Fabriano 9 X 12" 140 lb extra white HP paper. It was the first time that I used it and I love it!
One of my Art Goals for 2007 is to practice drawing people - real people, photos of people, photos of nude models, and Greek-Roman statues. Here are a few sketches from August.
This sketch was made from a photo in a pregnancy magazine that is distributed at the medical school. There are great photos of babies and pregnant women in the advertisements!
These two folks were sitting separately reading at the Cafe at the Toy Boat Pond in Central Park. I loved her hat and then needed to find a suitable male wearing a hat for balance!
This was sketched from a photo in my Nude Models for Artists book. Although the graphite smudging doesn't show up on the watercolor paper, it really does in the scan. This is one of the liabilities of being left-handed for sure.
A sketch from the Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I went on my own Sketchcrawl today and did 3 projects that I planned for my next museum visit. The New York group was meeting at South Street Seaport for their Worldwide Sketchcrawl - and it is a hot, humid day. The Museum. in contrast, was beautifully cooled.... Ah, I'm getting old and fussy!
We had to disconnect our scanner to have a window air conditioner fixed and then developed modem problems with our computer - so I'm finally uploadng last week's and this week's Everyday Matters Challenges at the same time. I bought this peach just for the challenge and unfortunately can't eat it because of allergies. It looked delicious!
One of my goals for 2007 is to sketch in my own city as if I were on an exotic vacation. Manhattan is so large and so varied, from neighborhood to neighborhood, that I will never tire of the scenes. This is one apartment building on 5th Ave - in the 80s - as seen looking Southeast through foliage in Central Park. I think these are terraces associated with the penthouse(s), but the roof watertank is also probably housed in one of these structures.
I always love doing the EDM Challenges and try to make them a learning experience. I still have a great deal of difficulty with reflections, so I chose my clear green plastic spray bottle for this sketch. I think the transparent surface is recognizeable, but the few light reflections that I saw aren't very apparent. More practice needed!!
I love books, journals, paper, and almost anything sold in stationary stores - so buying school supplies was always a thrill. Now my purchases are year round, not just in September, and I love it when we start a new project at work and need to look through catalogues for new supplies.
At home I'm currently obsessed with the Levenger catalogue and new items for their "circa" notebooks. Although I have some in all 3 sizes, and even a leather cover for my junior size notebook, I carry the compact notebook that contains index cards in my purse and use it all day long. I have a punch that makes those great holes along the edge of the card (two pages can be cut from each 5 X 8" index card) and then the tabs wrap around the black circle discs. Pages are really easy to add or remove - which is the beauty of the system. The cover of this compact notebook is translucent plastic and I painted a daffodil on watercolor paper which shows through. The pen that I use for everything is a medium Pilot Easy Touch - I don't have the obsession that many people have for fountain pens!
We visited friends for 3 days near Keene NH - and on the middle day drove 3 hours further north to the Shelburne Museum. I completed one journal page/day, and even had time to piece some quilt squares for my Liberty of London quilt.
They have a beautiful view from their deck over Silver Lake. The colors of the foliage in front, the lake water, and the mountains beyond the lake change color so frequently that it is hard to really capture the view.
The Shelburne Museum would be a fantastic place for a Sketchcrawl - so many old historical buildings buildings have been moved to the site. My favorite was the 1871 lighthouse from Colchester Reef in Lake Champlain. The lighthouse protected boats from 3 dangerous intersecting reefs as they sailed to Burlington with their cargo.
I sketched the clothesline over the deck as I ate breakfast the last morning we were in NH. This is a collection of shorts and shirts from a day of fishing - from their younger family members who didn't want to make the trip to Burlington.
I actually did EDM Challenge #129 before this one. I walked around and around the apartment looking for a view that I felt like drawing. Some views were boring, some too challenging, some not blog material (bathrooms). This is the view from my dining room to a tiny stretch of counter space in my kitchen. The perspective isn't as wonky as it looks - the counter actually is slanted and there are triangular shelves above it where we keep espresso pots and a few favorite cups. Our coffee pot and cannister of coffee take top billing on this stretch of counter!
I really tried sketching my grandson Henry's face in this sketch - done from a photo taken of him just as he turned 3 last summer in London. And in spite of my efforts to improve figure/face sketching in 2007 - it was scarey! I think I might have been able to add a generic face, but I'm going to stay away from people that I know and love for now. The next photo in the sequence has him winding up, leg raised like a real major league pitcher ,to throw the ball. Baseball is big in their house!
I told Lynn that I make magnetic watercolor bookmarks and offered to upload some photos. Most that I made were given away - these are the 3 that are actively saving places in the books that I am reading.
This is how they fit over a page when the magnet holds the bookmark in place and a scan of the magnet side of the bookmark on the right. I cut the magnetic strips just slightly narrower than the width of the bookmark.
Here are the designs on the right side of the bookmark - which are folded in half after painting. I use 140 lb cold press watercolor paper and Winsor-Newton watercolor paints. On the back side I glue on cut pieces of a self-adhesive magnetic strip as depicted above. The final size of the cut paper for these 3 is 1 3/4 by 7 1/2 inches.
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 I was able to take a quick photo amid the crowds all having their pictures taken standing next to the horse.
Duke of York Square Sculpture: There are actually two pupils as separate sculptures. I loved the boy leaping over the bollard and didn't especially like the girl sitting on a bench watching him, so I only sketched him. This piece by Allister Bowtell was commisioned in 2003 for the bicentennial of the Royal Military Asylum. We walked by it every time we walked to Sloane Square, making it an important memory of our year-long visit in Chelsea.
I loved this drawing of Geurcino's at the Courtauld exhibit and copied it to create a two page spread at the very end of Journal #3 - the drawing on the left page and Callum's birth announcement on the right page. His birth in London in December was one of the highlights of the year for everyone.
I went back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Paul Poiret fashion exhibit again yesterday with out of town friends. These garments were from the first several decades of the 20th century, but avant garde for their times and still wearble. The hats were fantastic and rarely seen today, so I chose to sketch the mannequins with the best hats. I'm still trying to do fast loose, figure sketches, so this was a perfect journal page for the day.
When I saw the exhibit for the first time I carefully recorded colors and painted the sketch when I got home. Yesterday I didn't have time to really look at colors, so I'm leaving these as line drawings.
We were riding up WhiteHall in the front seat on the top deck of a #11 bus when I took this photo of storm clouds gathered over Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. During most of our recent visit, black clouds alternated with sunshine and there were periodic drenching rains.
This was a really difficult challenge for me. I clearly need more practice seeing, sketching, and painting textures. The pie-shaped section is my attempt to paint a close-up of the bathroom sponge surface. Out of frustration I added a foam brush - a quasi-sponge!
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 know from reading their blogs, enjoying their art, and exchanging comments.
Sandy and I would like to sketch faster and looser like Casey - so we watched her carefully! The 3 of us will upload our individual journal pages as they are completed - I'm not sure that mine are too different from my normal style as much as I tried.
Here are two photos: We started at the Toy Boat Pond, moved to Bethesda Fountain, then had lunch at the Central Park Boathouse. We ended the day on the Sculpture Garden Roof and in the Greek and Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Left to Right: Casey, Shirley, Sandy.
On the Sculpture Roof at the Met with the NYC skyline behind us: Shirley, Casey, Sandy
We all sketched random people at the cafe at the Toy Boat Pond, Bethesda Fountain, the Boat House restaurant where we had lunch, a statue in the Greek and Roman Galleries, and an Etruscan Chariot. However, Casey sketched lots more! Here are my sketchbook pages, in that order:
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 unique opportunity for us - being able to live in a terrace and shop in the local markets and stores in Chelsea. We were also, ever so briefly, part of a family that was working and going to school, going to doctor's visits, having a baby, and taking soccer and swimming lessons. But we also had time to ourselves to explore the streets, museums, theaters, famous national buildings, and restaurants.
Since July 2006 we have visited 6 times - each time for 2 weeks except for a 3 week visit over Christmas when our grandson decided to arrive 6 weeks early. Tomorrow we return to New York, leaving a house that feels sadly empty since our daughter and her family moved back to New York several days ago.
I'm surprised and delighted that I was able to complete this art project - finishing sketchbook #3 on this trip. Maintaining a daily sketchbook is new for me and my goal always was to develop enough skills to have many photos and a travel sketchbook from our travels. For London I used spiral Cachet Linen Watercolor Journals (9 " x 7" cold press paper) and was able to use both sides of every page without any problem. That means that I have approximately 150 pages of sketches - and all except a few have watercolor washes. I also will have a Liberty of London scrap quilt which I worked on while here to remember this year.
I am naturally drawn to all sketchbooks using pen with watercolor and I used Pigma micron pens in the beginning and Zig Millenium pens more recently. I have a small Daler Rowney travel watercolor set for days out and a palette with 12 W-N watercolor paints dried in the wells for home. I carry only my sketchbook, pen case, Niji waterbrushes, and paints in a small backpack when I leave the house.
Many of the sketchbook pages were uploaded and can be revisited by clicking through the London tag on the right side.
A combination of a real antique guard uniform and the life-size Bear that sits in front of Daisy and Tom's toy store on King's Road in Chelsea. When visiting the Antique Military Uniform dealer in Antiquarius (131/141 King's Road), I learned that you can tell which guard division wore the uniform by the placement of the buttons. Here on the left is a coat from the Coldstream guards because the buttons are in groups of 2. The Bear is dressed in the Scotch jacket because the buttons are in groups of 3.
Inspired by an ink painting in the China Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
An exercise in perspective: this is the modern stairway in the central area at the British Library on Euston Road. I'm not sure that it is possible to understand it unless you know the structure.
This was my second visit to the manuscript reading room over the past year to transcribe a letter from Col. Henry Bouquet to the British General George Gage. My Gr-Gr-Gr-Gr-grandmother Christina Wampler was kidnapped in 1757 by the Delaware Indians as child from the Wampler farm in Lebanon Township Pennsylvania. Col. Bouquet was then sent to the Ohio Territory to arrange a prisoner release with the Indians and in 1764 sent a letter to General Gage describing the negotiations and listing the prisoners who were delivered to Fort Pitt by the Indians (now Pittsburgh).
Drawing from Paintings: Leon Kossoff Exhibit at the National Gallery of Art
My husband and I went to this exhibit today on our way to the National Portrait Gallery - and I was intrigued by Leon Kossoff's process of working. He began to sketch in front of National Gallery masterpieces when he was a young art student and returns over and over to sketch the same paintings - some over many decades. He even etches plates directly in front of his favorite paintings to make prints.
I like to draw from art masterpieces on occasion to learn more about techniques, but I usually buy a postcard to work from and rarely sketch a painting more than once. I'm afraid I would be very bored.... Maybe I'll need to try the same one once a year and see if I can do it.
Here is a link to a Degas Masterpiece Combing the Hair by Edgar Degas
Here is the very simplified sketch/print of the Degas Painting by Kossoff Kossoff Drawing of Degas Painting
Here is my sketch with some watercolor added.
Most of Kosoff's drawings were more developed, resembling value sketches more than finished drawings. I also purchased a postcard of the Poussin masterpiece, The Judgement of Paris, which was another favorite of his, and I'll use it for some figure practice when vacation is over.
Our daughter, her husband, and our 3 grandchildren left their lovely, rented Chelsea home at 7:30 AM Friday - and we came back in the house for our continued minivacation, only to see the breaking news on BBC. We decided to stay in for the morning to see BBC/CNN news coverage of the suspicious car discovered on Haymarket. While we watched the news unfold, I sketched my photo of Piccadilly Circus - taken earlier in the week. I still need to add watercolor wash, but wanted to post this as the the first of my 3 journal pages on this morning when the London threat level has been raised to critical.
After lunch on Friday we took a bus to Westminster to walk around Big Ben - to see what sections of Parliament were reopened since our February visit. We were amazed how many people were out and about - all appearing relatively unconcerned about the possibility of terrorism. I took many new photos of Big Ben so I could continue to play with the image in a series of sketches and then we visited Westminster Hall. We have vivid memories of our visit there in 1970 - and weren't able to see it again until now. When we came out the helicopters that were hovering over Piccadilly area had moved slightly west, but we didn't learn about the closure of Park Lane and the robotic exam of the second car until we arrived home.
Saturday morning we left early for a visit to Portobello Road Market - in the rain - and I took this photo of our Circle Line train arriving at the Sloane Square Station. We walked back to Chelsea during intermittent heavy showers - and then learned about the Glasgow Airport incident. Foot traffic along King's Road and in Peter Jones Department Store during their big sale was unchanged from the usual Saturday afternoon crush. We are watching local news, but will continue with our plans for today and remain hopeful that this Critical Threat alert will end shortly.
SWAN IN HYDE PARK, LONDON. As I type this Hyde Park remains evacuated and Park Lane closed as police use a robot to investigate a suspicious car parked in/near the underground car park (under Hyde Park with entrance on Park Lane). This follows the discovery of a car bomb on Haymarket at 1AM in Central London. We spent the afternoon at Westminster Hall and Parliament and the crowds didn't look as if they even knew that there was a huge area closed around Piccadilly Circus.
I took this swan photo when we were here in December.
Hockney on Turner Watercolors at Tate Britain
I 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 and sketched, and then enjoyed another Turner exhibit called "Color and Line" in the afternoon. Katherine is really good at reviewing London museum exhibits - and she has an information-packed entry on her blog today with links to his watercolors and other Turner information.
We both did a sketch during lunch. Katherine has her restaurant sketch posted on her Travels with a Sketchbook blog. Here is my rather hurried sketch in the restaurant:
The Color and Line exhibit covered many of Turner's techniques - and his pigments. I loved how they dissected so many aspects of his art and had interactive displays. My favorite part was the drawing stations - set up with a block of paper and some pencils in front of approximately 8-9 of his sketches. I sat and worked from two of them - here are the results. Katherine has also linked to this exhibit on her blog today so you can see the originals for both of our "Turner" drawings there.
We took Henry and Sydney to the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood this week. The interactive displays are wonderful for children their age. This is 2 1/2 year old Sydney who "dressed up" in a picture hat, one ladies shoe from 1870 and another from the early 1900s - and then clopped back to the fire engine so she could drive it.
The Museum also had an exhibit of Picasso animal drawings and lots of interactive activities for slightly older children. I love to use his drawings for inspiration - and skill building.
Chelsea Art Society Show at Chelsea Town Hall. It is a beautiful building with windows and windowboxes all across the front. The show was interesting and I found 3 artists who I liked - each of whom had done paintings of our area of Chelsea.
A walk along King's Road in Chelsea - with a local bus, Pizza Express, and Boots Pharmacy. I will miss our daily walks on King's Road with my daughter and our grandchildren.
This is the beginning of our last visit to London this year. Our daughter and her family have completed their assigned year here and we are helping with odd jobs and babysitting while they pack. We spent our first day wandering around Piccadilly Circus, St. James and Regent Places - visiting the Summer Show at Chris Beetle's Gallery on Ryder Street. My husband sat on a step across from St. James Palace while I sketched this in 15 minutes. I then added watercolor while we sipped coffee at our favorite Caffe Nero on Piccadilly. We ended by browsing Burlington Arcade and the galleries on Cork Street.
While sitting in front of the window in Caffe Nero, there was a constant flow of buses and I was able to sketch a prototype from bits and pieces of each of them. We love riding the buses between Chelsea and our London destinations - sitting in the front seat on the top deck as often as possible.!
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 my 2 1/2 year old grand daughter asked to see a page of her toys that I did last October - that are in a London travel sketchbook that is back in New York. I photographed my journal page and then resized it with Photoshop Elements.
We lived in San Antonio for 18 years - and I never considered sketching the Alamo. While there on a business trip this week I sat on a curb in Alamo Plaza under the hot Texas sun and sketched this picture of the original front of the mission. Then, to capture more of the flavor of the city, I sketched Lucchese boots the next day.
