Paper and Threads

I am slowly practicing drawing hands from photos on the American Sign Language site.  I am moderately pleased with these drawings, but when I am faced with a real model, and hands are only part of the challenge, I can't draw individual fingers.  Oh well!  

 Here are my most recent hand drawings.  And then I added some drawn from photos of one of my grandchildren's hands.The sign language hands were drawn with a watercolor pencil and then brushed with water.  My grand daughter's hands were drawn with a standard color pencil.

Posted by Shirley at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

I am still slowly working my way through the Carla Sonheim Drawing Lab entitled 100 Faces.  The majority of these are sketched on the bus or subway in New York City.  Among these six, however, there is one of Howard Jacobson, the author of the Finkler Question.  I was watching a YouTube video of him talking about his book and couldn't resist drawing his interesting face and hat.

I still haven't gotten past #40 Face - this is a slow project for sure....

Posted by Shirley at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Almost 2 1/2 years ago I took a weekend book binding class to learn how to make a cased-in watercolor sketchbook.  Before that I was recycling old books, using their covers and sewing in watercolor paper signatures.  But I wanted to learn how a full watercolor journal was made by a skilled bookbinder. 

The book we made in class is bigger than any I used previously and too big for me to use as my daily sketchbook.  So I decided to dedicate it to paintings of my apartment.   But somehow the project became too precious.  I added only one page in 2009 and one page in 2010 and I constantly put off using it because I don't want to spoil it.  I need help and an attitude readjustment. 

Here are my two pages:

Our living room fireplace 

An antique golden oak draftsman's table  - now used for storage of supplies

Posted by Shirley at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Sunday was our January Meet-up Central Park Sketching session at the Natural History Museum.  The group leader, Jesse Richards, does a fabulous job selecting places within the Museum for 30-45 minute sketches and when we started in the Asian Mammals section, we had the big room almost all to ourselves.  Here is the baby tiger that I loved in one of the exhibits.

The Ocean Life section, under the blue whale was quite dark and I had problems seeing the paint colors as I added them on my Common Loon. 

This Mammoth was drawn with a watercolor pencil and then brushed with water to shade it.  It is a sketch of a mammoth sculpture that is part of the huge mammoth skeleton exhibit.

The Meet-up website, in the link above, has 90+ drawings from the participants for anyone interested in joining this group.

Posted by Shirley at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

I participated in Pam Carriker's online classes as part of the Strathmore Journal Workshops and just finished the 4th and final week's additions to my journal page.  I worked on a page in my 6.5 "X 6.5 handbound sketchbook containing 140 lb watercolor paper. 

Week 1:  I scanned previous "trees" from my watercolor journals - some were Christmas ornaments and others were just visual journal pages from the Holidays over the last few years.  I printed them out on the paper Pam recommended, although it seemed a little heavy to me, and cut out the individual trees.  I tore strips of green tissue paper for the background and then layered as many trees as I could in my Magical Forest.

Weeks 2-4:  I followed Pam's instructions each week and added charcoal, graphite, oil pastels, and gesso.  Then I added to the negative space using sequin waste, a plastic screen, mesh, and a bottle cap.  And finally, I doodled some with pens and added words. 

I persisted with the classes even though I had to admit to myself that I don't enjoy mixed-media art nearly as much as I enjoy drawing with ink with watercolor washes.  I love trying new techniques and really looked forward to seeing what came next as the 4 classes unfolded so it was worth the time spent.  And now I have a set of oil pastels!  I look forward to another Strathmore workship in March,

Posted by Shirley at 5:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)