Paper and Threads

We are almost at the end of our beach vacation with our friends, but will return with our family later this month.  And I continue to collect shells on our beach walks, and also sketched a beach scene and our bedroom for a little variety.

The item on the bottom right is an operculum, which moon snails use as a latch door over the opening in the shell.  The are almost translucent and have a beautiful structure.

I challenged myself to draw/paint a broken moon snail, but the internal structure is hard to paint to show the depth.

This was the view from the deck at the Café where we have coffee after our beach walk.

And after our beach walk, and during the heavy rain and wind, I sketched the bedroom we stay in at the beach.  It is primarily a happy memory page for me and a perspective challenge. 

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We are at the beach on our 8th annual vacation with dear friends.  I pick up shells on our morning beach walk, but rarely see any that I haven't found and sketched previously over the years.  But that makes these trips more memorable!

I made a new case for my sunglasses using strip-piecing and old scraps from my fabric stash.  The analogous hot colors make me smile!

I love watching the seagulls and managed to get a photo of one right as it was beginning to take off in flight. 

We drove down to the beach on Sunday morning, but it was raining and likely to do so all day.  So we went for coffee at Citarellas and enjoyed the time talking to local residents.

All of these sketchbook pages were photographed, not scanned, accounting for the pale blue background colors.

Posted by Shirley at 6:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am again loosely following a 100 Day Project - Drawing from My Imagination - even if it takes me more than 100 days.  Last year when I did this, my character Axel was just "born" and being developed.  This year I hope to increase the number of drawings I do with Axel.  Here are a few of the ones I already completed.

We are going to the beach and may or may not have WiFi for the next few days.  I have a new recycled book to use as my beach sketchbook and can't wait to start using it.  Enjoy the beginning of summer

Posted by Shirley at 6:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matthew Midgley, a British teacher and illustrator, was the Artist for week 5 in Sketchbook Skool 6.  He is a master at painting his meals, even if it means that he doesn't eat it until cold.  I knew that I couldn't draw and paint, postponing my enjoyment of dinner, so I took photos at our pre-theater dinner last weekend and painted it this weekend.

Italian bread with olive oil, Caesar salad, a Super Tuscan red wine, sausage pizza, and a cappuccino.  Yum!  

Posted by Shirley at 6:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday is Art Day in Battery Park City from now through October.  This week I went to the morning session in Wagner Park, searching for newly bloomed flowers and painted 3 flowers, all growing from the same stem.  I chose them because I could sit in the shade on the artist stools the Conservancy provides!  But it presented me with the challenge of drawing white flowers on white paper - and kept me happily engaged for an hour.

In the afternoon I arrived in South Cove (2 blocks away) just as one of the big ships was sailing around the tip of Manhattan and heading north up the Hudson River for fleet week.  There were sailors lined up all around the ship looking at the beautiful views of Lower Manhattan.

I love Claudia, who was our model for Figure Al Fresco.  I've sketched her before and have good memories of those sessions.  Here is my work for our two hour session - photographed instead of scanned because of the paper size.  I had a mat at home that I put around my longer pose drawings just for fun!

From 10 One Minute Poses:

Our 4 Five Minute Poses:

My 4 Ten Minute Poses - I only sketched for 10 minutes even with the 20 minute pose: 

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