EDM Challenge #122: Drawing shade was really difficult for me because it required me to paint a landscape. I took a photo walking through Central Park last Friday, with my husband and grandson, because I wasn't able to stop to sketch it. Then I procrastinated and did 4 journal pages since then - including the next challenge. The area of the Park is so beautiful that I will also include my photo.
I simplified this scene and structure considerably from the photo (or I would never have done it). Here is the photo:
EDM Challenge #123: Draw a Bell
I have no bells in our apartment except for Christmas ornaments which are packed away. Then my husband remembered my bear - complete with his own bell. I was a frantic mother when my two sons went on a camping trip in Alaska and there were so many bear/bear bell stories that my boys brought me this really cute, plush bear. I sketched it for the first time on a journal page that I prepared with a brown wash - right after I developed my blog at the beginning of 2006. And I sketched and painted it again for this challenge. Here are both versions.
Another visit to the Greek and Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with fellow EDMer Paula. She is returning to Brazil at the end of the month, so this was our last time to sketch together for awhile. We're both hoping that she will come back to NYC for work - regularly.
There are cases and cases of artifacts that are wonderful for sketching. The ewer on the left was so beautiful because of the colors. The funny head on the right is one end of the yoke for a real Roman Chariot - an amazingly beautiful piece.
These are two small terracotta horse heads - even though one of them looks more like a moose without horns. I love using a colored pencil for these sketches.
I could spend many days in these galleries before even finishing all of the types of artifacts.
It was a beuatiful cool, sunny morning last Sat and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art rooftop sculpture garden to read for 2 hours(needed to work on the 500+ page book I have for Book Group tonight). While reading I took approximately 20 minutes to sketch these towers on the building at 74-75th St and used watercolor pencils to add color. The 4 pencils I used are listed in the paint samples. It was liberating not to worry about all of the windows - and not to really try to capture all of the architectural detail. When I enlarged my digital photo on the computer screen at home, I could really see how complex the towers are.
I have lots of trouble staying loose. Even though I sketch quite quickly, it is too tight and I can become obsessed with detail. Not that I put too much detail into a sketch, just that I can't seem to sketch it if I can't see it. I envy those in the EDM group who can stay really loose and capture images of something - this week Casey in Hong Kong, Hashi on her LA city walks, and Gabi on the bus.
I want to be able to do both - depending on the project. So this morning I brought my sketchbook and watercolor pencils with me when my husband and I took our grandson to Bethesda Fountain and I forced myself to do just a really loose sketch, add color, and then water - all in < 30 minutes.
I definitely need to have more of these sketching sessions. Need more practice!!
My husband had these earrings made for me for our 25th wedding anniversary because I liked black roman coins in gold jewelry that I saw somewhere with him. He then gave them to me at a lovely dinner in a villa in Padua, Italy - so the roman coins returned home! The coins are more black than painted here. As I was sketching the front and back of one earring last night, I also "googled" Roman coins and was able to identify my coins as Gordian III - from approximately 240 AD. There are many, many images of Gordian III coins and I would need to better see the images on the reverse side of my coin to be more specific. Both earrings use the same image on the front of the coins.
I used gold gouache for the gold casing and back of the earring.
May 30th: There is a wonderful wall display of amphoras in the new Greek and Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was really attracted to the composition, the colors, and the shadows.
May 31st: Big Ben has such an intricate guilded structure around the clock face and I could see the details when I zoomed in on my photo. I used W and N gold gouache for all of the gold. This is the second sketch in my Big Ben series in my recycled Elizabeth I book.
This is the final sketch in my "Every Day in May" series. For me this project was an exercise in uploading my daily sketch rather than doing a daily sketch. It was time consuming on work days when I was tired. I also didn't like the slight change in my attitude toward my daily sketch, i.e. I actually had to upload whatever I produced each day. The major advantage is to have a full months body of work saved on my blog - and it really is eclectic: figure drawing including yoga poses and nudes; museum sketches as I repeatedly visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art; several pages in my recycled books: the 10 blocks series of NYC and Big Ben; and of course the EDM Challenges!
May 28th: I really like my new book - Nude Figures for Artists - and can probably spend the next year sketching these models without running out of inspiration. This was a quick sketch done with colored pencil - no faces yet and pretty poor hands. But those are challenges that I will work on! Michaelangelo on the left and me on the right. Again having problems with the rough paper - the model didn't have hairy legs!
May 29th: I went downtown early this morning to buy a gift for my daughter-in-law who will graduate from Medical School this afternoon! She will begin her Pediatric Residency in June and we will still babysit their son Robbie on Fridays! I then continued to walk downtown, through Washington Square, in the direction of Dick Blick. I stopped for a cup of coffee and did this quick sketch at the SE corner of the park. The proprietor cleaned and polished his cart the entire time I watched!
It was a lovely cool morning and I decided that an early visit to the Met was a perfect way to spend the morning. I stopped at the Southeast Corner for a quick sketch for my 10 Block series of NYC journal pages and to wait for the Museum to open. At this corner, I sketched just one window of the windows from the Greek and Roman Galleries - and the amorphous stone sculpture that sits among the bushes.
Inside, I wandered through more of the exhibits in the new Greek and Roman Galleries and saw the chariot for the first time. I found one more marble figure to sketch and then went to find a small iron hunting dog in another part of the Museum. I saw it previously and loved the shape. Unfortunately, the body is longer than my page was wide and I didn't realize it until the end. I will resketch it from photos so I have a better image.
I sketched the marble figure with a colored pencil and the dog with a Derwent Sketching Pencil (light wash). I was then able to use my Niji waterbrush to add the gray color to the dog. I love playing with those pencils! And they are great for Museum sketching.
Memorial Day weekend in the US, which means 3 days off work - and beautiful weather. Many New Yorkers escape for the country or open beach houses. Others, like us, love the city during the summer - it seems slower and neighborhood restaurants are less crowded.
Yesterday I did another lesson from my Anne Elsworth Watercolor Skills Workbook: Painting an all-white still life with a monochromatic color scheme.
Today my husband and I took a late afternoon subway ride to Battery Park - I had NEVER been on the Staten Island Ferry - a free 30 minute ride across New York Harbor. Here are two pictures that I took from the railing - one on the way out of the ferry slip and the second one as we were returning to Manhattan. I loved every minute of the ride, including the path past the Statue of Liberty.
After our ferry ride, we stopped for dinner at Battery Gardens - and sat on their outdoor patio overlooking the harbor. I was able to sketch another table - and also do a 3 minute sketch of one of the huge sailboats that quickly passed our table.
May 23rd: EDM Challenge #120 - Draw a Flashlight
We have lots of flashlights, but I love how long this one is - I guess to use in tight spaces.
May 24th: More Figure Practice from my new book - a book of nude photos for artists by Mark Edward Smith. I need lots of practice and will be very happy when the Every Day in May challenge is over so I don't need to upload sketchbook pages every day! Some of my practice figures would be best left unseen! And I still hate rough paper.
I recycled a 1940s book on Elizabeth I that I bought in the basement of a bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London for 1 pound - and added several different types of watercolor paper in the signatures. During our regular visits to our family this year, I filled one journal page each day in Cachet Linen Watercolor Journals, so I needed to figure out how I was going to use this alternate journal. I sketched Big Ben from a photo that I took during our visit, but then never painted it - no time vs no interest vs fear of failure or combination of all of these reasons. This week I finally decided that I would use this London journal to do a whole series of sketches of Big Ben - close up, far away, from Victoria Street, from the bridge, from the Banks of the Thames at Somerset House where it was just a silhouette in my photo, etc. We will visit again in June/July so I can increase my photo collection even more. When I exhaust ideas for this image, I'll move on to another London icon and continue to play. That will make this journal different from my other 3 - and I feel good that I finally have a plan!
No work today and beautiful sunshine. My husband and I wandered through a fantastic Picasso lithograph exhibit at Helly Nahmad Gallery and then I stopped 10 blocks from home to add a page to my NYC Journal. This really interesting little store has a very narrow facade, and is squeezed between two large buildings on E. 78th St. The large banner attracts attention from Madison Avenue and the very sedate sign next to the gate says that it is a "unique, chic haven for brides."
I continue to practice figure drawing and my Yoga Book was the inspiration for this quick sketch. I don't "do yoga" and never have - so I only know that this is Shoulderstand Cycle from the figure legend under the photograph. My husband is watching me type all of this and just said "That is a better foot!" I certainly hope I am improving, if only a minute amount with each sketch!
Another rainy day in New York City so the Sketchcrawl group switched the location from Southstreet Seaport to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (my 4th trip this week!). We spread out in the new Greek and Roman Galleries and sketched - ancient sculptures and visitors. I was really happy that Paula (an EDM member from Brazil who I met last Fall) joined me. We had fun catching up as we sat on one of the many benches that are scattered throughout the beautiful sculptures.
Since I really want to learn how to sketch figures in 2007, I used this opportunity to sketch as many sculptures as I could before we went to the Museum cafeteria with the rest of the group. I loved the fact that none of these sculptures had heads, hands or feet. I'm not up to those lessons in my self-imposed curriculum yet.
These sketches were done with a Faber-Castell Polychromos pencil in a Moleskine watercolor journal.
We had another bad weather Friday in New York City. So we took our grandson back to the Met for the second week in a row. This week we visited the Astor Court in the Asian Art Galleries to show Robbie the pool full of Koi. While he was enjoying the Courtyard and periodically returning to the pool with my husband, I sketched one of the swimming fish.
Those of us participating in the Every Day in May challenge are more than halfway - and I'm definitely getting faster at scanning and uploading my daily journal pages.
May 16th: I went to the Paul Poiret fashion exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was captivated by the mannequin who was reclining on piles of pillows and a bed in the middle of the gallery.
May 17th: Katherine Tyrrell and I found Christopher Lambert's book Taking a Line for a Walk when we visited the Southbank Galleries in London in February. Katherine bought it then and I received it as one of my Mother's Day presents. The author walked from Le Havre France to Rome with several pens, some watercolor pencils, and a small sketchbook - and kept a wonderful travel journal - one page per day - every step of the way. He never considered publishing it and the writing is small - but very interesting - necessitating me to use my magnifying glass to read the text.
It took me awhile to decide what to sketch for this challenge - and finally sorted through old photos to find one of me 40 years ago with my long braid. It was cut one year later and I never let it grow that long again. I still need lots of practice sketching faces and my husband says that it doesn't look anything like me.
I continue to practice figure drawing and enjoy adding them to my recycled Michaelangelo book. But I will never buy rough watercolor paper again - just have to get through these pages!
I was tagged by Katherine Tyrrell of http://makingamark.blogspot.com/ on Friday and posted the "7 things you don't know about me" on Saturday on my blog:
http://www.paperandthreads.com/2007/05/post_24.php
Yesterday the tagging spread to our EDM members and since everyone needs to tag 7 more people, I'm not sure how quickly and how far this will spread. It is fun to do and definitely will help to develop more of a community among our EDM group members - if we know a little more about each other.
So in order to pass the Tag along, I decided that I would like to tag any EDM member who joined the group in the last 6 months. After you post "7Things" to your blog, please leave a message on the EDM message board so we can all visit and get to know you better.
We spent several hours in Central Park with my son, daughter-in-law and grandson Robbie in celebration of Mother's Day. The weather was beautiful and the Great Lawn was full of families and softball players. I sketched the city skyline looking south from the Great Lawn at 86th St.
I still hate the rough watercolor paper. This sketch was done in my NYC Journal using Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils. The piece of subway map that is above my sketch is my addition to the journal to cover the gap between signatures.
Today was my monthly Empire Quilt Guild meeting which is held on the 8th floor of Building A at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). I arrived early to meet with my small applique group and while sipping more coffee sketched the view from the window - another NYC rooftop image. I'm not sure what fascinates me about these water tanks. If you take a minute to look up in the city, they are everywhere! And no two structures or rooflines are the same. This is the back of the buildings on W. 26th St.
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 seven
things most of us don't know about you (if you care to play along!)
I treasure my visits with Katherine when I'm in London and would never consider saying no. So here goes:
1. I met my husband in our final year of high school and this year is our 40th anniversary. We married after our second year of medical school, but I remained in Philadelphia and he stayed in Chicago and we had a long-distance marriage for 2 years. He still thinks of me as "the captain of the high school cheerleaders" or calls me the "dancing hematologist." If it weren’t for his encouragement and support, I may never have gone to medical school.
2. We had 3 children between September 1971 and July 1975. I was permitted 2 weeks vacation after my first and second children were born, and then moved from California to Texas when my 3rd child was 14 days old. I have always loved being a mother (and now a grandmother) and a physician.
3. I just reduced my work schedule to 3 days/week, but continue to work as a Professor of Medicine at a New York medical school. This allows me to expand my interests and passions further - and I started sketching, painting, and joined Everyday Matters in 2005.
4. I spent 3 years intensively studying my family history (2000-3) and have 10 leather-bound, 3- ring notebooks full of birth/marriage/death records, passenger lists, and naturalization papers. My great-great-great-great grandmother was kidnapped as a child by the Delaware Indians in 1757 during the French-Indian War and released in 1764 by a treaty between the British and the Indian tribes in Ohio, USA. I read the original letter sent by Colonel Bouquet to General Gage about the prisoner release this past year at the British Library in London.
5. I don’t like or exercise, organized sports, running, jogging, hiking, or camping. I took dance classes "on and off" throughout my entire life, most recently ballet classes in New York. I have never been to a spa and have no desire to do so. I love living in a city where I can walk anywhere I want to go, but still drive to work.
6. I love textiles and everything related to them - sewing, smocking, French hand sewing, silk ribbon embroidery, Madeira applique, quilting, painting silks with procion dyes, and beading, These interests started when I was very young and I continue to add additional skills.
7. I adore bookstores and stationary stores! I have a shelf full of blank journals and many journals of various types that I keep: sewing, quilting, cooking, fabric dying, books I have read since 1985, travel journals and now travel sketchbooks to name a few. I write a "welcome letter" to each of my grandchildren when they are born and a detailed letter to each of them on each birthday. I have very few things left by my ancestors and want to make sure that I change that with my family. One of my favorite books is Leaving a Trace by Alexandra Johnson and I’m trying to do so!
Addendum: On 5/14 I was also tagged by Casey Toussaint and told her that I would add her name to my entry so she could stop looking for another to tag.
Friday is the day that we take care of our Grandson Robbie - who will be 2 the end of July. When the weather is nice, we love to go to the Boat Pond in Central Park. But today it was raining off and on so we chose our back-up location - the Metropolitan Museum of Art. All of our grandchildren love wandering through the big open space that houses the Temple of Dendur. Today he threw at least 50 pennies into the large pools and kept us really moving as he explored. Before we left the museum we went into the Egyptian Galleries to visit William the Blue Hippopotamus, an informal "trademark" for the children's program in the Museum. William is only 8 inches high and approximately 4000 years old!
I am currently working my way through 2 art workbooks, one on watercolor skills and one on figure drawing. Both authors are currently exploring "light and shade" in the lessons. For my journal page(s) on May 10th, I moved my basic shapes around and redrew them. Then I put in the hard shadows using watercolor pencils. Finally I looked at the shapes to add the shading and was horrified to notice that I didn't really have a light and dark side that corresponded to the shadows. I have two overhead track lights and two wall lights above my desk in my studio which really confused the lighting. And I decided not to use the strong sidelighting that I used the first time I sketched these shapes because I needed to turn all of the other lights off and then couldn't see my sketch journal well enough to draw. So I added some of the subtle shading that I saw, but it really doesn't correspond well with the true, actual hard shadows. I will rearrange these shapes again one more time and use watercolor paints - not pencils.
I sketched a figure from my figure drawing book and then added watercolor to shade the figure. I'm still having problems with proportions This is the rough WC paper that I added to my Michaelangelo Sonnet recycled book (along with several other types) and I hate it. It is hard to use a pen on it and worse than that, it scans really poorly!
Another long work day - and a quick sketch and painting from one of my photos of Montecatini Alta, Tuscany, Italy. I love rooftop sketches and started to look for photos in my archive that I can use for practice.
