Paper and Threads

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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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! 

Posted by Shirley at 6:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

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: 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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! 

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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....

Posted by Shirley at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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.

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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. 

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

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. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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!

Posted by Shirley at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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!

Posted by Shirley at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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!

Posted by Shirley at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 9:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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.   

Posted by Shirley at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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".

Posted by Shirley at 6:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

  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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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!

Posted by Shirley at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

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.

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

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.

Posted by Shirley at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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

Posted by Shirley at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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!

Posted by Shirley at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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.

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

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. 

Posted by Shirley at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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?

Posted by Shirley at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

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. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

 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.

Posted by Shirley at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.  

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

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.

Posted by Shirley at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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:

Posted by Shirley at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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!

Posted by Shirley at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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! 

Posted by Shirley at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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

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

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

2007:

2008:

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

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

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

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.

Posted by Shirley at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 8:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

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! 

Posted by Shirley at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

                                                     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. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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. 

Posted by Shirley at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 6:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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....

Posted by Shirley at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two faces drawn from magazine advertisement photos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are 3 of our grandchildren enjoying the day. 

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

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

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

Posted by Shirley at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seemed very fitting to be drawing the back of this $10 bill while thinking about the historic House vote that hopefully will occur today....  Living in New York City, it is easy to see how lack of credit is going to affect the middle class as much as those that work in the financial district.  I'm excited about the possibility of keeping Mayor Bloomberg for 4 more years - to skillfully navigate the decreasing budget available to keep this amazing city afloat.  And I've never been one to endorse Republicans....

Re: the challenge:  This was hard work.  I was going to comment on how well Sandy had drawn both sides of a bill, when I looked at our new member's (Speck) drawing of many paper bills! 

Posted by Shirley at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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

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

This is a painting of my travel watercolor set - made by Daler-Rowney - and purchased on sale at Pearl Paints in New York City.  The only other time I saw this set was in a similar drawing in The Creative License - page 57 - by Danny Gregory.  I don't like the color selection as much as my palette of Winsor-Newton paints which I use at home, but I've learned to mix enough colors to make it workable - and it is small, light, and functional. 

Posted by Shirley at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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

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

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

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

I finally had to skip the peanut challenge and move on.  We don't have peanuts in our house and I haven't seen any around during the last few weeks.  But we do have multiple packs of disposable razors - yellow for me and blue for my husband.  I enjoy doing sketches from multiple angles so this razor was fun for me to draw. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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

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

Domenic left this message for me on the EDM message board and that led to our agreement to each sketch more figures and specifically faces by September 13th.

It was helpful for me to have the challenge because this was my usual fall back behavior when practicing figures.

I started the challenge immediately by sketching one figure with a face from a magazine photo, and then a face from an old master art book that I have.

But a real challenge for me was to sketch from the photo of a dancer, and actually feel confident enough to add a face.

Yesterday, while at the FIT Museum looking at the Gothic Fashion exhibit, I decided to even sketch the face of the mannequin when sketching a fabulous silk evening coat.  Her eyes are wonky, but I could have resorted to my "blank face" and didn't.  I love Margaret's frames that she puts around her journal pages - and quickly discovered that I'm not patient enough to do those fabulous frames, not even her dots!

This was a good mini-challenge for me.  I definitely need to have a specific goal to keep me stretching my daily sketches.  Hopefully Domenic hasn't forgotten and we'll get to see his figures from our challenge before long.

Posted by Shirley at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have two ceiling fans in our apartment, but I sketched part of one for a previous challenge.  This journal page shows multiple views of a battery-operated personal fan - and I have no idea where it came from.  However, it was perfect on that very hot night in August 2003 when New York City and much of the East Coast had their last blackout.  That was the very last time it was used, and I almost didn't remember I had it because it is so small (3 3/4 inches high) and inconspicuous sitting on a corner of my book shelves.  The image on the bottom right is a frontal view when the fan is on.  It goes so fast that I couldn't see the soft black "blades" at all.

Posted by Shirley at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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

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

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

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. 

Posted by Shirley at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

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. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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.

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

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

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

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.

Posted by Shirley at 8:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute, 1835

Castle Conway: 1798-1800

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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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.

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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.  

Posted by Shirley at 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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.

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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.

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

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. 

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

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

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!

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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. 

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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.

Posted by Shirley at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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! 

Posted by Shirley at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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. 

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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. 

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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!

Posted by Shirley at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I 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.

Posted by Shirley at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!  

Posted by Shirley at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

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.

Posted by Shirley at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                              There is a music box in this shadow applique pillow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L  

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

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. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Posted by Shirley at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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). 

Posted by Shirley at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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

Here is my painting from today.

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

EDM Challenge #154: Draw a Lemon

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

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

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!

Posted by Shirley at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)