Paper and Threads

I love to create journal pages that reflect my daily life - and post them only occasionally to my blog.  Since I started sketching daily in Jan 2007, I filled 33 sketchbooks in addition to travel sketchbooks and those devoted to figure drawing.  Here are 3 recent daily pages that I like:

I volunteer for Goddard Riverside, a settlement house on the Upper Westside of New York, sorting new books donated by publishers each Fall and then working at the annual Book Fair where the books are sold for 50% or less.  This page was created by sketching the main characters of 3 books that I bought for our grandchildren.

We take our oldest Grandson to 4 NY Philharmonic Young Peoples' Concerts each year and he gets to try instruments in the Kidzone, which is held the hour before the concert.  Last Saturday was a concert on Baroque music and he was able to try the harpsichord, and play a violin (which he does anyway.)  The violinist picture on this page is the image from the Kidzone violin site in Avery Fisher Hall.

I spent last weekend planning and making some Christmas gifts for the children and decided to draw a grid page, in case I want to make some fun foam stamps for the season.

Posted by Shirley at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

I make multiple Christmas ornaments each year and just finished those for 2010.  Several years ago I made many images of a Christmas tree in a silk screen workshop by Marit Kucera and just put away the fabric squares in my studio when I came home.  This year I rediscovered them in my studio and designed ornaments for our children and grandchildren to hang on their trees.  

I made 13 total, several with a sparkly fabric overlayer.  After stitching together the fabric with the silk screen, batting, and backing, the trees were turned and machine quilted with gold metallic thread (YLI Kaleidoscope).  I love the sparkle!

Posted by Shirley at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

My husband and I cook Thanksgiving dinner for family and friends since moving back to the Northeast in 1993.  Over the years the number of hors d'oeuvres prepared to go with the champagne has increased to 7, but the rest of the menu remains almost fixed.  As with most families, everyone has their own personal favorite dish and it is hard to change any part of the feast.  I do rotate among 6 different soup recipes based on whim, and my daughters-in-law bring the sweet potatoes that they can't live without.

This turkey was drawn from a photo on Wed during one of my cooking breaks. 

On Thursday we put out almost 20 champagne glasses (none for the 5 children!), and to keep them from being mixed up during our long pre-dinner event, I put fobs on each stem.  These are the two that my husband and I used on Thanksgiving.  As the cooks, we wander back and forth among living room, dining room, and kitchen, so we are forever searching for our glasses.  Our guests select their own fob and then just need to remember it for 2-3 hours!

Hope everyone had a wonderful day!  Now onto the rest of the Holiday season.

Next posting:  I finished making my Christmas tree ornaments for our children and grandchildren - another annual event.

Posted by Shirley at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

I love Matisse and will never forget the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit entitled Matisse: The Fabric of his Dreams His Art His Textiles.  I'm sure that part of my love is his use of colors and patterns.  

James Morgan's book, Chasing Matisse, was a natural for me.  It is about a year long journey for James and his wife Beth following Matisse's steps from his birthplace, through Paris, Venice, then Southern France to Morocco, and back to Nice.  The section of the book about Collioure, France was fascinating because of the light and colors described by Morgan.  Along the Chemin de Fauvres in Collioure, there are 20 reproductions at sites where Matisse and Derain completed these paintings. 

I looked up Collioure on Google maps to find its exact location, and in the process found a photo  which just begged to be drawn and painted. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Yupo, a synthetic plastic "paper," was discussed many times over the years on the Everyday Matters message board and/or members' blogs.  However, I never was interested in playing with it until I saw wonderful watercolor paintings, using crayons as a resist, on Yevgenia's blog. 

You can search her blog using the word "yupo" and see what I mean.  Yevgenia has a good, short,  tutorial on her blog about painting on yupo and she was wonderful to answer my questions by email. 

My Journal Study Group, 4 artbuddies who all keep sketchbooks, make art quilts, and love bookbinding, meet regularly in NYC for afternoons or full days of fun.  While we were on one of our field trips, we stopped in DaVinci's Art Store and I bought a sheet of yupo to play with.  Yesterday we gathered in my apartment and tried painting on it.  At one point, during lots of giggles, I said that I thought that we were at the very bottom of the "Yupo Learning Curve."  I hope Yevgenia isn't horrified by my very first results.

Here is the evidence:

           These are 4 paintings on Yupo that are cut the size of shipping tags.

I don't think that I will use yupo very often, but I truly believe that it is important to get out of your comfort zone and really play - preferably spending the time with like-minded friends who love to laugh.

Next:  My preliminary "lines" with a ruling pen using thickened black dye on fabric:

 My artbuddy Melly is responsible for this departure from my comfort zone and she even brought her ruling pen yesterday to give me another quick, in person, tutorial.  I'll post these "line drawings" after I have a few more.  I'm really excited about the possibility of drawing on fabric with dye and a pen!!  Think about the book cloth covers I'll be able to make for sketchbooks in the future!

Posted by Shirley at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)