Time to start Lesson 4 in my Watercolor Skills Workbook: 3-Dimensional Form-The Art of Illusion. The first exercise is "Drawing the Basics: cylinder, cube, cone, and sphere." I set up the forms, put a light across the still life and sketched the shapes. Next I may try to do them with watercolor shading - but not tonight.
Late day at work - so I decided to try PoseManiacs 90 second images for my daily sketch. Wow, the figures were in tortured positions and 90 minutes went by very fast. I did 3 of the images and then added my grand daughter's hands and feet to the page for more human figure practice.
The is a recycled book in which I inserted signatures of 140 and 90 lb watercolor paper. I used a bone folder to press the paper and a coptic stitch, pulling the linen thread as much as I could. I didn't use tape or glue paper or cloth over the spine. I wanted to make sure that glue didn't get between pages - preventing each page from opening flat.
The book was made from a 50+ year old book of Micahelangelo Sonnets and his drawings were scattered throughout the book. I incorporated many of the original pages in my book which is intended for figure drawing practice. What better inspiration could I have? Here is the first mixed page layout.
I decided to cover the two gaps between signatures with a piece of Michaelangelo's drawings - one page was divided in half and glued in place with PVA glue.
May 6th (but labeled incorrectly as the 7th on my page)
I am starting a series of New York City sketches - when the spirit moves me - probably in nice weather and when I have time to take a walk and sketch without needing to get somewhere. Since it is hard for me to decide what I want to sketch in this big city, I will walk 10 blocks (1/2 mile) and then select something from the 4 directions that I can see. Today was "10 block series #1" - and I stopped in a my neighborhood independent bookstore, sat on a bench, and read for awhile along the way. Only when I reached my destination did I realize that I only had 12 watercolor pencils with me. This was very liberating and I think the sketch is looser. I added ink and water when I came home. My only disappointment is the Arches 140lb rough paper. I bound many kinds of watercolor paper in my recycled books so I could experiment and I don't think I'll buy "rough" again anytime soon.
Here are journal pages from May 3rd, 4th, and 5th. I think it might be easier if I at least scan them daily, because my evening hours are too short to do everything I want to do. I definitely won't take the time to also upload them to the Every Day in May Flik'r group.
May 2nd: There was no sketching or photography allowed at the Met's exhibit "Barcelona and Modernity." But I was taking a few notes in a really small notebook when I saw the Gaspar Homar's 1905 furniture design drawing. I still think like a quilter and I still collect images that I want to save for textile projects. The guards couldn't really see that I was sketching instead of writing. The top half of the image is Homar's and the bottom half is my addition. The colors are all mine.
May 3rd: I was permitted to sketch in the "Venice and the Islamic World" exhibit and among the many pieces of Venetian art that were inspired by their Islamic trade, I found this "ewer." The surface was marbelized, something I couldn't do on this journal page. However, I tried to capture the shape and colors.
May 5th: I was "stuck" on the last exercise in Lesson 3 of the Elsworth Watercolor Skills Workbook because I don't love landscapes. My city landscape has really tall buildings everywhere! I finally decided to work from one of my photos, taken during a wonderful trip to Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast in Oct 2005. The exercise was to paint a landscape using the layer-on-layer method - and here is Mount Vesuvius from Sorrento on a partially clear day.
I am trying multiple methods to improve figure drawing and at this moment I'm still primarily doing outline drawings. During April I recycled a book of Michaelangelo's sonnets and I incorporated some of his drawings among the new pages for inspiration. The above sketch is based on a Posemaniacs.com figure of the day. I used pencil and some watercolor wash.
Several sketches from a photo of a baby - to try to capture their chubby hands, chubby feet, and big eyes. These sketches were done using colored pencil on one of the original sonnet pages that are on the back of the page with Michaelangelo's drawings.
This is my journal page from May 1st - another daily pose from posemaniacs.com. Yesterday I posted this week's EDM Challenge which was done on May 2nd. Tomorrow I'll post museum-inspired journals pages from May 3rd and 4th. I'll then continue to post journal pages sequentially and I'm just hoping that I have time to post everyday in MAY.
I draw everyday so my commitment for this month is to upload one of my journal pages for every day in the month - which I never previously have done. This one will be out of order because I wanted to post my EDM challenge today. On Sunday I'll upload all of the other sketches.
Three "sorta" round wheels: I was leaving the International Center of Photography exhibit several weeks ago - really inspired by Henri Cartier Bresson's philosophy about impulsive actions, when a red pedicab pulled up to the light as I was crossing 6th Avenue. The beautiful driver, then sat up and placed her hands on her hips - exuding power and confidence. I managed to quickly take one photo before the light changed and she pedaled on, but I was fearful about sketching from the photo because I couldn't figure out how to sketch so many spokes on 3 wheels. I even asked for advice from this group - and sketched "the anatomy of a bicycle wheel "from our bike rack at work. But, when I saw the magnificent tandem bicycle in the large painting by Ramon Casas at the Barcelona exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I realized the wheels had NO SPOKES - and I might never have noticed if I weren't obsessing over this photo. As soon as Karen announced the challenge for the week, I knew I had to do this - without spokes.
EDM Challenge #116: Draw Something Green: I searched all week for something green that was interesting and exciting enough for me to use for this challenge. I gathered up my apartment green objects for my Color Project Green month last year, so I was more interested in finding something in another environment. Today I went over to the new Greek-Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and sketched the south end of the gallery for an hour. Then as soon as I started to wander around the space, I found wonderful Roman glass from the 1st C. A.D. This green glass vessel is only 6 inches high, but so beautiful!
In 2003 I purchased a set of postcards of Leonardo DaVinci's portrait drawings during a visit to Vinci, Italy and his museum there. One of the drawing exercises from a book I'm working through was to use a grid to reproduce a drawing and I decided to try it with a Leonardo portrait. It was great fun - and I decided to leave my grid marks in place so I could remember the utility of the exercise and method.
More figure sketches from my Yoga "How-To-Book" - purchased only to use for figure drawing practice. These are definitely challenging because of the extreme body positions and work very well for my daily sketches when I'm too tired to compose a more complicated daily sketch page in my journals.
This year I hope to draw many more figures to develop some basic skills - but still don't have time for organized life drawing sessions. I bought John Raynes' book The Figure Drawing Workbook at Green and Stone in London and I'm working through the lessons and exercises slowly. These are a few of the first sketches completed. I'm doing them in my recycled book of Michaelangelo sonnets, so you'll see one very yellowed page that I rebound from the original book. The figure sketched on the sonnet page is actually inspired by Posemaniacs.com - the Japanese site that Cully recommended in one of his EDM messages. I'm trying to use regular pencils, colored pencils, Conte pencils, and watercolor so I can also explore different media and papers.
I'm slowly working my way through Anne Elsworth's book and Lesson 3 is drawing "negative space." This concept is never in my mind when I'm sketching and my spacing would be so much better if I could remember to combine positive and negative space.
For the first exercise I sketched an old kitchen stool by just filling in the negative spaces. I used a Derwent 4B pencil with a light wash.
For the second exercise, I trimmed a plant and taped the leaves randomly to a piece of paper. Then I used an Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil to sketch the negatvie spaces.
For the last exercise, I created a kitchen "still life" and then sketched using a combination of positive and negative spaces.
I hope that this practice will make me remember how useful it is to always look at the negative spaces when sketching. I know it intellectually, but just don't "see" them when I'm in the midst of a sketch.
Our general supermarket is one-half block away and I take frequent walks there to pick up a few items at a time. We also have several specialty shops with produce and prepared foods 1-2 blocks away and a butcher, fish shop, and bakery within the same area. Each of the stores has shopping baskets for those of us that walk there and only carry home small bags of groceries. This basket was sketched from a photo that I took early yesterday morning when I was purchasing milk, yogurt and a banana for breakfast because Friday is the day we take care of one of our grandsons.
I had a great deal of difficulty selecting something from my everyday life that was ugly, kept for sentimental reasons, and worthy of a sketch. Our almost 35 year old salad spinner, purchased by our first Nannie for our small kitchen in LaJolla, is now cracked, but still working. It is really ugly, especially with a crack in the lid. It is also probably vintage and nearly a first edition! But I just didn't feel like sketching and painting it. So I selected my very favorite, brown leather, pocket-sized Filofax - which was purchased new when we moved to New York City in 1993. The snap on the small piece which closes the notebook is broken, and the estimate to replace it was $50 approximately 5 years ago. A new comparable Filofax was only $85 and I just wasn't ready to retire mine. So I made a small quilted wrap for the notebook and added a long piece of velcro along the end to close it. It is still my only calendar and general all-purpose notebook and it travels everywhere with me in my purse.
There are many wonderful, artistic fences in our neighborhood, but New York City is much too cold to wander around and spend time outdoors sketching. So I opted for a really simple sketch of the fence for our apartment building service entrance. Most apartment buildings in the city have a main entrance and a service entrance - or multiples of both depending on the building size. The service entrance is used for deliveries and remains locked much of the day. What is sometimes surprising to folks who live in other parts of the country, everything, or almost everything, can be ordered and delivered to your apartment. My personal favorite is our fire wood delivery man and the Christmas tree delivery guys because I love the holidays in the city. Even all of the very good restaurants deliver right off of their regular menu, although if I'm eating that well, I want to enjoy the restaurant ambience for those prices.
One of the joys of my visits to the Royal Academy of Arts in London is seeing the prints of Donald Hamilton Fraser's ballet dancers in the Museum Shop. I purchased a "postcard book" with 18 of his postcard size prints of dancers during one of my visits and I tried to capture his sketches in ink with watercolor washes as part of my figure drawing exercises. I love ballet, I love dancers, I love sketches and painting of dancers, and especially his prints which I knew nothing about before visiting the Royal Academy this year.
One of the watercolor projects from Chapter 1 in Anne Elsworth's book (Watercolor Skills Workbook - 10 easy lessons) is mixing watercolors to match master paintings. I chose this Picasso piece (which was done in pastels) and used my regular palette of primary watercolors to mix each of the colors that I could see in the print. This is a fabulous way to train your eye and I hope to do more of these projects as I work through her book.
I am now done with the projects that I want to do from Chapters 1 and 2 - and ready to move on. I need to plan my way through these exercises and projects slowly if I want to enjoy them. I think I was previously unable to appreciate the 10 lessons because I was trying to rush through the book.
I would never have thought of photos of yoga classes/instruction books for my figure drawing practice during 2007. But Christeen http://christeensblog.blogspot.com/ on the EDM group has some great yoga sketches that she did and I found a perfect second hand book to use for photo images. I won't stop sketching ballet dancers, although I don't upload many of them because I'm copying sketches by Donald Hamilton Fraser that I bought at the Royal Academy of Art. I love his style and wanted to try to learn from him through studying his dancers - all of whom are caught during moments between practice or performance sessions. Here are a few of the first sketches of yoga poses.
Last weekend (3/16-17) we had freezing rain and snow - precluding even walking because of the winds. This weekend was much warmer and New Yorkers ran a marathon in Central Park and filled the playgrounds on Sunday morning. We met our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson in Hippo Playground in Riverside Park. He loves the slides - and I was warm enough to sketch the hippo sculptures. There are buds on the trees and the early spring flowers have stems about 4" above the ground. This is as close as we have gotten to "fresh" - wonderful fresh air to cure winter cabin fever.
There are two groups of hippo sculptures - that children climb on and adults sit on. Here are two pictures that I took of the "animals."
Very few New Yorkers even pay attention when I'm sketching, and while I was sketching the hippo head with open mouth, a woman kept talking to her friend and actually put her foot right up into the mouth obscuring my view. And I was standing not more than 4 feet from her!
In 2003 I purchased Winsor-Newton watercolors in primary colors and Anne Elsworth's book entitled Watercolor Skills Workbook - 10 easy lessons. However, it wasn't until July 2005 that I partially retired and in September joined EDM. I'm finally starting to slowly go through the 10 lessons - and doing a few of the exercises and projects.
Lesson one recommends a basic palette and then outlines exercises to mix secondary and complementary colors. I mixed Winsor lemon and French ultramarine to make green and then added varying amounts of cad red to mix complemetaries. These were used to paint houses from a painting by Camille Pisarro (The Hermitage at Pointoise - posted March 13th).
I'm now posting 2 projects from lesson 2:
Project 1. Drawing a still life on mirror tiles: I took several items from my china closet and sketched them on a round mirror. It was fun, but I'm not sure I would know this "busy painting" is because of reflections in a mirror if I didn't know it.
Project 2. Painting the silhouette of buildings: This is a painting of the Tower of London rooflines from a photo that I took during our October visit. I loved doing this project and will probably paint more photos from the series of photos that I took that day!
We had spectacular onion soup at the original Au Pied du Couchon in the old Les Halles area of Paris in November 1970. The soup was delicious and the thick, melted layer of cheese extraordinary. My husband and I perfected Julia Child's recipe from Volume I: Mastering the Art of French Cooking and bought these soup bowls to use for the last minute cheese melting step and serving.
After the Les Halles market moved out of central Paris and Au Pied du Couchon underwent a significant face-lift, the soup was the same, but the ambience of the old place was gone. The marzipan pig was saved from my dessert plate from one of our later visits. Somehow it survived the trip home and is now rock hard from years in the china cabinet.
I adore candles and all varieties of candle holders, but now limit myself to using only closed varieties, i.e. globes of some kind, because of fire hazards. My painting of the flame needs lots more work - I should have made it bigger and just concentrated on the wonderful colors that I saw. However, I love this Dutch brass candle holder that we bought on the Rokin in Amsterdam in 1989. The antique brass shop had/has been in the family for well over 100 years and was then managed by a father and son named Hart This piece is estimated to be from ca 1770 and sits in a prominent position in our apartment for my constant enjoyment.
We visited the Guggenheim Sunday afternoon to see the El Greco to Picasso exhibit before it closes on March 24th. What huge crowds! The lighting was wonderful - a combination of light from the skylight in the rotunda and the lights over each painting. I was captivated by the view across the open center and stood along the balcony to sketch the scene. I had to reduce the number of people in my sketch in order to really see the paintings. The half circle in the center of the sketch is an open area overlooking a small adjoining gallery below.
I then quickly visited a few of my favorites in the permanent collection and sketched this small portion of Camille Pissaro's painting Hermitage at La Pointoise. I love rooftop scenes and ! was looking for something to paint using a single color triad: cadmium red, Winsor blue, and Winsor lemon.
My husband and I love sitting in the front seat, on the upper deck, of a #11 bus as it winds it's way between King's Road Chelsea and Trafalgar Square/Strand, London. We are on vacation when we are in London and have lots of time to really look at all of the buildings - which all look so cool from our aerial position. I "examined" this clock on the front of the west entrance to Westminster Abbey during every busride, thinking about how much I would love to sketch it. I had practically memorized all of the details - and therefore sketching from one of my photos was easier and more pleasurable. I used my W-N gold gouache again for the gold on the clock. Since I sketched it in my WC Moleskine, I had to simplify the center section of the clock because of space and it is not accurate!
We thoroughly enjoyed the Hogarth exhibit at Tate Britain during our recent family visit to London. Until I watched Danny's videoclip, I totally forgot about upside down drawing of people's faces - and just had to try it. One of my favorite Hogarth paintings was one which had multiple faces of his family servants, so I sketched one of them quickly upside down. While it is not a perfect representation, it does look like a face. For small things I am grateful.
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 collection was obtained is fascinating and they did a wonderful job presenting lots of relevant information about the times in addition to the many specimens. One of John Hunter's prized possessions was his sketon of the "Irish giant" and I collaged a photo from the brochure on this page with the Royal College of Surgeons logo (in my own colors).
I met Katherine Tyrrell <http://makingamark.blogspot.com/ > again to spend another "art day" during our visit to London. This was my first visit to Bankside Gallery where they currently have the Royal Watercolor Society's 21st Century Watercolor exhibit. I loved seeing the exhibit, the gallery, and the book store. If the exchange rate weren't so dreadful for Americans visiting England, I'm afraid I would have purchased several new art books! We then had lunch in the Member's Cafe at Tate Modern (which is adjacent to the Bankside Gallery) and sketched as we looked across the Thames. Katherine sketched the area around "the Gerkin" and I faced the other direction and sketched Puddle Dock and the Blackfriars train station. I love glancing through her sketchbooks when we meet. She has wonderful pen sketches and many more detailed pages using colored pencil.
