Paper and Threads

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.

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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. 

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I am still trying to finish my 100 Faces for Carla Sonheim's Drawing Lab exercise #16.  I forget about it for weeks at a time.  And then as I'm leaving our apartment for a day on buses and/or subways, I grab my watercolor cards and pencil case - and complete several.

The first several Faces were from a ride downtown on the #6 subway.  Subject #69 was asleep, but very briefly because he jumped up and got off the train one stop after I started my sketch.  Subject #70 was a gorgeous little girl - with corn row braids and many barrettes holding her hair in place.  She had on very dark sunglasses and probably watched me draw her from across the aisle.

Subject #71 is a Home Health Aid at my Mother's Retirement complex.  I sketched her in pencil several months ago while we all sitting in a common area.  But I didn't add ink and watercolor until last night.

TWENTY-NINE MORE TO GO BEFORE I FINISH!

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I LOVE Melanie Testa's online Stencil Magic class.  Afte finishing the 4 classes, I feel as if I've learned enough to create multiple types of stencils and to develop many different images.

I reworked another doodle and made a stencil from one of the drawings in the lower right corner of this page.   The intersections of the grid lines were left blank on the stencil so I can add circles or squares and paint them individually.   

Here is the stencil print which I painted in red and green - might be useful to make cards, tags, and wrapping papers at Christmas if I use these colors.

I made another stencil, inspired by an image from Owen Jones' book The Grammar of Ornament (1856) and republished by Dover Books (1987).  It was printed with gouache, using a dauber, and the image is much crisper than my first prints.

I followed Melly's directions to use photos as inspiration for stencils, and here is my penguin - first my photo from the Central Park Zoo, and then my images.

From left to right: My Photoshop manipulated photo to convert it into Black and White as a stencil design, My first print from the stencil, and a Bookmark that I made using the penguin image.

I did another exercise using one of my first stencils.  I painted watercolor paper wet-on-wet to create background color.  Then I traced one of the images from an earlier stencil with a watercolor pencil and painted the negative space around the image.  Finally, I added squares using a piece of construction netting as a stencil and traced and painted circles through a commercial stencil.

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