Paper and Threads

We are at the beach this week with friends - who we met in the 1960s.  There are early morning beach walks, afternoon pool swimming, and lovely dinners on the house patio.  Three of us sketch together, so we are creating visual journal pages and having great fun doing "labs" from Carla Sonheim's new book entitled Drawing Lab.

These are the visual journal pages from Mon-Wed.  Mon and Tues we went to the beach.  This morning we had a huge thunderstorm just as we were leaving and we spent the morning in the sunroom identifying bugs.

I'm taking photos of my journal instead of scanning the pages, so even the white bacground is slightly blue....

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Our group met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, instead of in Central Park, because of the threat of inclement weather.  Our first drawing session was a major challenge - the Starn brothers bamboo structure on the Museum rooftop.  I decided to really limit my scope and to focus on the method that they used to connect the bamboo and creat a structure which supports many people on internal walkways. 

Our next drawing session was in the current exhibit called The American Woman - from the costume institute.  I already sketched some of the fashions in the exhibit on a previous visit and this time concentrated on the room called "The Heiress." 

Our 3rd and final sketch was in 19th C. European Paintings.  I am studying Cezanne's card players over a several year period and this time did a simple line drawing of one of the card players.  For more information about this project and my 2007, 2008, 2009 paintings, click here.

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We just returned from a Holiday weekend with our children and their children.  This is the first photo that we have of all 6 grandchildren this year - and I'm thrilled to have a new one.

I sketched every day in my summer watercolor journal - in which I try to paint something that will help me remember the day.  Here are 4 pages.

 Blue Mussel Shells:  I bought a wonderful laminated shell identification card which Callum calls "the map" and we tried to ID shells that I brought home from our beach walks. 

Our 3 and 4 year old grandsons made great progress "swimming" this weekend and spent lots of time going back and forth between their parents and the wall without floaties.  This is a pair of goggles that were abandoned on my chaise while I was watching them.

We waited for our car AC to have freon added and I was sitting next to this planter and flag - which looked especially forlorn after the holiday was over.

I take sea gull pictures each time we walk on the beach.  These are several drawings of one gull from those photos.

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Our Central Park Meetup Group met at the Conservatory Garden again and it was beastly hot.  However, there were enough non-wilted flowers to paint.  They are not labelled and I have little practical knowledge of flowers - but I love drawing individual blooms.

There are two wonderful fountains in the Garden.  One of the fountain areas was the site for a lovely wedding.  The other fountain, the Three Dancing Maidens, was in bright sunlight.  But we discovered that we could dangle our feet into ice cold fountain water until the guards reprimanded us.  I drew this fountain twcie before (see here and here) and this time I decided to just draw one of the maidens.  I had just enough time before the guards came!

Following Meetup, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a special afternoon program on Picasso to go along with their huge current exhibit.  Francois Gilot gave a long and excellent lecture on her encounter with Picasso, She lived with him for 10 years and had two children with him.  Professor Michael Fitggerald presented detailed information about the first private American collectors of Picasso's paintings and the history of the Met vs MoMA and their Picasso acquisitions.  Then there was a wonderful French film (The Mystery of Picasso - 1955) in which Picasso drew on one side of a support and we the audience just saw the lines forming and colored inks being added.  It was mesmerizing. 

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We were at the beach for several days in June and I never uploaded any of the daily drawings that I did.  It was an amazing week for finding shells on the beach - last year we barely found any and this year I only brought home perfect ones. 

My Straw Hat - but it was too breezy to wear it on our morning walks.

A few of my favorite types of shells - the variation in color of the moon snails and bay scallop shells is truly amazing.  I could use one shell for an example of nature's perfect color combinations each time I paint.

I love the seagulls and this was the only one we saw with this coloration.

We took a ride to the end of the South Fork to the Montauk Point Lighthouse for the first time.  It is a wonderful place for drawing and painting.

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