I usually have a problem doing the EDM weekly challenge when we are in London. However, the light bulb from the lighted globe that we bought for our 3 year old grandson Henry for Christmas burned out last night and I sketched it before taking it out to shop for a new one. I'm having fun playing with a Winsor-Newton gold gouache and used it for the brass bottom on the bulb. Although the photograph doesn't show it, it actually glitters on the page.
Another sketch from the London Natural History Museum. This was sketched using a Derwent sketching medium wash 4B pencil and then "washed" by using a waterbrush over the sketch lines. Interesting. Need to play around with this pencil a little more.
There is a wonderful drawing exhibit at the Courtauld Art Gallery at Somerset House. Guercino was the foremost Italian drawing artist during the 17th C. and his drawings are brilliant. The gallery also is displaying some Rembrandt drawings to enhance the exhibit. This is a quick sketch of St. Jerome that I did just to remember the joy of seeing his work.
We walk by this pub several times each day and I finally sketched it. In spite of multiple visits to London over the past year, we still haven't gone to a pub. There are several in our neighborhood that I've been meaning to sketch, but I feel that I should at least stop by for a drink.
We found this wonderful "Drawings" exhibit at Petley Fine Art on Cork Street and I fell in love with the Elephants. I didn't record the name of the artist, but I suddenly developed the need to sketch elephants. My husband and I went to the Natural History Museum several days later to fulfill this need and I sketched both elephant exhibits.
Both of these sketches were done with a Derwent Sketching Medium Wash pencil - 4B. I loved using it and can't wait to see the effect of using water to create a wash. I'm sorry that I didn't do the sketches in pen - next time!
Yesterday we went to the Mall Galleries for the first time. It was the first time that we went through Admiralty Arch since many, many years ago. I took a photo for this sketch because it was raining most of the time we were there.
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 bar - Caffe Nero on Piccadilly. I thought that it was finally time to sketch the counter area for my travel sketchbook.
Rachel and I took Callum for his first immunizations and when walking back along Sloane Street saw this interesting roof top (4 tops like this along the front of the building) and a cute little vacuum called Henry which was being used while changing a window display at Peter Jones Department Store on Sloane Square. I'm glad that I took a photo because it was gone by the time we took our Henry to see it.
This is a photo of the building showing the elaborate fronts that are part of the otherwise plain rooflines on these beautiful Victorian buildings.
We went early one morning this week to see the Hogarth exhibit at Tate Britain. It was crowded, but later there were long lines and even bigger crowds. I liked his engravings best and copied a few of the faces from one of my favorites - entitled "Characters and Caricatures."
Yesterday was drizzly and we decided it was the perfect day to go to the National Gallery to see their exhibit "Manet to Picasso." It is a nice small exhibit - with many impressionist paintings on loan from the Tate and private collections. There is only one early Picasso. Since I am constantly trying to improve my skills drawing figures, I sketched this painting of Carlo Pelligrini (labeled Carol Pelligrini on the postcard I bought) by Degas.
Our departure lounge at JFK in New York seemed crowded when we arrived for our early morning flight. The East Coast was paralyzed the previous day by a snow-ice storm and these were travelers left behind when their flight was cancelled. It gave me a unique opportunity, since I don't usually sketch people in these types of public spaces. I had 5-10 minutes before he changed position - just enough time for a quick sketch.
We took the children to Harrod's toy department on Saturday - where there are numerous employees demonstrating all of the toys - and mechanical toys moving around on the floor all by themselves. Syd loved the plush mechanical pig that could found instantly by the helium balloon tied to her tail as she moved slowly between displays. Henry really liked the remote-control vehicles including the helicopter that was always flying through the air, as if by magic, as the Harrod's employee controlled its flight remotely. The elephant and giraffe were two of many near life-size stuffed animals and I used a photo I took of Syd to show their size. The sketch is a generic child - not my younger and really, really cute Sydney.
Syd returned to this pig regularly during our visit. They also had a rabbit and two types of dogs similarly "walking" around with helium balloons marking their position.
It was raining Sunday and I spent the afternoon home with baby Callum while everyone else went to the gym - for swims and a workout. While Callum slept, I sketched, but still haven't painted, the houses across the street.
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 News which is displayed everytime I open the internet. We also see short segments of BBC news before or after Henry and Syd watch Dora or Diego. I'm trying to remember how to work with photographed (i.e. not scanned) sketchbook pages. I plan to upload my daily sketches from our trip soon.
This past week was hectic, as I met various deadlines at work and got ready for another visit to our London family. I tried to think of other examples, but only had one pickle left in my jar and no Sour Tarts in my local store. I love lemon flavor, but only when sweetened. My daughter and her two children eat fresh lemon and lime slices - the thought makes my mouth pucker! I need to play more with paintings of citrus fruit cut surfaces to get more texture - maybe during a less busy week....
Several weeks ago I sketched my quilting supplies and a quilt that I was working on while too sick to be more active. In this sketch I included my cute little blunt-nose Gingher scissors. When air travel restrictions were relaxed and these scissors were allowed on airplanes in the US, I was horrified to lose a pair while passing through security at DeGaulle Airport in Paris. The gendarme didn't say a word, he just reached over and dropped them into a plexiglass box full of confiscated items. Strange that nothing was said on the prior trip through DeGaulle in the other direction.
These are the scissors that I drew for the EDM Challenge - 26 years old and still perfect. I first learned about Gingher scissors when I started quilting and now have the above 8" shears, 2 pair of small embroidery scissors, 1 pair of the craft scissors, 1 pair of pinking shears, 1 pair of applique scissors (which I don't use), one pair of clippers, and 2 pairs of the blunt-nosed scissors sketched above. It took awhile to convince my family that all of these were fabric-only scissors, but they have all survived and perfomed quite well. I think this qualifies as a Gingher collection!
I loved the Holbein in England exhibit at Tate Britain and decided that he would be one of the Masters who I copied periodically to learn more about his methods of drawing faces and figures. This is one of the few full length drawings, most of the others were only portraits.
I am struggling to draw occasional people when sitting in public places, but usually the seats are so close together that I'm intimidated. On Tuesday, during lunch at the Morgan Cafe in the Morgan Library and Museum, I had a leisurely lunch and was able to spend a few minutes after I ate making a quick sketch of a husband and wife who were facing each other at a small table approximately 10 feet away. This is a huge breakthrough for me. I have no problem sketching inanimate or non-human subjects in public. Maybe now I'll slowly build up confidence to draw people!
I sat in the back row yesterday, in a corner of the auditorium, listening to the medical school Dean give a lecture. I was able to sketch several audience members during the lecture without being detected (or at least not confronted). I'm determined to keep sketching people but rarely find an opportunity. I'm not a Starbuck's fan, don't commute on trains, subways, or buses, and usually attend very small meetings. I increased the contrast on this scan to bring out the pencil sketches - accounting for the brown smudges over the page. It is not a sepia watercolor wash!
In our kitchen we use a glass cannister of Kosher salt and a pepper mill to season food - and really don't have specific S and P shakers that we use during daily meals. However, my daughter gave me a set of miniature salt and pepper shakers that we put out on the dining room table when we have a group dinner - especially on holidays. Roz told someone in the EDM group that she has calligraphic gold gouache in her watercolor palette and I thought this was a great excuse to buy a tube of glittery gold for myself. My local art store only had Winsor-Newton, not the Daniel Smith color that Roz has. You can't see it on the scan, but these tops really glitter as you move the page around. The darker color is the gold. The lighter color is Winsor lemon that I added for the light reflection. I love the effect of the sparkles!!
One of my Art Goals for 2007 is to become more comfortable sketching human figures - especially hands. This week I pulled out some reference photos of ballet dancers and magazine advertisements showing hands and just played with them. The hands on the first dancer are so bad that I resketched them at the bottom of the page,
I'm such a novice with watercolors, that I am simultaneously trying to work with skin tones and shading so these sketches in my large watercolor Moleskine serve two purposes. My husband and I watch the Lehrer News Hour each night after I come home from work and that hour was a perfect time for one of these journal pages. I could listen, but not really watch the speakers. And then I had the rest of the evening to hand quilt a wedding quilt that is overdue (My oldest son was married in July 2004)! Too many baby quilts for my grandchildren kept getting in the way and I still have a wedding quilt for my other son who married in Oct 2005 on my list to be quilted.
The background on the pages looks muddier than in real life. I suspect that my scanner is picking up pencil that was used and poorly erased. I am one of the EDM group that does a quick preliminary sketch in pencil. Otherwise I don't think I would be able to make these learning experiences.
I wonder if I will be the only EDM member without exercise equipment to sketch for this challenge? When considering what I really do to stay healthy, I could only focus on really good weight control and daily walking. Obesity is such a major problem in America. When research data is displayed at national meetings that I attend, and the average weights of the study subjects are reported (regardless of the type of medical study), there is always a chuckle from the audience when comparing the numbers from the US in comparison to the study populations from other countries. The only way that I have been able to maintain an ideal BMI as I age is to weigh myself every morning and rein in my food selections and portion sizes. By walking, I really don't mean that I am Julie or Penny (or other EDM members) who walk a fixed distance every day. By living in a city, however, I now walk almost everywhere that I want to go. My car is parked 3 blocks from our apartment and when I get to work I park several blocks from my building. All daily errands are done by walking in my neighborhood and carrying home the packages. Our car remains in the garage, except for work days and we walk long distances in the city on weekends. It is almost exactly one mile with stroller(s) between our apt and that of our grandchildren. This is a huge difference from our previous life in Texas, where the culture is garage door openers and car trips even one block to the covenience store for a newspaper. During those years I took 2 ballet classes each week in the evening after my husband came home from work and our children went to bed. Although I do take occasional ballet classes here in Manhattan, I can't fit everything that I want to do into my usual work week. I now buy walking shoes that move comfortably from work to play and wear out one pair of these shoes every several months.
I sketched a photo of Sydney and Henry in Hyde Park - intending to do a "city park landscape" painting. But I never got around to finishing it when we were in London, and today decided to add a watercolor wash to both of my grandchildren and then call it done. I have a series of similar pictures of the two of them. Sydney, who just turned 2, says to Henry "hand!" when we are walking with both of them and sweet boy that he is, he takes her hand and walks with her.
I feel as if we now live in a world of power strips and plugs that are huge and heavy to recharge our electronic devices. And when we go to London we need equally large UK plug adaptors in which to plug these huge recharger plugs to allow us to recharge everything while we are visiting. I too wish we lived in a simpler world - where all of our modern conveniences were interchangeable. At my daughter's home in London there are separate DVD players for those DVDs bought in the UK and those from the US.
One of my goals for 2007 is to draw more human faces and figures. I sketched the Holbein drawing of Anne Cressacre again and this time added a watercolor wash. In addition, I started what I hope will be a series of dancers taken from photos in dance magazines and programs from our New York City dance companies. I think it will be fun to struggle through these exercises - I certainly need many days just drawing hands!
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 in Chelsea. I visit the gallery each trip to see their new exhibits and always take more photos of the clock. However, I never could really see the hands of the clock because they were overlapped at 3:15. During this visit Michael Hoppen himself got a yardstick and leaned over the open stairwell to change the time so I could sketch the clock hands.
On New Year's Day we wandered through the crowds assembling for the parade on Whitehall in Westminster and went to visit the War Cabinet Rooms and the new Churchill Museum. I sketched this on the last page of my journal after we came back to New York from photos that I took of the entrance and of the sentry (mannequin) who is quarding the War Cabinet Room. The scans could be better, but it was difficult getting the final 2 pages of the journal to stay flat.
I wasn't sure that I was going to enjoy the Cachet Linen Watercolor Journal, but I now have completed two. I am able to paint on both sides of each page so I have approximately 50 pages in each book. When my daughter told us they were moving to London for one year, I had no idea that I would be able to maintain a travel sketchbook and have so much fun doing it. I love looking back through the pages and remembering each day of our visit. Some of the pages reflect activities in the lives of my grandchildren and each of them spends time looking through the journal for their favorite page - Pooh bath toys for Sydney and 5 cars from the Disney movie CARS for Henry in this volume.
We have 2 more visits planned before they come back to New York, so I think that I'm hoping to finish a 3rd journal. I'm so glad that I ordered multiple copies because I haven't seen these in any art store and only on one website.
I buy soap less than once each year because the soap provided in hotels is so yummy. And the minute you open one bar, they replace it with a new one making it hard to resist taking the replacement home. Lemon trees are plentiful on the Amalfi Coast and everything comes in lemon-flavor. I bought several packages of these small soaps to bring home, but was disappointed that they really don't smell like I expected. The Peabody Hotels have live ducks that "march" into the lobby and swim in the fountain several times each day - making the duck the logo for the hotel. I couldn't resist these cute white soap ducks after watching the ducks for several days in the Peabody Orlando. I have no idea which hotel provided Gilchrist and Soames soap, but I haven't yet opened the cleansing bar or exfoliating soap.
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 to supplement some of the images. This photo of me shows my brown leather backpack with sketchbook and map in the back and small digital camera in a black leather pouch on the front. This has been a successful way for me to be a grandmother and tourist while sketching quickly and taking lots of reference photos.
I was very attracted to these 3 pieces of Moche pottery that were together in a case next to an aerial photo from Peru. I sent my husband off for 30 minutes to work on a New York Times crossword puzzle from his pocket and sketched as quickly as I could. I was in such a hurry that I actually sketched it upside down in the journal. The watercolor was added at home using a reference photo that I took in front of the case. We returned from London yesterday so this journal page was scanned, not photographed. It was another great visit and I brought home many reference photos that I hope to use for sketches in my recycled Elizabeth I book.
Last Thursday I met Katherine Tyrrell and several of the Society of Graphic Fine Art members for a sketch day at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I was delighted that they chose the Islamic Art Room - we saw it briefly when it reopened this Fall and I always meant to return to sketch some of the designs. I spent the morning analyzing a Turkish tile design followed by a Turkish bottle. We had canvas stools and I had my backpack with sketching tools, waterbrushes, and the Daler-Rowney cylinder of watercolor paints. I was delighted to be so comfortable sketching/painting and zoned out.
I chose this Turkish tile design because it forced me to slow down and figure out the design which was symmetrical across the diagonal of the square. In the past I photographed magnificent mosaic tiles from the floor of the old Paris Opera House and appliqued quilt squares from the designs.
This 16th C Turkish bottle was the most beautiful shades of blue. I loved the stylized flowers and also envisioned the design in fabric.
Katherine prepared a sheet of Arches Watercolor paper with a grid design before she came to the museum. She then copied designs from a series of beautiful plates and was halfway done when I left. Her work is wonderful and is now posted (Jan 5th entry) at:
http://makingamark.blogspot.com/
My notes re: adding hot links in my blog are back in New York - so I'm just adding the link to Katherine's blog here because today's entry is from her visit to the Holbein exhibit, followed by the sketches from the V & A. I love reading all of Katherine's blog entries, and not only enjoy her journal sketches, but learn something about art everyday because of the research she does for each entry.
We played tourist in London this week and visited the exhibit at Tower Bridge followed by a delicious Italian lunch in the Butler's Wharf building. This morning there was a question about the Daler-Rowney travel watercolor set on the EDM message board, and I remembered that I had this rare photo of me - sketching a piece of Tower Bridge from the warm restaurant. Since I carry the camera, there are full vacations without any documentation that I traveled with my husband!
I take a small leather pencil case with mechanical pencil, 2 Zig millenium ink pens, a Bic Clik eraser, a folded paper towel, the watercolor set, two size Niji waterbrushes, my travel journal (not very small), wallet, comb, kleenex, Moleskine cahier with map and bus route - all in a very small (ladie's purse size) leather backpack. Here is the journal page that I was creating:
I downloaded the Holbein drawing on the left from the on-line exhibit catalogue and sketched the drawing on the right in #2B pencil. How can I prevent it from smudging?
