Paper and Threads

This is a quiet week in New York City - as many people leave the city over the Holiday.  Last Friday my husband and I went to see the current Maurice Sendak exhibit at the Society of Illustrators.  WOW!!  My children grew up with his books, starting with Where the Wild Things Are and the Nutshell Library.  We then bought In The Night Kitchen and Outside over There when they were published.  I thought that I knew his illustrations, but I really never appreciated his drawing skills and draftsmanship until I saw the originals one week ago.  He is a master of pen drawing - crosshatching and lines. 

One of my favorite Sendak characters was Really Rosie and my children, and now grandchildren, love the video with Carole King.  So to commemorate this amazing exhibit in my sketchbook, I copied a sketch of her!

On Wednesday I went to Battery Park for their adult art programs - Nature in Wagner Park in the morning and Figure Drawing in the afternoon.  Thank goodness I had fun painting two flowers - because we were caught in a freak downpour at 2:30 and our outdoor figure drawing session was cancelled.

I'm taking another Mary Ann Moss online class.  My first introduction to her was with her "Remains of the Day (ROD)" class which I adored. 

This past Christmas I took her Ticket to Venice on-line class - and made a unique long stitch book and accompanied her to Venice through photos, postcards, and many videos.  I was in Venice 6 months before Mary Ann and relived my fabulous vacation!

Yesterday her "SEWN" class started - a summer fun class for making lots of patterns on papers which will then be sewn in other projects.  I signed up without knowing the details because I LOVE her classes.  She has a huge following and there was growing excitement about the start date for this class - although anyone can sign up for the class at anytime.  Yesterday several hundred class members made sheets and sheets of patterns - pure play - disengaging our brains and just painting.

I made several sheets of patterns using watercolors and then created one page in my sketchbook just to commemorate the new class.  Can't wait to do the same today, using acrylic inks. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I started drawing faces while doing the exercises in Carla Sonheim's book Drawing Lab.  The first 60+ were done on watercolor paper and painted with watercolor paints or pencils.  Then a friend gave me a small leather book with drawing paper and I now carry that with me all the time.  So the series changed from color to black and white.  

I try to sketch people when I'm on the bus or subway, but sometimes they leave too quickly, or the crowd blocks my sight-line.  These are ones during the last few months.  I just counted up my faces in the 2 groups and I am over 100!

Posted by Shirley at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I just finished two Japanese Stab Books - one with a soft cover and the other with a hinged hard cover.  Each month since January I researched a book structure and made one or two books to increase my skills. 

January: 2 Coptic books

February: 2 Long stitch leather books

March:  Flag book with samples of paste papers I made that month

April: 2 Accordion books

May: A portfolio 

June: 2 Japanese stab books - with Classic 4 hole stitching pattern

I make case bound watercolor books for my daily sketches/paintings and discovered that I love making books.  This is a fun project for the year partly because I love the reading, research, and problem solving.  Now I need to decide on additional structures to make in July-December. 

Soft Cover Stab Book: Size - 8"wide x 5.5" high    16 Pages     Canson Mi Tientes cover and text paper pages.  Black waxed linen thread.  A Gelli print was added to the cover.  My research notes and methods are in this notebook and I made it to practice the stitching pattern.

Hinged Hard Cover Stab Book:  Size 8.5" wide X 7" high   24 Pages  Tex Libris book cover, Strathmore 400 Drawing paper, Paste paper was used for the inset on the cover and the end papers, Waxed black linen thread.  I will use this book for figure drawing practice when my current sketchbook is completed.

 The Paste Paper End Papers

Posted by Shirley at 8:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My "Daily Watercolor Sketchbook" is my visual diary - the place where I try to include bits and pieces of my life.  I also have specific destination travel sketchbooks, a figure parts practice sketchbook, a live figure drawing sketchbook, and a doodle notebook because I need to encourage myself to loosen up.

Here are some daily sketchbook pages from the week before the Beach and after we returned.

Desk Chair that I Can See From my Special Place on the Couch:  I prepainted this page when I had some leftover paint on my palette.

Cut Hyacinths and My Blooming Gloxinia: 

Duck for Charlie and Sea Gull for Robbie and Zach:  We had baby Charlie overnight while his two big brothers were at the beach with their Mommy and Cousins.  The duck is a quick drawing of part of the Hans Chrisitian Anderson statue in Central Park - where we stopped to feed Charlie his afternoon fruit.  The sea gull is from one of my many photos from our week at the beach.

NYC Dinner with Cousins: Another Pre-Painted Background

Edward Hopper Exhibit at the Whitney Museum: Teri, Pat, Benedicte and I had brunch, went on a tour of the current permanent collection exhibit with my friend Gail, spent 2 hours in the Edward Hopper exhibit, and then went gallery-hopping in the neighborhood.  I was so over-inspired that day that it is hard for me to remember what I wanted to try next.  The Hopper exhibit has >200 of his drawings and 20+ of his paintings.  Many of the drawings are preparatory to the paintings.  Others are fabulous figure drawings or drawings of parts of the human figure.    I highly recommend getting to NYC to see it before it closes on Oct 6th if you love master drawings and some pretty famous Hopper paintings.

Posted by Shirley at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Visual Exercise 4:  An Exercise in Mark Making  From: Dunnewald et al.  Finding Your Own Visual Language

This is a "freewheeling" exercise done by "marking" (doodling) an entire page until full, completing 6-10 pages of marks.  I did suggestions #3 and 7 - using different tools and different paints/inks.  The end of May and most of June were so busy that I didn't post any of these doodles and I haven't even thought about exercise 5.

I'm not sure how interesting these marks/doodles are to anyone but me - but I am fascinated with the use of my wide parallel pen which is one of the last pages of doodles that I did (see below).  I'm not a doodler so filling this many pages with random marks was a fun exercise. 

1.  PENTEL POCKET BRUSH PEN

2.  OSMIROID CALLIGRAPHY PEN

3.  TOMBOW MARKER - BRUSH AND FELT TIP

4. RIGGER BRUSH AND WATERCOLOR

5. WIDE PARALLEL PEN

6.  BAMBOO PEN, DIP PEN WITH 2 NIBS, RULING PEN

Observations:

I prefer geometric rather than organic/amorphous shapes 

A Rigger brush can be very accurate for drawing lines and making marks.

A wide parallel pen is an amazing tool for doodling - very dramatic and interesting shapes emerge!  I wonder if a narrower parallel pen would give me the variation in line that I'd like with figure drawing?  Seems like an experiment worth doing!

Posted by Shirley at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)