Paper and Threads

Last night I went to Figure Drawing at the Society of Illustrators in New York City.  I think some of the people that I see there regularly go twice each week.  I'd love to go twice each month, but will probably never go more frequently than that.  This time I took my 9B woodless pencil and stumper that I played with when I was reading Bill Rankin's Fast Sketching Techniques book and loved using them for the longer poses.  Here is one page for 2 min, 5 min, 10 min, and 20 minute poses.  My new sketchbook is slightly bigger than my scanner and the person sitting next to me created charcoal dust periodically that drifted onto my page - so I cleaned them up as well as possible.

Two Minute Poses for each Model (2 of 20):  

Five Minute Pose (1 of 4):

Ten Minute Pose (1 of 2):

Twenty Minute Pose (1 of 3):

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I blocked out three days to make new fabrics to use as book cloth for my watercolor journals.  Over the last 20 years I learned many surface design techniques for silks and  cottons and love to play with dyes and resists to create textiles.  In a Manhattan apartment, I need to "schedule" time to play with dyes because I have to get out so many supplies, tools, etc.  And our dining room table is covered in plastic for several days as the fabric cures and dries. 

I purchased 3 new primary color dyes in February and made up new stock solutions.  Then when I was "playing" I decided to see if the stamp process I used recently for paper worked equally well with fabric.  Here are my stock solutions, the secondary colors I mixed and my new stamp.  I used it to stamp a dark blue design over an entire piece of dyed blue-green cotton that will be book cloth.

Posted by Shirley at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I made these 3 bears for my children when they were babies and they are well worn.  I forgot that I had them until this weekend when I was looking for a dress I made for my daughter to see if her daughter could wear it (Sydney is too tall) and found the bears.  I gave Sydney the one from her Mom and will deliver the boys' bears to them so their children can play with them. 

Posted by Shirley at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a new fashion exhibit called the American Woman.  It was crowded, and I sketched two garments quickly and then painted them at home - mostly from memory.  The whitish stripe down the center of the page is from Photoshop removal of the gutter between the two pages. 

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I finally finished the book inspired by Gwen Diehn's book on Darwin.  Hers was really small.  The ones that our Journal Study Group made are 3" X 5". 

Here is the cover of mine.

This book has two concertinas, one that makes up the spine and end papers of the book and a second one that makes the pages.  The concertinas are stitched together with a 3 hole pamphlet stitch.  The spine of the book is then held closed with one stick which goes through 3 tabs - two on the front cover and one on the back.

These are the pages that I created using stamps I made from figures I sketched at the Society of Illustrators figure drawing sessions this spring. 

End paper on the left and page 1:

Pages 2 and 3:

Pages 4 and 5:

Pages 6 and 7:

Page 8 and End Paper:

When the stick is removed, the spine can be opened to reveal a hidden image.  This is a stamp that I made from my painting of mother and child - inspired by a Henry Moore sculpture.

Posted by Shirley at 8:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)