We returned to the Imperial War Museum with our grandchildren. Henry loves the interactive submarine and asks us to take them back each time we visit. For the holidays there was a small display in the middle of the ground floor from the "Children at War" exhibit. The mannequins drew me in instantly and I had to sketch them during our short visit. While I was standing there sketching, an older man, his son, and grandson came to look at the display and the grandfather told his family how he was sent to the countryside in 1939 - an only child sent to live with strangers in a small country village. He told me that the two beige shoulder boxes were the gas masks. He was returned to his parents in London once during the 4 years, but immediately sent back as the blitz worsened.
HARROD'S Food Halls have always been one of my favorite places in London. I always feel an enormous urge to buys lots of ingredients and go home to cook a big dinner. We managed to visit the store several times in the last few weeks and each visit ended in the food halls where I bought a few things and took photos of others. Yesterday we bought fresh crab, tiger prawns, and fresh artichokes for New Year's Eve dinner, but I was attracted to the huge charcuterie (Pig) sculpture (silver) and my photo of the poor little pigs from last week (pink) for my daily sketch. I can't imagine how many people buy suckling pigs to make for dinner to have them as a regular item! Today we are going to see the Holbein exhibit at Tate Britain. Can't wait to see his drawings.
Baby Callum is now 10 days old. The National Health Service provides at-home, mid-wife, after-birth care so he was weighed at 1 week and was almost back to his birthweight. He eats, sleeps, and spends a little time between each feeding with his eyes open. Henry and Syd check in on him periodically but have been busy with a belated birthday party and Christmas.
I continue to do a daily sketch, but most have been items or scenes from around the house or neighborhood.
Sydney had her belated birthday party on December 23rd (instead of 12/20 when Mom and Callum were still in the hospital). My daughter made a Pooh cake for her and had Happy Feet penguin plates and cups. She and Callum will have birthdays one day apart in the future!
Partidge's, in Duke of York Square, is the specialty food shop in the area - a place where we stop for fresh baked bread on our way home at lunch or dinnertime. This is the first time that I sketched individual bricks - and it made me realize that I get no joy from these kinds of details!
My daughter, son-in-law, and baby Callum joined the rest of us for Christmas Eve dinner at Oriel, a brasserie on Sloane Square. There are almost no restaurants open in the area on Christmas and our son and daughter-in-law arrived from Washington DC to see their new nephew and celebrate the holiday. The restaurant was very gracious and set up an area next to the table for Callum's pram. He was bundled and slept peacefully during dinner.
We bought Christmas presents for Henry and Sydney when we were here in October - and they really seemed to enjoy them. She now takes the big bouncing Tigger to bed with her - along with monkey, books, a special pillow, quilt etc. Henry learned where New York, London, and Washington DC are on the globe and then had fun telling us about the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He wanted to find out where Africa was before we put it on the shelf.
The neighborhood was very quiet on Boxing Day. While Henry and Syd went to Battersea Park with the guys to ride scooters, Rachel and I took Callum for fresh air and a stroll along King's Road. We have no idea what Boxing Day commemorates and saw many possible explanations on Wikipedia. Osborne and Little (that previously had ice cream cones and fish in their 4 windows), now has gigantic Christmas stockings outlined with little white lights. I also sketched the clock on the Chelsea Town Hall, something I wanted to do since July.
There was a special, old-model London double-decker bus parked along Duke of York Square the other day. I previously sketched one for my grandson from a photo on Morgue file - but now saw one myself on the street. I never found out the significance of a free ride in the Art Bus. We take buses all over the city and love to take Henry and Sydney to the top deck!
Yesterday my husband and I went to the Rodin exhibit at the Royal Academy and I did a 2 minute sketch of "The Thinker." I hate uploading this because it is really out of proportion and barely representational. But it is my daily sketch and part of my learning process. Today we are off to the Imperial War Museum again with Henry and Syd. They LOVE the interactive submarine and ask us to return during our visits.
I am trying to continue with a daily sketch, even though our days are full - with Henry and Syd at home and Rachel and baby Callum at the hospital. I don't have a scanner and therefore chose to photograph my journal pages. The light, the angle, the shadows are all an issue, but I want to document this wonderful week now rather than waiting until we return to New York after the holidays.
A fun window display at Green and Stone art supplies on Kings Road. I was on a mission to find bottle nipples and couldn't walk by the window without a quick sketch.
Henry and Syd went to Budakwai for a 75 minute play session on Monday and Thursday morning. I sketched the children while I watched - although I didn't even try faces. The child in pink with a heart on her shirt is Sydney. The boy is orange - with a face - is Henry. He insisted that he needed a mouth!
We went shopping for Callum supplies. Mothercare on Oxford St. has the following clothes sizes: Early (up to 5 lbs), Tiny (up to 7 lbs), Newborn (up to 10 lbs). We bought Callum a fluffy white suit and hat to come home from the hospital in Tiny - although he really should be in early!
EDM Challenge #98: I saw these Santa and Snowman ceramic figures in the window of Waterstone and the small gold Christmas tree in the window of Pier 1 as I was doing grocery shopping along King's Road. This is a wonderful week for us - especially now that Callum arrived and we know that Rachel will be back home with her family for our Christmas celebration.
Our last daily visit to St. Mary's Hospital - we just got word that Callum and Rachel are coming home tomorrow! I took lots of photos of the hospital buildings from outside, but chose to sketch the exterior door to the maternity hospital where Rachel had her prenatal visits, hospitalization and delivery this week. I wanted Callum to have photos of his hospital, since Henry and Syd were both born and live in New York City.
Callum and Rachel came home from the hospital today. He has a really nice Moses basket in the living room and the two soft, furry duck toys were sitting in it waiting for him to arrive. We are so happy! Uncle Jason and Shannon arrive tomorrow for Christmas so we will have our in-house Pediatrician here. Callum is eating well and was 4 lbs 11 oz at discharge!
Henry and Sydney went to meet their new brother on Wednesday. Callum James was born Tuesday at 7:38 AM - 4 lbs 14 oz - and 6 weeks early. Fortunately, he was absolutely fine right from birth and both breathed and fed well. We are all very relieved. There was just no way that this baby was going to wait until his due date! The plan now is for Mommy and baby to come home tomorrow. Then we can celebrate sister Sydney's birthday (no one told her it was yesterday) and Christmas. One of their uncles and aunts are flying in on Saturday - fog conditions permitting so we look forward to a wonderful family Christmas celebration far from home.
This was Sydney at Christmas in 2004 and then 2005. She started life even smaller - 3 lb 13 oz and was discharged from the NICU at dinnertime 12/24/2004.
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 sewing before going to Orlando on a 6 day business trip. That made our change in plans possible - but still not ideal.
Things are still stably unstable - and she is so disappointed and bored to be in the hospital instead of enjoying the wonderful decorations and festive activities of London. Meanwhile we're having a great time with Henry and Sydney. I loved arriving to her Christmas tree and Poinsettia plants and sketched them for my daily sketch on Saturday (12/16). I'm testing a photo of the sketchbook page, instead of a scan to see if this will be a temporary solution to my lack of a scanner. The colors seem grayed out.
Our Christmas holiday in London began 1 week earlier than expected. My daughter was hospitalized with possible premature delivery and we came as soon as we could to help with Henry (age 3 1/2) and Sydney (who will turn 2 on Wed). We barely had time to finish the Christmas cards and pack the night we received the call. It is the first time that I didn't do the weekly EDM challenge in months.
London looks beautiful with all of the Christmas decorations and holiday shoppers. It is wonderful being with grandchildren and I hope to post some London photos instead of sketches over the next 3 weeks because I don't have access to a scanner. Here is the first photo of the group,
Sydney who will be 2 on 12/20 Henry who is 3 !/2
We cleared our apartment of desserts and sweets after Thanksgiving, so I brought home a candy from the candy dish in our Department office. I am struggling to learn more about painting reflections and thought that the cellophane wrapper would be a huge challenge. Fortunately, no one can see how poorly I achieved the desired effect in this scan. I brought home a second piece yesterday and tried Jana's Mask-it trick, but that wasn't any better.
I leave in an hour for a 6 day business trip without my laptop, and now realize how much I enjoy my daily review of the EDM group site. I'll have lots to catch up with when I return.
Last Sunday I explored Bryant Park, the space behind the New York Public Library. A free skating rink and 100 artisan Christmas shops were set up in the park and Christmas decorations were everywhere. The sky was clear and the late afternoon sun was on the Empire State building and the Chrysler Building. I sketched and painted both of them, and tonight collaged the wreath that I painted last week on both buildings. However, I'm not proficient enough in Photoshop to do it digitally, so I cut out the wreath, used restickable glue (like post-it notes) and put the wreath on each building before scanning.
Our family Christmas card each year is a Manhattan holiday design - next year I might be able to make my own.
In September I posted my first non-sketchbook watercolor painting - my son and daughter-in-law's new house in Washington DC. When I was talking to my son on Thanksgiving, he said they would love to use the painting for their Christmas cards but wanted it to have a wreath on the door and candles in the window. I am madly trying to finish baby quilts, ornaments, and other family gifts before we leave for London for the holidays so I told him another painting was not possible.
So yesterday morning I looked at some images, and created this sketch:
And by dinnertime, and through the magic of Photoshop, my son had created this:
He even had to do some color adjustment on the plants and tree to turn summer into late autumn. I am so delighted that this worked so easily and even more thrilled that my watercolor painting of their very first house will be their Christmas card this year.
I brought my sketchbook, waterbrush, and travel set of watercolor paints to a Med School Retreat last week and sat in the last row at an end seat so I could doodle during the proceedings. I sketched the keynote speaker and then painted the sketch without the person sitting next to me even realizing. Then I turned over the program and sketched the panel discussion and moderator in ball point pen - to try to practice figures. In the spirit of playing with art, I decided to cut out and collage my figure doodles with the painting. Definitely an unplanned composition! Again, I think I'm so tired after a 2 day Thanksgiving event in our apt. that I forgot to crop the scan before posting it! It is definitely in my Moleskine large size journal!
I am really, really bad at painting reflections in glass and metal. So I actually drew spoons for 2 days to try to improve my skills. In reality, I would need to paint reflections every day for an entire year to understand what I am doing. As I type this I realize that I never even cropped the second sketch so it is very obvious that I am using the Moleskine watercolor journal now for my daily practice. I am able to use both sides of each page using watercolor, so I am enjoying the process and results as I flip through my visual record of the recent weeks.
EDM Challenge #90: Draw Something with WingsI was in London during the "Wings Challenge" and saw mostly pigeons! However, on a long walk past Fortnum and Mason, I saw this wonderful large glass peacock that was a major feature in one of their window displays. My husband had just patiently had coffee while I sketched St. James Church and I decided not to push my luck and his patience. So I took several photos and waited to sketch and paint my bird until I returned home from my travels.
EDM Challenge #91 - Draw an Apple: I don't eat apples and I therefore had to find one to sketch and paint. I wasn't working wet enough to get good blending of all of the colors, but I try to share all sketches, whether I like them or not.
EDM Challenge #92 - Draw a Paper Bag: We didn't have one brown paper bag in our apt, so I begged a small one from my neighborhood grocery store, folded it, and carried it in my pocket the rest of the day.
EDM Challenge #93- Draw Eggs and an Egg Carton: My husband immediately told me how wonky the egg on the left is - which of course I knew as soon as I drew it. But I bore easily and couldn't bring myself to start over or repeat the sketch the next day. We're trying to clean out the refrigerator before we gather our groceries for a big Thanksgiving dinner, so we won't have a fresh dozen eggs until next week. So here is my egg carton and last 2 eggs.
Immediately after arriving home from London, I unpacked, repacked, and flew off to Houston Texas for the International Quilt Festival. I started quilting in 1980 and attended my first Houston Quilt Festival in 1983. It was relatively small and held at the old, wonderful Shamrock Hilton Hotel. Since then it has changed venues several times and continued to expand. This was the 23rd year that I attended and it now fills the entire Houston Convention Center - all 5 parts. I sketched this view of just one of the 5 parts from my 10th floor room at the Hilton Americas. The building always reminds me of the Pompidou Museum in Paris.
I love London public mailboxes and the old style public phone booths. This mailbox was painted very quickly in the rain during a walk to the grocery store on King's Road Chelsea. Click on each image for a larger size.
This is a statue on Pont Street in Belgravia - it is tucked into a small area with pretty trees and benches. I was fascinated to see that it is the logo for the Jeeves Complex - a group of stores in the area.
We walked from Oxford Circus all the way back to Chelsea - browsing all the way. My husband humored me by touring the fabric section at Liberty to price fabric for my latest quilt. When we stopped at Caffe Nero, our favorite coffee shop in London, I sketched the tower of the St. James Church across the street.
We took care of our grandchildren our last weekend in London while my daughter and her husband explored the town of Bath. By the time we finished a full day with them on Saturday, the only thing I could think of for my daily sketch was the bath tub toys that they just played with. My 22 month old grand daughter loves Pooh and his friends.
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 one of the terrace houses on Walpole Street. As you look down the row of houses, it is interesting to see how each owner has added space in a variety of ways around their back entry. This sunroom addition has a wonderful round table that is bathed in sunlight and surrounded by flowers.
The sketch on the right is the Library entrance to the Chelsea Town Hall. The other end of the long building is identical and there are civil ceremony weddings occurring there almost everytime that I walk past.
Left: John Sandoe Books - a wonderful, packed book store that is purported to have everything. During my last two visits, I have lovingly looked at Cezanne's Basel Travel Sketchbook and Henry Moore's Sheep sketchbook in the store. It is hard to buy anything in London, however, that is available in the US because the exchange rate is currently so bad.
Right: A regular dinner spot for our family - The Big Easy on King's Road Chelsea. They have an American menu which is perfect for our toddler grandchildren. I loved the fisherman/fish sign the first time I saw it in July, and finally had time to arrive at the restaurant early and sketch it.
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 old grand daughter loved the puppy that was descending from the roof in a parachute. After they left to return home for naps, my husband and I went through the "Children's War" and "Holocaust" exhibits. Both were excellent and emotionally draining.
There is an amazing exhibition of Leonardo Da Vinci notebook pages at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I loved seeing his figure drawings, but was especially intrigued by his exploration of the human body. The sketch reproduced above presents his ideas about the brain. He completely ignored the white and gray matter and hypothesized that all human functions were contained in the 3 fluid-filled ventricles: The first was the receptor of all senses, the second blended the senses into consciousness/soul, and the third was the memory. It is unusual for him to be so wrong.
One of my treats this trip was meeting London artist Katherine Tyrrell for an afternoon at the David Hockney Portrait Exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. I have never been attracted to Hockney's Southern California series, but was overwhelmed during this exhibit by his drawings. It is a large exhibit, but there was still time for Katherine to take me to Tea in the Cafe at the top of the Museum. There we spent time enjoying each other's sketchbooks and had time to talk more. The view from the Cafe is magnificent - and the above quick sketch was taken from a photo that I hastily took before the cafe closed.
I have 100s of buttons in my studio from my many, many years of sewing. When we lived in Texas I bought an old English oak button cabinet to use as a side table, and the buttons that I sketched tonight were some of the lovely metal buttons that came with that table. Each one has a very intricate design, regardless of how small. The two largest buttons in this group are 3/4 inch and the smallest is 1/2".
Last Saturday I spent the day between the New York City Garment District and Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) with my new fried and fellow EDM member Paula. She is from Brazil and currently studying at Columbia. I have walked past the Garment District sculptures at 40th and 7th Ave many times, but on Saturday joined Paula in taking a few pictures of the large button, needle, and garment worker. It sometimes takes new eyes to make you see something that is so familiar! I thought that I would include it as another sketch for the Button challenge.
