I took my daughter and my grand daughter Sydney to the Nutcracker Ballet at Lincoln Center on Wednesday night to celebrate her Dec 20th birthday. The evening fulfilled all of my expectations - it was magical in every way. She watched every single minute of the ballet, with rapt attention, but loved the Snowflakes dancing in a blizzard on stage and especially the Mouse King the best. I now need to find a photo of the Mouse King to add to my journal for her. If anyone reading this has a photo of the Mouse King from the NYC Balanchine production, I'd LOVE to have a copy!
Sydney - looking very grown up - for her first night at the ballet. Loved the rhinestone headband! And the silver bracelet from her great grandmother (on my last blog page) was a big hit!
On Monday we bought our Christmas Tree and I picked up a pine bough for EDM Challenge #252. I was able to really study the way that the needles grew from the branch, and on this one there were 5 long needles from each little knob along the it. Fascinating!! I used my rigger brush and both tube watercolors and paint removed from the tip of my watercolor pencil.
Two of my grandchildren have birthdays this week, making the holiday schedule even more complicated. Long time readers of this blog may remember our frantic dash to London when Callum arrived 6 weeks early - and one day before Sydney's 2nd birthday.
Tonight I'm taking my daughter, and Sydney to their first NY City Ballet production of The Nutcracker for her birthday. My mother, Sydney's great grandmother, gave me a a small silver bracelet to give to her to wear to Lincoln Center. We are very excited!
Saturday we took our 6 year old grandson, Henry, to his second NY Philharmonic Young People's Concert. At Kidzone, an hour before the concert, he was able to try playing a cello and a harp, compose a bar of music which was then played by a violinist, and watch Instrument Village play compositions by young composers. While he listened to them for 10-15 minutes, I sketched a few of the musicians.
On Sunday morning, the Meet-Up Central Park Drawing Group met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to sketch. We started in the Greek and Roman Galleries with two 30 minute sketch sessions. I drew 3 statues with watercolor pencil, and may still add water.
We then moved to the American painting exhibit - and I sketched a painting by Everett Shin, using watercolor pencils to add color. Only pencils and pens are permitted in the Museum, so I surreptitiously added water with a Niji waterbrush, to paint it as we left the gallery.
In Kate's "Artist's Journal class" we are exploring various media that we own or have never used and this week I sketched my whole repetoire of pens and the 3 watercolor triads that I use for mixing colors. After documenting what I had, I decided to make a trip to NY Central Art Supply today to learn about nibs for dip pens and to bring some home to try.
Here are all of the sample pages done as over the last 3 days:
