Paper and Threads

We spent the weekend at the beach with our daughter and her family.  The children are there during August, so we love visiting in order to see them.  My husband and I walk 2 miles on the beach each morning and Sydney joined us on one of the days.  She has wonderful energy and last appeared on this blog after her 8k Firecracker run.  

I took lots of photos of her running in the surf and painted this sketchbook page from a photo.

The next day I set up a beach still life (weathered plywood, gull feather, pine cone) + some hydrangea petals to add color.

All of our New York grandchildren will spend next weekend with us in the City and then start school .  Summer is officially over!    

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I haven't been to the weekly outdoor figure drawing session since July due to travel and weather and next week have jury duty!  Guess I will sketch fellow jurors and maybe even complete my Faces project.  

I'm posting the information again for those who live close enough to participate in this free city park program.

I'm just uploading a few of many sketches this morning.  We did ten 1 minute poses, five 2 minute poses, five 5 minute poses, one 10 and one 20 minute pose. 

These are two minute poses - and I was pleased that they seemed to flow easily after a month with no practice.

The others are my 10 and 20 minute poses.  In both of these graphite drawings the model's left knee is bent back completely.

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We were in Minneapolis for a wedding this weekend and friends took us to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to see Rembrandt in America, at the 3rd and final stop for this amazing exhibit. 

I was incredulous how often experts changed their opinions on the same painting - was it by Rembrandt or was it by an artist from his workshop?  The exhibit was also extraordinary because the provenance for each painting was detailed on the identification label.  It was wonderful to see where these paintings traveled over 300+ years.

After seeing the Rembrandt paintings, I looked at the museum's holdings of Rembrandt etchings and sketched The Girl With the Basket from 1642.  The original print is approximately 2.5 x 3.5 inches, so I had trouble seeing the details.

Here is a copy of the original from the internet (public domain).  I found this after we returned to NYC, and can finally see the details of the etching.

 Here is my pen and ink drawing that was inspired by this very sweet, and very small etching:

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I have one sketchbook in which I just practice drawing body parts.  Readers of this blog may remember that I slowly sketched the American Sign Language alphabet, from photos that I found on the internet.  I also practice drawing faces and feet.  While watching the Olympics, I pulled some photos and this sketchbook for practice, and here are the pages.  The first two spreads were drawn with watercolor pencils and then painted with water.

A Face (while I paused the Olympics competition to draw a Turkish gymnast) and some hands from magazine photos:

More Hands from Magazine Photos (advertisements):

Portrait Drawing:  I no longer remember where I got this idea - but it was from one of the art blogs that I follow.  Sorry.  I save magazine face photos that fit nicely on my sketchbook page.  I then cut the face in half, collage one side to the page, and draw the missing side.  This was done in graphite.

I also have small, articulated figure and hand models that I can draw.  I decided to paint them today in order to try two of my new stencils.  Melly Testa, in her class Stencil Magic, uses her stencils to make positive images and to paint the negative images.  I tried both on "My Models" page.  My main goal for the figure was to draw the foreshortened left arm.

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

We just returned from a brief visit to Silver Lake, in New Hampshire.  We've been visiting our friends there for 10 years, and I've been sketching for 6 of those years.  All of my drawings and watercolor paintings are done in sketchbooks, so I've accumulated images of many parts of their home and regular quick drawings of their yellow lab.  This year Buffie, the rusty porch lamp, and two flowers that were in bloom were all sketched on a single page.

I don't like painting landscapes unless they are urban.  The house we visit has a wonderful porch overlooking the lake valley and I've only painted it once before, and that was a very simple effort.  This year I decided that it was time to try it again.  I mix greens from my 3 triads of primary colors, so that and depicting the dense woods were my challenges. 

Posted by Shirley at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)