I have never sketched a flag - and was lucky enough to have one in front of a historically landmarked building in my neighborhood in New York City. I want to do multiple sketches of this beautiful building that was the home of a light opera composer in the early 1900s. In the 1930 census that I viewed its value was already estimated at $1,000,000 and it is well maintained and now contains several luxury apartments. I was able to do the sketch while standing in front of the building and then take a photo of the flag when it was blowing to sketch and paint at home.
My husband and I went to DC last weekend to visit our son in their new home near Eastern Market in the East Capitol Hill section. We went to the Market early each morning for food and on Sunday I went 30 minutes before the group so I could quickly sketch the Eastern facade (built in 1873). I stood and then sat on the sidewalk across the street and just finished when they arrived. Then we realized that the image used for the market on T-shirts and by local artists is the North facade. One of the artists in front of the Market told me, "I'd never do that complicated Eastern facade." My sketch of the north facade is coming.
On Saturday we went to the Library of Congress Book Festival on the Mall to hear Mo Willems, the author/illustrator of the pigeon series of children's books. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus is a real favorite in our apartment with our grandchildren and he was wonderful - even passing out paper and pencils to all of the children in the audience and then teaching them how to draw the pigeon! We walked home up the Mall toward the Capitol, but I didn't have time to sketch the rotunda. This sketch was done from a photo taken as we walked by.
The grid format was perfect for sketching my lunch today. My work always far exceeds the amount of time I have in any day, so whenever possible I bring lunch and eat at my desk while reading, answering email etc. Some days lunch is provided at meetings and I have some control over the menu so the choices are reasonable. I'm not a health freak - and it takes alot for me to pass up potatoe chips, french fries, juicy big burgers, melted cheese, tacos and fajitas, and large loaves of freshly baked bread.
In the past, when I didn't bring lunch to work, I seemed to eat all relatively unhealthy things that were available in the building and growing older means slower metabolism and the need to reduce calories. The sandwich is smoked turkey and fresh tomato on whole grain pita. I only sketched half. I bought the tomato from a produce cart halfway between my apartment and garage on my way to work and it was really fresh and delicious. The remainder is self explanatory.
I looked at traffic signs all week as I drove from home to work and back again. Our streets are very wide and I suddently realized that 95% of the traffic signs are along the sides of these 4-6 lane city streets and highways. I never remember seeing half of the signs that I saw when I was patiently looking (and trying not to hit the cars in front of me). My favorite was the yellow and black sign in the middle of this drawing - on a signpost in front of yellow and black arrows. An undivided city street suddenly acquires a center median and all traffic needs to move to the right. If you fail to do so, you plow into the sign and a huge row of black rubber containers! My second favorite is the "Don't block the Box - Fine +2 points" sign. I wonder if our EDM members would have any clue what this sign means?
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 daughter's house.
Lion: One of the recently refurbished and now uncovered lions from the center of Trafalgar square. The tourists are still climbing all over them for photos.
Flower Cart: A charming cart that is permanently set up along King's Road, Chelsea. The red and blue wheels, which add charm, are just propped up against the actual cart. While I was sitting on a small step at the corner, the only person who stopped to talk was an 8-10 year old boy who then had to catch up with his mother and brother. He spent more time with me again on his return trip down the sidewalk - but Mom didn't seem really interested in letting him take time to ask all of his questions.
London Taxi: I Love all of the gaily-colored London taxis, many with very interesting exteriors that are part of a total car advertisement. This sketch was done from a photo while the taxi stopped for an instant to let off passengers. It was only when I was drawing it that I noticed there was no light on top.
St. James Palace Guard: We were walking by the Palace with my 3 year old grandson Henry when the guards changed shift. I took a photo of the new guard when he got into position and then did this drawing from the photo.
Fish: When we visited London in July, Osborne and Little Decorating Shop on King's Road had ice cream cones in their windows. This time it was fish. Each of the colored pieces in these drawings are separate fabric-wrapped pieces of cardboard or wood. There were 4 types of fish as pictured here and each window had multiple fish of a single design. I can't wait to see what their Holiday display is going to be. I went into the store to ask permission to take a photo when I was done sketching and learned when the windows will change again.
In May I did a quick sketch of my son and daughter-in-law's new house - an East Capital Hill row house. They liked the sketch enough that I decided to paint it again on larger paper - and will deliver this sketch (done on 9 x 12") paper to them this week. It was done with lots of love and best wishes for many, many happy years together in their great house.
My husband and I enjoyed more and different museums on this second visit of 2006.
British Library: I wanted to read an 1857 copy of a 1764 manuscript that described a prisoner exchange with the Ohio territory Indians during the French-Indian War. My ancestor was one of the kidnapped colonists who was returned to her family during this exchange. Only pencils are allowed in the Manuscript Reading Room, so while I was waiting to receive the manuscript, I sketched the book pillow on which all such "elderly" books must rest. We now have British Library reader cards!
Imperial War Museum: Our last visit was in 1970! This time we took our 3 year old grandson who loved the interactive submarine. We will return soon to see the Children at War (WWII) exhibit that we couldn't see easily when he was with us.
National Gallery: We visited parts of the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery and I decided I would like to try a copy of a simple Van Gogh painting to commemorate the visit. I bought a postcard of this painting from the exhibit and sketched/painted it later in the day.
Somerset House-Courtauld Art Instutite: The Raoul Dufy painting seemed like an appropriate painting to copy since the EDM challenge was to draw water and because I wanted to see how well I could mix and match paint colors.
Somerset House-Gilbert Collection: A medallion from the outside of the building on the River Terrace and one of the most beautiful pieces of jewelry in the current Tiffany exhibit. I wasn't sure what the rules were about sketching the jewelry, so I sketched this image from the brochure while we had lunch in the River Terrace cafe.
I love books and bookstores, and while the big superchains really allow you to browse and read all day, I like the personal selections and recommendations of independent bookstores. This is one of several in my neighborhood. I also love specialty food stores, but when I looked at my favorite green grocer/food shop, the facade just wasn't as interesting as I thought. Too many piles of fruits and vegetables on large shelves across the front and no architectural interest above the level of the awning.
Each of these sketches was done during approximately 30 minutes and then the watercolor wash was added later. We saw Antony and Cleopatra at the Globe Theatre Bankside and had 30 minutes to wait along the embankment - with a wonderful view of St. Paul's Cathedral across the Thames.
The second sketch is the roofline of houses along King's Road in Chelsea - directly across from Caffe Nero where we were having coffee.
The last sketch is a row of interesting shops across from another small cafe with outdoor tables in Pimlico. My husband can be encouraged to stop for coffee while I sketch and he does a NY Times crossword puzzle.
When we visited London for the first time in January 1970, we were intrigued by the market at Covent Garden and loved eating lunch in the area restaurants. We attended a performance of the Royal Ballet - one of our favorite ballet companies- and the entrance seemed to be right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the market. In July we returned to Covent Garden on a very hot Sunday afternoon and were so disappointed. The market was gone, it was jammed with tourists, and globalization had replaced the very English establishments with the equivalent of an American mall food court. In September we decided to return yet again on a cool weekday afternoon for lunch and spent a very pleasant hour at Le Petit Chez Girard's court level outdoor cafe. This was one of the views from where I sat and sketched.
More Sketches from our recent London visit.
Sketch 1: Parliament and Big Ben as seen across the Waterloo Bridge from Somerset House. They were both so far away that only a guess could be made re: the actual structure. We visited the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Gilbert Collection Tiffany Exhibit at Somerset House - both were terrific.
Sketch 2: Royal Hospital - designed with Royal Avenue by Christopher Wren as a home for elderly soldiers. It is fun to see many of them walking along the streets of Chelsea in their old uniforms.
Sketch 3: A pub near Queen's Square in Bloomsbury. We had a quick lunch at the adjacent outdoor restaurant, but the pub was much more interesting to sketch.
I have never sketched/painted water, and don't believe that my skills are up to it yet. In addition, the only outdoor water I saw during the challenge week was the muddy brown Thames in London and it looked gross. I did accompany my 21 month old grand daughter to her first swimming lesson at an indoor pool and decided that was going to have to be my sketch for this challenge. You have to look really carefully to see the small patch of pool water on the bottom right! The beautiful blue color of the water was of course due to the colors of the pool tiles and walls.
I sketched the roofline of 3 houses on Thurlow Street, near the V and A Museum, while we stopped for a cup of coffee. The number of fireplace chimneys on each terrace house in London is impressive and I wanted to remember the great roofline. The sketch shows houses at #13, 11, and 9 (from left to right). The photo shows the fronts of the same houses (L to R #9, 11, 13).
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 allowed ONE bag that is no larger than 45cm x 35 x 16 (18 in x 14 x 6.4). No liquids or gels of any kind are permitted, even tube lipstick. My bag contained my sketchbooks, journal, a pencil case with a pencil, eraser, and Zig Millenium pen, a book to read, my camera and card reader, jewelry, my wallet/passport, Filofax, kleenex, gum, and a comb. My waterbrushes and watercolor paints were packed in my luggage, thus the JFK airport pen/ink sketch which I intend to leave that way as a reminder of this terrorist-shaped period in our lives. It was amazing to me yesterday to see the large table full of confiscated items at Heathrow, and the number of passengers who arrived with 2+ carryon bags. We heard that the restrictions will be lightened this week which is good, because we need to bring the Halloween costumes for our next visit!
Back to work tomorrow so I will post some of my sketches from the trip slowly over the next week.
This Wet Canvas exercise in creativity encourages the artist to move from realistic to abstract in a series of 4 sketches. I did it earlier this year using an image of household scissors. This time I sketched a small art piece of seagulls that my now-grown children gave me on Mother's Day when they were children. It now "lives" in the center of a round table in my office at work. Each of these sketches were done quickly in my office because my day was full and I needed to do my "sketch-a-day" at work instead of at home in the evening. Sketches 2-4 were done in a Moleskine watercolor journal with a Zig Millenium pen and Winsor-Newton tube paints in 3 colors (yellow ochre pale, Payn'es gray, and burnt sienna).
I sketch and paint anywhere, and rarely use space in my very small, very crowded textile studio. My goal this year was do at least one sketch every day and to explore watercolor washes with pen and ink. Most frequently, I don't have time to think about the sketch-of-the-day until in the evening after work and then I want to spend time in our library with my husband. So this half of the couch is my current workspace. I work in journals that are no bigger than 6 x 9 inches; use both a travel set of watercolor paints and a palette with dried tube watercolor paints, Pigma micron and Zig Millenium pens, and Niji waterbrushes. I intended to sketch more of the couch, bookcases, leather footrest and chair, but ran out of space due to poor planning.
When I first read the EDM chalenge, at 5:30 in the morning, I thought that it said traffic light. So I grabbed my camera when I left for work and took a photo of the traffic light on my corner. I didn't want to get run over as I stood in the intersection sketching and decided a photo would have to be used. After I sketched and painted it, I realized that Karen's email said "streetlight". Since the streetlight is the single pole that holds everything, I sketched it too. The height has been shortened to make the composition more compact. There are endless varieties of street lights in my neighborhood (one light or two) and traffic lights (single and fixed to the pole or double and triple and suspended over the intersection on a long arm that is attached to the street lamp pole). Since this is such a walking city, I also included the Walk - Don't Walk signs that are on the street lamp pole.
Wednesday night I was in mid-town Manhattan and noticed that they have much nicer lights on their poles. Before this challenge, I never realized that there were regional differences in street lights on the main streets in the City!
When this challenge was announced, I sketched an ear in pencil because I lacked the skills to paint it in watercolor. Then I decided to take photos of each of my grandchildren and practice. The ear on the left is Robbies and it was painted in a Super Aquabee. The two on the right were painted in a Moleskine watercolor journal. It is definitely easier to scan the Moleskine. I used alizarin crimson, winsor lemon, burnt umber and Payne's gray.
This week I've been trying to think about EDM challenge #80 - what makes me happy? I'm thrilled when I am with all of our adult children, their spouses, and our growing group of grandchildren. We take care of our youngest grandchild Robbie on Friday and last Friday I posted a sketch from the Central Park Boat Pond Cafe - done while he sat with us for an hour. Our London-based grandchildren then spent the weekend with us (an absolute joy for my husband and I) and Saturday morning we watched the penguins and seals being fed and the Widelife theater play at the Central Park Zoo. I did these sketches very quickly in the Petting Zoo area - the first two are the large sculptures along the pathway and the 3rd sketch was the perky little LIVE llama that seemed to be saying "I'm the cutest - sketch me!" And then stayed still for 2 minutes for me!
There was lots of discussion about Moleskines this week among the EDM messages. I HATE the format for the watercolor journal, but I do like the paper and I love how it scans. I finally became comfortable with using more than one journal at a time and next will try an RKB Fat Pad with Fabriano 5 watercolor paper that I bought in London. However, this is risky because they don't appear to have a US distributor.
My husband and I take care of our youngest grandchild on Fridays and when weather permits, love to walk him in his stroller to the Boat Pond Cafe in Central Park. It is just opening most Fridays when we arrive to get our coffee. This week Park crews had heavy equipment cleaning up mud debris from the Thursday evening thunderstorms. My grandson, who turned 1 at the end of July, had a wonderful time sitting in one of the big chairs with us, eating snacks, and watching the bright yellow vehicles moving around the walkways.
Moleskine watercolor journal, Pigma micron pens, and mostly Winsor-Newton tube paints. The base layer of paint copper roof and awning were done with Daler-Rowney viridian from my cylinder travel set.
This sketch was made from a photo from Morguefile.com because I didn't have any live models when I returned from work tonight. I rarely use pencil, but don't know how to shade well in pen and can't make convincing skin tones in watercolor. I think I might make lots more ears this week and try to work on some of these deficiencies.
I have great difficulty using new journals and work best in my inexpensive spiral Aquabee. I shared my journal angst here previously on several occasions and this Moleskine actually was carried back and forth to Washington DC without a mark being entered. Since then I successfully used a Cachet linen watercolor journal while in London - and forced myself to take the Moleskine on a weekend trip to Chesham NH so I would have to use it for my daily sketch.
I loved this discarded old slightly rusty lantern that was propped on the wood pile with an aluminum pail used for citronella candles. There was little variation in color or tone in the "still-life" and I didn't try to add something that wasn't there. My goal: just get some pen and paints in the Moleskine journal-finally! However, as soon as I started using my journal, Moda & Moda sold Moleskine to the French so maybe I shouldn't get too attached. Perhaps the French will also get my email to Moda suggesting that Moleskine make the watercolor journal using the sketchbook format. I hate the shape of this book!! Their reply: We'll put it in our suggestion box....
I don't collect anything specific and my "souvenirs" are almost always a piece of fabric or a new journal when we travel. The exception is Italy! I love to survey all of the leather carts and shops in Florence. I bought this very small, wonderful leather pouch several years ago at the Leather Factory inside Santa Croce. It was on sale and a fun inexpensive purchase. I had no idea that it is the perfect size (7.5 x 4.5 inches) and shape for me to carry my digital camera in the main section and an extra battery and photo card in the zipper pocket. The lightweight cord is long enough for it to be carried very comfortably around my neck/across my chest and when we're out exploring I forget that I even have it on. The small piece of fabric that I bought during that trip at Fortuny in Venice and the journals that I bought in Florence and Venice are still in my fabric stash and empty on my shelf respectively!
I love ice cream and Italian ices and debated trying to sketch some of each before they melted. But with temperatures nearing 100 degrees in New York City, I REALLY love something that cools me for more than 10 minutes and that is the combination of our ceiling fans and window air conditioners. My husband and I alternate between our library and master bedroom these days when we're home and turn the fan on when we enter the rooms and off when we leave. The AC is essential for sleeping, but we rarely need to use during the day.
We spent many mornings with our grandchildren during our visit to London and these sketches were from a larger group that were done during our special outings so I could remember the moments.
We took a walk to South Kensington with both Henry and Syd so our daughter could take us to Harrods - the excuse being real American Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Henry loved this 3 foot London Bobby who appeared randomly around the store to remind shoppers about store surveillance and then selected the large chocolate replica of Big Ben for me to sketch next.
