Paper and Threads

Here are a few of the quick poses from Figure Drawing this month.  I find that I prefer the 2 and 5 minute poses because the models are more adventurous.  By 10 minutes, and especially by 20 minutes, they are in stable positions that they can hold.

Each of the drawings on this page was from a 2 minute pose:

These drawings were each from 5 minute poses:

Very few artists on blogs that I follow post live figure drawings, and I wonder whether they just don't post their work, or because live figure drawing is mainly for art students.  I resisted attending these sessions for several years after I started drawing.  And now I love it.

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I make watercolor sketchbooks for my daily drawings and paintings.  But because I keep a separate doodle book, a small sketchbook for drawing faces on the bus and subway, and several figure drawing books, I don't have entries in my daily sketchbook for each day. 

Here are several pages that were done, just because....

My Christmas cactus is blooming again - in December and now in March.  I love the color and had to commemorate the event.

I was sitting with Callum (age 6) as he was drawing and painting, and this was the page that I did  during our art session.

Sydney made me a painted wooden trinket box several years ago and decorated it with jewels and feathers.  I try to put something small in it so she finds a tiny gift each visit.  The ballet dancer is a pin I bought at a Seattle Gallery many years ago and I thought she would love it.

My friends Bunny and Richard drove from Miami Beach to Key West last weekend and sent me periodic road photos.  We've never been to the Florida Keys so I asked her to send me a photo when they reached Key West, and she sent me a picture of this rooster walking along the sidewalk. 

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I periodically work through a series of exercises in a book.  This process is important to me as I explore new techniques or refine skills.  In December I saw a new, exciting book mentioned on Beth Berman's blog: Finding Your Own Visual Language by Dunnewald, Benn, and Morgan.  Although I draw and paint on paper, I also make stamps and stencils to use on paper or fabric and love using corn dextrin and soy wax resist with procion MX dyes to make fabrics for my projects.

Jane Dunnewold was the Chair of the Suface Design Studio at Southwest Craft Center in San Antonio Tx when I took my first fabric dying class and a silk painting class in the early 90s.  I love her fabrics and devoured her books Complex Cloth and Art Cloth.  That made this book even more appealing. 

There are 16 Visual Exercises in the first section of the book, and I am currently working on Exercise 2. 

In Exercise 1 - Splitting Shapes, I selected a square as my shape and made many 1.5" squares from black paper.  Each square was cut into at least 3 pieces and then reassembled as a square and glued in place.  I made 8 and then just kept going to do another 8.  Here are my two pages of "fractured squares."

Exercise #2 is 30 Days of Cutting Stamps.  I make stamps from fun foam, even complex ones to create multicolored images.  But I have no experience carving stamps, so I plan to use Speedy-Carve and Moo Carve and my Speedball Lino Cutter Assortment for this exercise.  I can cut my 4 X 6 X 0.25" Speedy-Carve into 24 1X1" pieces and then make 6 slightly bigger stamps with Moo Carve to complete the series.  I also work in sketchbooks that are 8 X 8 max, so little stamps work better for me.

I don't have a black stamp pad - so these images were made with Staz-On and Colorbox pads.  I feel more confident about the carving lines with each one.  This is good practice!

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a wonderful new exhibit (through May 27th) entitled Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity.  The exhibit explores how the fashion of the time influenced the impressionist painters, in both portrait paintings (where presumably the subjects were wearing these clothes) and in paintings set in different venues.  There are many dresses, men's jackets and pants, and accessories. 

I sketched accessories - loving the composition of the corsets lined up on forms and items enclosed in one long glass case.

Yesterday Pat, Benedicte, and I met Gwen and Phil Diehn for brunch and a visit to the Frick Collection.  They currently have 7 Piero Della Francesca paintings (through May 19th) and 3 rooms of drawings:  The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec.  All of the drawings are on loan from the Clark Art Institute (through June 16th).

There were at least a dozen that I wanted to draw, but finally chose Degas After the Bath - 1891-2.  I used a 2B graphite pencil and tried to replicate the heavier lines in the original.

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These may be the final four in my Elephant Series.  It was a good challenge for me during February and the first half of March, especially since I limited my activities as I recovered from presumed influenza that occurred in spite of a flu shot.

The numbers on the paper aren't very accurate, since I missed a drawing and that shifted the numbers.  These are really #17, 18, 19, and 20.

These elephants were drawn from frames in the PBS Nature special entitled Echo: An Elephant to Remember.  I love the documentary and I'm fascinated with the ability to pause and sketch.  They were all done on Fabriano Artistico 140 lb soft press watercolor paper with different media.  Although frequently frustrating, I'm very glad that I pushed myself to explore and use different tools.

Echo and her Mother were drawn in pencil and then colored with various shades of gray Pitt artist pens (B).  I never use markers, so I decided to add color with lines - and couldn't bring myself to fill them in as if I were using crayons.

I was dreading trying my pastels - and spent some time watching online videos re: using oil pastels and pan pastels. 

Oil Pastels (Echo following her Mother):  My friend Melanie gave me a set of student grade oil pastels and I used the black, gray, and white pastels to color the elephant, and then blended the colors with a white acrylic eraser.  I photographed this elephant because I didn't want to put the pastel on my scanner plate.

Pan Pastels:  My friend Pat gave me her pan pastels because they were too messy.  I tried Teri's once before and liked the creaminess of them, so I accepted graciously.  This morning I mixed all of the colors I had, in order to practice the application and blending, and then decided to use gray, white, and some purple for the darker areas because I don't have black.

Here is my palette and the gray-purple elephant:

I started missing my watercolor paints and ended the series with a closeup painting of an elephant head. 

What I Learned:  I LOVE painting with watercolors, and also enjoyed drawing with soluble graphite, watercolor pencils, and watersoluble inks.  Although I decided that there will be minimal painting with acrylics, drawing with markers,  or using pastels, I am very happy that I challenged myself. 

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