We had an exciting visit to the Natural History Museum dinosaur exhibit. While my husband took Henry to the catwalk-like viewing balconies, I stayed with the stroller and sketched the triceratops skeleton head.
Henry wanted to ride on the top of a London double-decker bus, so we planned an excursion for all of us to take a bus to Hyde Park for the morning. We took Henry to the front seat on the top while my daughter remainded with Sydney and her stroller below. We wandered the park, watching ducks being fed in the Serpentine, and spent time in the children's playground where Henry was partial to the bouncey bike.
One of our last museum visits was a morning trip with Henry to the Science Museum. He introduced us to the many interactive exhibits for children and then, when asked, requested a book on rockets at the Museum store. The young woman in the store directed us to a wonderful book called "Astronaut For a Day" which was perfect for him. In the afternoon, while the cast of the new Superman movie was in London for a promotional visit, my daughter bought him his own superman costume. Neither of these sketches are of Henry - the astronaut is from the book and the superman costume is on a "model." He took off his costume to go to sleep but had to take his astronaut book to bed with him. As we were leaving London. my daughter was negotiating with him where it was OK to wear a superman costume.
The plaza area on my way between the parking garage and my office was magnificent last week. I "stole" a single flower and painted it during the day as it sat in a Dixie cup on my desk.
We had dinner with cousins last Sunday in the middle of their wonderful gardens. This hibiscus plant was sitting on the deck and I couldn't resist taking time to paint it. The plant was much fuller, but I needed to simplify it to be sociable! Hard to believe that I was painting a hibiscus in London exactly one week before.
These were sketched with a Pigma micron pen in an Aquabee Globetrotter Sketch Diary (70 lb paper) and painted with Niji waterbrushes and Winsor-Newton tube watercolor paints. I sketched the actual flowers and took the photos later because they were so beautiful.
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 things to sketch very carefully - based on their complexity. My interests in textiles makes it natural for me to gravitate toward colors and designs so many of my sketches captured those passions. I chose some representative museum pages to upload here.
Tate Modern: We walked across the Millenium Bridge for our first ever visit to the Tate Modern. As we viewed the permanent exhibits, I was attracted to the brilliant colors of one strand of a hanging installation, a part of a Sonia Delaunay color block painting, a very small part of a Kandinsky painting and a Giacometti bust. It was our first full day in London and we decided to save the Kandinsky special exhibit to our next visit.
British Museum: The museum changed so much since our previous visits, but I was still attracted to the Elgin Marbles and specifically this horse's head. The upper right part of the page shows some mosaic designs that I loved in the Hellenistic Galleries. The wine bottle label is from the bottle that we shared enjoying the late afternoon "people-watching" in the outdoor Russell Square Park Cafe.
Victoria and Albert Musum: One of my long time favorite places in London! Unfortunately they are doing lots of renovations and the jewelry exhibit won't reopen until 2008. However, I found lots of designs that I loved in the Japanese galleries and was completely overwhelmed by a modern set of 100 silver cake slicers commissioned from the world's best silversmiths by a US Chemistry professor named Benton Seymore Rabinovitch. I only sketched the silver/blue cloisonnier fish from the collection, but could have spent all day in front of the exhibit cases. None of the quilts in the V&A collection were on open exhibit. I definitely need to invesitgate this before our next visit.
Royal Academy of Arts: There was a special Modigliani exhibit at the Royal Academy - 1 piece of sculpture and approximately 40 of his paintings. His 3rd mistress, Jeanne Hebuterne, was the model for many of his last paintings and she watched over him as he died of TB meningitis in his 30s.
I was concentrating so hard on the # of grams and millilieters when I made this for dinner in London, that I didn't have enough energy to also sketch and paint the ingredients. But I wanted to remember this sketch as one of my recent London journal entries, so here it is.
These ingredients are sauteed together and then put over al dente angel hair pasta. The dish is then finished with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
We took a long walk through Belgravia on our last day in London and I sketched the huge basket of flowers that hangs from every light pole in these areas of London and one Hibiscus flower that was blooming in front of a terrace house. In spite of higher than normal temperatures, these baskets always looked fresh and beautiful.
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 their balcony, my 3 year old grandson's nursery school, Greene & Stone arts supply store, and Osborne & Little's windows. All of these places are on or near King's Road in Chelsea.
This was a full family vacation and for much of the time I was with one or both of my grandchildren - ages 'just 3 and 19 months. I carried my supplies with me and tried to make very quick sketches and then added watercolor washes - both from memory of the colors and occasional photos taken immediately before. The clouds (EDM Challenge #74) need a little tweaking after scanning, but I have no time at the moment to do it.
The journal was a linen watercolor by Cachet (7 x 10" spiral bound). I used Pigma Micron pens, Niji waterbrushes (small and medium) and a Daler-Rowney travel watercolor set. Since my goal when I started sketching recently was to be able to keep an illustrated travel journal, I am pleased with my progress. I purchased Graham Byfield's "London Sketchbook: A City Observed" before we went and realized very quickly that wonderful watercolor paintings of major London sites probably take days and days en plein! I love looking at his magnificent book, but can't imagine creating it.
I have had many types of mailboxes in my lifetime: mail slots in the front door, rural and suburban mailboxes with flags, and mailboxes with combination locks filling entire walls while at school. Our "mailbox" in New York City is really our mail table. Mail is sorted in the morning into cubbyholes in a large rolling set of shelves and then the apartment staff moves the shelves into the elevator and delivers the mail to our hallway.
I love mail and as a child home during the summer could hear the mail truck move down the street approaching our house. Several letters changed my life as I was accepted into college and then medical school. But the best mail was the daily letter I received from my boyfriend, then fiance, then husband as we both went to medical school hundreds of miles from each other. We have two full boxes of letters that some day we will open and reread.
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 oranges that were very similar. The colors in my Daler-Rowney travel set, which were used for the lily, produced much more varied and interesting colors. This ends 6 months of using my current palette - one cool and one warm red, yellow, and blue - which I used for an entire month of painting each primary and secondary color. When I see my 18 month old grandaughter in London, I may be inspired to work with pinks! Until then, I'm done. The scans were more difficult than usual today - maybe because the paper was more buckled.
I'm still doing a minimum of one page per day in my sketchbook because I'm determined to improve my drawing and painting skills in 2006. I still feel most free working in my inexpensive spiral Aquabee Globetrotter sketchbook, so I'm not making much progress moving to the Moleskine or Cachet watercolor journals that are waiting on the shelf. There are several threads on the forums at Wet Canvas about sketchbooks and I'm comforted to know that many others share my "Fear before action" (see my EDM challenge #70 entry). I found some of the proposed solutions hilarious as those who have no trouble using "special journals" try to coax those who do.
Someone in the Everyday Matters Group announced the new Wet Canvas Drawing Basic 102 Classes and I'm working my way through Class 2 assignments on creativity. I posted the sketch made with a 1:4 ratio view finder earlier this week and these are the next assignment: 4 progressive sketches starting with a kitchen object and then leading to more and more abstraction as each sketch becomes a starting point for the next one. The 3 smaller sketches can each be enlarged. It also is one of my "color project orange" pieces - since June is my month for orange, the last of my secondary colors to explore.
The Wet Canvas website still confuses me so I was very glad to have a link posted by one of our group members - so thank you.
I went to San Antonio last weekend to give a lecture, visit Mom, and see old friends from my 18 years working at the University of Texas Health Science Center and participating in the Greater San Antonio Quilt Guild.
The first page includes sketches from the Hilton Palacio Del Rio Hotel. I loved the perspective on the torchere and the color variation in the large marble wall hanging which is an outline of the Alamo. On the top right is a small sketch done with a 1:4 ratio viewfinder (Wet Canvas Drawing Basic Class 102 - Class 2 - Assignment 1 on Creativity).
The second page was done from the Hilton outdoor cafe on the Riverwalk to commemorate the famous San Antonio Riverboats which fill up and empty at the landing directly across the river (really a small canal) from where I was sitting enjoying my annual margarita and cheese/fajita beef nachos.
The 3rd page is a sketch of the small, soft Spurs basketball that I purchased in the airport to bring back for my oldest son (the big San Antonio Spur's fan) and his 10 month old son. It is perfect for the weekly EDM challenge which was announced <24 hours later.
My favorite beverage is coffee, especially when I wake up at 5:30 AM on work days. I sketched our Krups automatic drip coffee pot for EDM Challenge #14 - "The First Thing That I See in the AM" shortly after I joined the EDM group last fall. This time I decided to draw other ways that I have to make good, black coffee: an Italian espresso pot, a brass Turkish coffee pot, a Bodum travel press that allows me to make pressed coffee and then drink it from the same cup, and a Melitta filter for an individual mug to make a single cup of drip coffee.
It is very apparent that my style has changed significantly in the last 8 months. I didn't start adding watercolor washes to my pen sketches regularly until December and now prefer COLOR!
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 wasn't familiar with these charming rowhouses and immediately wanted to do a quick sketch. I did take a break from taping walls Saturday afternoon and here is both my sketch and a photo of me sketching while sitting on a brick ledge (ouch!) which my son took from an upstairs window. This sketch was done in my 5 1/2 by 8 1/2" sketchbook so I don't have many architectural details. However, I did more sketches of individual details over the rest of the weekend - and hope to do many more sketches when they finally move in.
I have sketched several computers in the last few months, so I added two of the old images to the new sketch that I did for the EDM challenge. All of the images can be enlarged further by clicking on them.
Computer 1: I use this old laptop on the desk because my husband and I spend alot of time in the library and I have the most extensive collection of bookmarks on this list of favorites. It has never been used on battery and rarely removed from the library.
Computer 2: I spent many hours preparing a course exam, both at home and in my office - carrying the textfiles between sites with my trusty flash drive. This sketch of the keyboard and flash drive was done during lunch.
Computer 3: We just got a new laptop which is much better prepared for travel to London and back. A camera has been added so hopefully we will be able to communicate with our family and actually see the children daily! My husband was unpacking it when I did this sketch.
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 least one year. Last night I did this sketch as they were boarding their overnight flight, and at 5AM I got up to check for their email that they "landed and were leaving the airport" to go to their new home.
October in London is a month-long celebration of drawing at multiple venues and I will definitely be there to enjoy it!
Danny Gregory organized a sketchcrawl at the Rubin Museum of Art in February 2006 and I have several journal pages with some design elements that I sketched from the paintings. I have one drawing of a beautiful stylized fish - that was my favorite image. For some reason the scan looks fuzzy after I changed the size!
Last Saturday I saw a very small exhibit at FIT (The Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York City which was entitled The Power of Paint. I loved the transformation of all of the images and objects in the exhibit by adding color and wanted to use brighter colors on my fish to remember the transformation that is possible.
I was very fortunate and absolutely delighted that I was able to spend Mother's Day with my three children, their spouses, and my 3 grandchildren. My 87 year old mother Margaret lives in Texas so we had a celebratory phone call, but no visit. I decided to honor my maternal lineage for this challenge: my mother Margaret, her mother Bernadine, her mother Margaret, and Margaret's mother Mary. Mary was born in East Flanders in the early 1800s and immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1854 as a young married woman. The letter "M" was inspired by a Dover publication entitled Alphabets and Ornaments.
I continue to work on purple this month and have several more paintings done. Click on the image to enlarge the scan.
It is definitely harder to mix secondary colors than to just match primary colors to objects sketched. I loved sketching and painting the hydrangea that was growing in a windowbox in front of a neighborhood restaurant. Most of the people arriving for brunch ignored me completely, but one man just said "nice painting" over his shoulder as he passed me and entered the restaurant. This was great for my confidence of sketching AND painting in public. Information on the cool and warm blues and reds that I used are in the first purple entry for the month.
We live in corner building and I was able to sketch/paint 3 fire hydrants just around the corner - along the side of our building. The one on the top left stands on the sidewalk right in front of the building, the big one in the middle is on the sidewalk along the curb, and the one on the bottom right is actually on the wall of the building. Two of them are beautifully polished brass, but I'm still not able to accurately capture reflective surfaces. Maybe next year!
I found a few buds on a sweet gum tree for EDM Challenge #59 and then fell in love with that particular tree! My first sketch was done on March 22nd and the buds were only 3/4 inches long.
I walk past a row of these trees when I leave work and each day watched for changes in those very tiny buds. I have painted two more sketches of the tree and now want to post all of these entries together. By April 17th, the tip of the original bud had grown to approximately two inches and several very small leaves and one very tiny seed ball had appeared. By April 26th, the leaves and seedball were slightly larger and the bud was now a fully formed flower. On May 3rd (no sketch), all of the flowers were lying on the ground below the tree and both the leaves and seedballs were growing daily.
I love the brown, dried seed balls that fall from these trees during the fall and winter and look forward to watching what happens to the baby seedballs on my tree over the next few months. Several leaves from these trees were collected in the Fall of 2004 as patterns for my autumn-theme, quilted, silk wedding chuppah (#3) which can be seen in the "threads" category on this Blog (http://www.paperandthreads.com/2006/01/post.php).
Thanks Karen and the EDM group for Challenge #59 because I'm not sure that I would ever have watched a tree with such passion!
I think that I was so worried that I wouldn't find anything purple to paint, that I found many things in the first few days of the month. I therefore decided to post some now and then any remaining paintings throughout the month. I spent a day mixing my cool and warm reds (alizarin crimson and cadmium red) and blues (French ultramarine and winsor blue) to see the range of possible purples - and found it difficult to match the exact colors without some premixing and testing. From left to right: (1) miscellaneous toys and household items, (2) myrtle ground cover, (3) eggplants, and (4) a beautiful pansy. Each image can be enlarged by clicking on it.
Previous months I painted blue (January), red (February), green (March), and yellow (April). These previous entries can all be seen in the "Color Project" folder on the right side of the webpage.
I had a few minutes this morning and decided I should do this sketch before Karen posts the next EDM challenge. We renovated the 1920s bathroom off the master bedroom in our apartment and had to decide how to handle the area above the sink if we moved it below the window in a wood and marble built-in. I was able to find lovely translucent glass that allows the sun and light in but gives us some privacy from the avenue below. The bathroom is wood, marble, and mirrors but I have no idea how to depict marble in a watercolor wash! I also haven't mastered shiny brass, so the lights and fixtures are not reflective. Ah, so much more to learn!
This was my month to try to replicate yellows, using cadmium yellow and winsor lemon as my two primary tube paints. My yellow daffodils and yellow NY Checker cab paintings were already posted as EDM challenges 61 and 60 respectively and can be found in the archives. I have now completed 3 primary colors and one secondary color. I liked mixing shades of green and next month I will look for purples!
When EDM Challenge #59 (Draw the first signs of spring) was announced, the tulip plants in front of my apartment were only about 4-6 inches tall and very uninteresting. I sketched and painted one and then followed that plant through the growth cycle. Yesterday it bloomed and the pink color is breathtaking. Here is my romance with one specific tulip plant. It's not the one that bloomed first and was captured in yesterday's entry.
I joined the EDM group in September and slowly worked through earlier challenges using Pigma micron pens. In December, I pledged to myself to do a daily ink/watercolor wash drawing every day during 2006. For challenge #62 I decided to repeat my sketch of mugs - and to add a watercolor wash because I'm not ready yet to move beyond these pens and my limited watercolor palette. The perspective is still wonky and I continue to wonder "Why are circles and ovals so hard for me to draw?"
My springtime allergies are bothering me, so I sketched my steroid nasal spray medication yesterday. Then I remembered that I sketched it almost 3 years ago when I was drawing only occasionally. It was fun to compare the two journal pages and realize that I now add a watercolor wash to every sketch - adding color has become a really important part of every journal entry.
Yesterday was a beautiful day in New York City and everyone was outside enjoying the early spring weather. Central Park was full- many ball games, bike riders, walkers, runners, sun bathers and just plain folks sitting on the benches. There were several beds of daffodils at the park entrance on E 86th Street and I stopped to sketch a few while I was walking with my granddaughter in her stroller. I was delighted to see the EDM challenge for this week because I already had my grouping of 4 different daffodils and just needed to finish painting them today. Within the next 2 weeks there will be many beds of tulips in bloom as spring definitely arrives in the Northeast. I'm watching and periodically sketching one specific tulip plant that is growing in a flower bed in front of my building. I can't wait to see what color it is! This daffodil painting was going to be one of my series of Color projects since I'm exploring YELLOW this month. Now there will be one less to add at the end of the month.
I sketched and painted cars twice already in 2006, so for this challenge I decided to use my Grandson Henry's toy New York City checker cab. Since I will soon start my yellow month, as part of the Color Project that I am doing, it was exciting to get an early start.
I found another tree that is no longer dormant on the block that I walk between my office and parking garage. Most of each of the branches are red or red brown and the largest of the buds are only 1/4" maximum. The buds are extremely complex when viewed with a magnifying glass (see separate sketch of buds at the bottom). There are 4 petal-like structures and where they are open you can see 8 or more circular structures that are darker in color. Each one of them is barely larger than the tip of a pin. The buds are arranged in fours - around the stem - or as a pair on opposite sides of the stem. I decided to watch this tree change over the next few weeks and then to try to ID the tree type. My walk is more interesting since I now have a sweet gum tree and this unknown tree to observe over time.
Those who know me might have said that the appearance of "PEEPS" on the grocery store shelves heralded the arrival of my spring. When I left for work, with a wind chill of 15 degrees, on Monday AM, I seriously considered sketching and painting two boxes of Peeps for this challenge. Today, however, one of a long row of sweet gum trees that line the block between my office and parking garage was definitely "blooming" with multiple 3/4" buds along each branch. All of the other trees in my neighborhoods look dormant. My other favorite signs of spring are the many beds of tulips that bloom all along the streets and in the flower beds in the city - a wild profusion of colors. The tulip plants are approximately 4-6" in height today and many actually look like mutants! Did they always look so twisted and deformed? I will have to inspect them daily to watch them flower to answer that question.
I also brought home a sweet gum seedball that was lying with hundreds of others below the trees. Laura's paintings inspired me and my husband challenged me to TRY to sketch and paint my own. I really think they are works of art all by themselves.
In May 2002, my husband and I rented an apartment in Venice for our 35th anniversary and invited our family to join us for the week. My daughter and her husband, my two sons, and their girlfriends (who are now my wonderful daughters-in-law) joined us for a very memorable vacation. I love Venetian paper and immediately considered drawing this frame for the challenge, but I definitely didn't want to draw more portraits! Therefore I sketched a photo of our Palazzo in Campo Santa Marina and "put" it in the frame. The frame is wooden, but the design section is a piece of handmade paper that is set into the frame. I loved that trip and just thinking about it makes me smile. Today I decided that I really should put the photo of the apartment in the frame permanently.
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 or without watercolor wash) every day in 2006. I'm constantly searching my apartment for things to draw and fill in some days with a monthly color challenge or sketching a small, jointed artist model in various positions. I have lots of patience for hand quilting - taking months to complete a piece. But my sketches tend to be very fast, and not very precise. I'm trying to slow down enough to really see what is in front of me but I need to balance this with the time it takes from each day's schedule. So far I have at least one daily sketchbook entry since Dec 26th. It was fun for me to sketch/paint the above wooden toys yesterday. We bought them 30+ years ago for our first little boy and now they are part of our grandchildrens' toys that wait for them in our apartment.
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! Seriously, neither my husband nor I see a resemblance, so Karen will have to repeat this challenge so I can obtain more skills before attempting self-portrait #2. The drawing was made from the photo that I added, taken at my son's October wedding. I don't even have any fixative for pencil sketches, so this image will slowly fade away in my sketchbook.
February was my month to experiment with my cadmium red and alizarin crimson W-N tube watercolor paints. I made several more sketches, but these are representational samples of the type of paintings that were done. The "lion" journal, which I purchased in Venice, was done using a watercolor mask. I was pleased with the process because it actually looks very similar to the handmade cover - imprecise sketching and painting.
Last fall Laura F. shared her 2005 color series with the EDM group. I am such a novice with watercolor paints that I just made the change from student grade pan paints to Winsor-Newton artist grade tube paints. This seemed like a great time to play with color mixing (my favorite part), so I used blue for January- a frosty cold winter month in the Northeast. I am also just learning how to build a webpage with help from my home-grown, computer expert son so this is my first attempt to add 3 pop-up images to the page. Hope this all works. If not, he is visiting from Boston this weekend, so I'll be able to ask for HELP!
I just tested the entry and learned that the second and third images will open only if the one before is closed properly. Sometimes the previous pop-up was still open and was actually hidden until I reduced the size of the window to see it lurking behind the page. This is probably novice information for some of you, but my skills building and editing webpages is really at beginner level.
This was a fun, quick, challenge drawing. I went searching for unusual doorknobs but found more than 25 in our apartment that look just like this. If they weren't predicting colder weather this weekend, I'd search the neighborhood for a few that are more interesting to sketch. That will be a great project for spring!
Valentines Day 2006: I love my 3 grandchildren more than words (or drawings) can express.
My skills at portraiture are such that I'm disappointed when my drawings don't look like my subjects. After much thought this week, I decided to sketch "someone that each of them loves." From left to right: 2 year old Henry's Lion, 13 month old Sydney's Monkey, and Mambo - 6 month old Robbie's monkey. Henry and Sydney adore their stuffed animals and bring them to Grandma and Grandpa's apartment for overnight visits. Robbie is still too young to have the same type of bonding with Mambo, but every month they have their picture taken together to chart Robbie's growth.
I had several hours of sun at the beautiful Biltmore pool before the temperature in Florida plunged to the 50s and the blizzard of 2006 started in New York City. We actually had "snow envy" because we were missing the winter fun in Central Park. The tower on the beautiful old Biltmore Hotel must have been sketched and painted thousands of times, and it was a challenge for me to work on this 4.5 X 6" drawing. A hotel employee told me that many artists sketched it from the golf course, head on, instead of from this angle as it rises above the other rooflines of the hotel. This seemed like just the "perspective practice" that I need. I used my new Daler-Rowney travel set of watercolor paints and medium and small Niji waterbrushes for the first time. These traveled well, in contrast to my Pigma micron pens which leaked during the plane ride.
This was an impossible challenge for me because I'm struggling regularly to draw realistic body parts. I couldn't decide how to shade the lips using pen and ink so this page was done with a smudgy 2B pencil. It will be a long time before I can figure out how to draw an open mouth with exposed teeth. Preliminary efforts were great dracula look-alikes! Several of the lips were from magazine photos, one is a self-portait, and the remainder are from photos of my grandchildren (7 months, 13 months, and 2 1/2 years).
I attended my first Sketchcrawl Friday February 3rd. It was organized by Patti and Danny Gregory at the Rubin Museum of Art which is a new Manhattan museum that features art from the Himilayas. It's a gorgeous space and the art was inspiring. I filled 5 pages of images that I abstracted from the paintings, clearly more in my "comfort zone" than sketching the very ornate, small sculptures. The sketch above was one tiny portion of a very large painting from 17th C. Tibet to which I was drawn because of the stylized clouds. I did the sketch with a Pigma micron 05 pen and added watercolor washes at home. I wish that I could have met all of the other artists, and I really wish that I could have seen their work. Hopefully most of them will post their sketches to the EDM group.
I loved this little fish - created in a transparent orange pigment over a dark background with white highlights. The same fish appeared scattered around the border of the painting several more times. I can't wait to recreate him on paper or on silk in a quilt journal page.
I see this rooftop many times each day, but never previously considered it a scene for sketching. Although I used only pen for all but one of my sketches in Sorrento Italy (see earlier entries from Moleskine journal), I recently started laying out lines in my sketches in pencil, usually because I had the time to play with lines a little more now than when I was standing and trying to draw in just a few minutes during our trip. There was a wonderful exchange this week on the Everyday Matters group (and Danny Gregory's Everyday Matters website) about using pen versus pencil/then pen and I decided that I would do this sketch without allowing a pencil to touch the page. I still have lots to learn about watercolor, but I found this quick sketch to be fun to do.
This is the first opportunity for me to sketch a section of our new library. My husband and I have watched the MacNeil-Lehrer (now Lehrer) News Hour since it was first broadcast. We never got home from work in time for the national news, and enjoyed the more in-depth coverage of their reporting. Our whole family are all also Law and Order fans, but I couldn't imagine how I could sketch the rapidly changing scenes in one of their episodes! Maybe in my next lifetime!
Laura inspired many of us to sketch interiors this month and I decided to try another one from my apartment. This is our wood-burning fireplace which hasn't been used yet this year because the winter has been mild. The previous owner of our apartment bought the mantle which is one of my favorite possessions.
My 12 month old granddaughter Sydney was sitting quietly next to me watching Play with me Sesame when I did this quick pencil sketch on a scrap piece of paper. She is much cuter than the drawing, but maybe more practice will make a difference. The opportunities to really "look" at her face are rare since she started to walk so Ill have be content with fast portraits and hope that I'll get better.
Reflections:
1. The Drawing: This was one of the hardest sketches I have done. I wanted to work in my 5.5 X 8.5 daily journal, but feel as if I really needed a huge piece of paper to draw all of the moldings and details. Thus this is simplified for the smaller format. The apartment walls and trim are off-white and the floors hardwood. The furniture is all slightly different shades of brown wood and the quilt that I made is cream background with a red and green feathered star with mutliple red and green pieced borders. Newbies like me should get a laugh when they notice that the furthest wall sconce "just appeared" in the middle of my quilt! If you look really quickly you don't notice it. The rug is a complicated red/green/beige geometric design - do I have enough inner strength to tackle the design? I wanted to post this before I added watercolor because I have no idea how I will develop the sense of deep space and warm light. Any ideas?
2. My feelings as I enter my apartment: I love my apartment and my life in New York City. My childhood home is 22 miles from our apartment, in Northern NJ - our move to Manhattan was like coming home. Although we live on a busy avenue, it is possible for me to get completely lost in my apartment, or to be surrounded by people from all over the world within minutes. We can walk almost anywhere that we want or take easily available public transportation. Our car is used only when we are leaving the city - I drive 11 miles to work and back. The entry hall has an antique table (purchased when we lived in San Antonio Texas) and an antique Victorian oak hall tree (purchased when we lived in San Diego). It is covered with hats, caps, and earmuffs which I ignored in my sketch, but just this minute realized that I should have then added the empty hooks! The double doorway on the right leads to the living room and the door to the left leads to the dining room. The light on the table is hand blown glass, and on most of the time, creating warm light and shadows. The antique brass candle holder was purchased during a favorite vacation in Amsterdam. We just renovated one of the bedrooms and now have a beautiful mahogany library - my new favorite room. Maybe I'll be brave enough in another week to sketch in there.
EDM Callenge #49: Draw my refrigerator. Given the choice of drawing the outside or the inside, I decided to take a comfy seat instead of standing in a really small space. We obviously have too many kitchen magnets - very few of them are holding anything up. The three pig magnets have magical power to allow my husband and I to remain thin. I think that I'll throw the rest of them away. The baskets on top hold our bags of chips - very tempting.
Our 12 month-old granddaughter spent the night last weekend and I managed to get several quick sketches of her playing. I have enormous difficulty drawing faces - and even though it doesn't look very much like her, it is an improvement over prior attempts which will remain unpublished.
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 line both side walls are just visible. It would be hard to catalog all of the fabric, thread, and supplies that fill this small room - there is one ceiling to floor cabinet that is just filled with procion dyes and all of the supplies necessary to paint/dye silk.
Below: EDM Challenge #9 - Controlled Chaos
This is a quick sketch of my fabric studio. I love this space and can lose myself for hours in the midst of all of this fabric and these supplies.
My rudimentary art supplies: French School student grade pan watercolor paints, several 5 ml Winsor Newton primary color tube watercolor paints, assorted brushes, a plastic palette, Pigma micron pens (03 and 05), a Derwent graphic 2B pencil, and a Bic click eraser. I don't have room to expand so I'll have to continue to work in small format journal sketchbooks!
Santa Christmas Ornament Collection: EDM Challenges #19 (A Collection) and #46 (Holiday Themed)
For approximately 30 years I have selected and made a prototype ornament each Fall and then made 20-24 of the same ornament for gifts for Family and Friends. Each of these is made entirely of fabric, usually scraps from my many quilting projects. I couldn't think of any specific thing that I collect for EDM Callenge #19 until I started to decorate our Christmas tree this year. Although I have a small collection of reindeer, angels, and birds, the Santas are my favorite. Each of my children have a full set of these ornaments for their Christmas trees. It was fun to paint the fabric designs.
The top 2 Santas are flat. The star Santa is heavily stuffed.
This 7th Santa is made on a large red jingle bell and is the family favorite.
I had trouble deciding how to draw an animal - none around - and how to honor my Father. He was an amateur photographer during his retirement and I have several mounted enlargements in my apartment. I walked past this photo many times before suddenly realizing that it was perfect for EDM Challenges 20 (Draw something "Dad) and 44 (Draw an animal).
Dreams for 2006 - on Paper
I would love to establish the habit of never going out without my sketch journal so I can draw daily throughout 2006. My current angst: which journal should I use?
I regularly use the Aquabee sketch book because it is cheapest and I can add watercolor washes. I am just finishing Volume 3. I'm not inhibited by the journal itself and can therefore sketch freely.
I loved using my Moleskine journal in Italy - the size was great for one page or doublepage sketches and it was easy to do fast sketches while standing because of the hard cover. But the pages don't take watercolor as well and they scan too yellow. I only filled half of Volume 1 in Italy and Volume 2 sits on my shelf.
The Cachet watercolor journal is wonderful with its bright chartreuse linen cover and great watercolor paper. I have a purple one that I used intermittently "for special entries" since June 2003 and just finished it. But its specialness makes me more cautious, and that is stifling.
My current thoughts: Use an Aquabee every day, take a Moleskine as a travel journal, and develop some of my fast sketches into "slower" sketches in the Cachet.
The Amalfi Coast: We took a bus along the Amalfi Drive to Positano and then walked down the main stairway to the beach. I fell in love immediately with the Positano style: the colors, the textures, and the amazing design of the clothes that were displayed in all of the shops along the passageway. We had 10 minutes for coffee on the beach before our boat arrived and I sketched a few buildings on the edge of the water. We then cruised the coast to Amalfi and we walked so much in the main squares of Amalfi that I only had time for a few fast sketches. I did buy a wonderful small watercolor journal in the oldest paper shop in Amalfi.
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 Vesuvius towering in the background. I was constantly amazed at the sophistication of this civilization that was buried in 79 AD - especially seeing the wonderful mosaics and almost contemorary silver designs from Pompei which are on view at the Archeology Museum in Naples.
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 good way to loosen up my artistic muscles before grabbing my Moleskine and heading off to a new adventure. I carried only my sketchbook and one Pigma Micron pen with me and had to learn how to juggle my camera and sketchbook.
I clearly need to spend more time figuring out how to get better scans from my sketchbook, but I'm still struggling with just posting entries!
I asked a friendly waiter in our hotel bar for a lemon and to my delight he brought me this one, complete with leaves. Sorrento is surrounded by lemon groves and lemon flavor and scent are used in numerous products. I thought that it was the perfect journal sketch for my newly acquired lemoncello recipe. I can't wait to try it.
Lemoncello: 7 medium-sized lemons, 1 L grain alcohol or good quality vodka, 1/2 L water, 500 gms sugar. Peel lemons thinly, avoiding the bitter white and place peels in jar. Add alcohol and leave for 10-30 days. Boil sugar and water until syrup, then cool. Add to mixture, then strain through cheesecloth. Keep in freezer and serve really cold.
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 A3 paper. I then painted the copy. I originally intended to just use it as a sample when I returned to New York, but now it is hanging in my studio. I photographed this sketch because of the size instead of scanning it for uploading.
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 Moleskine sketchbook even though it is not the best surface for watercolor paints. Here is the view from our hotel window, overlooking Sorrento.
