Paper and Threads

My New Friend:  Last Saturday I spent 6 hours on a sketchcrawl at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Lori - an Everyday Matters Yahoo art group member that I only previously knew through her blog and email.  I have thoroughly enjoyed every day spent with members from our wonderful group and love putting a face to a name - as well as holding their sketchbooks in my hand and watching them work.  We met for breakfast at a local restaurant and then escaped from the New York City heat at opening time of the Museum.  We started at the Turner exhibit - I LOVE his watercolors and this was my 3rd time to visit them this month.  We sketched from Turner and then sat at the table containing the HUGE books from the exhibit and added some water to our pencil sketches with our water brushes (only pencils are allowed in these exhibits if they even let you sketch at all!).  We were so cold by the end of the exhibit, we went up to the Sculpture Roof Garden to see the Jeff Koons sculptures and warm up.  We then toured the section featuring African, Central and South American artifacts and each sketched different masks and ceramic figures.  After lunch in the Museum cafeteria and lots more talking, we ended the day in the 19th C. European painting galleries.  I now have 6 journal pages to finish, converting quick sketches in pencil into ink/watercolor wash drawings.  Lori, who is in NYC on an art grant, still had several more days of lessons and experiences. 

A quick photo of us as we were ending our day (Lori on the left and me on the right):

My Old Friends:  After leaving Lori, my husband and I drove to my hometown in Northern NJ for dinner with my oldest friends - 4 women who I first met in elementary school.  Our 6th group member lives in Florida and we secretly were hoping that she was going to arrive and surprise us!  Even my 7th grade homeroom teacher - and our high school class advisor - joins us for these dinners!

From left to right: Judy, Me, Nora, Mary Ann, and Nancy.  Nora and her baby sister Nancy (not the Nancy pictured above) are among my most faithful blog readers and Nancy told me that she wanted to wake up yesterday morning and read about my fabulous dinner and party at their house.  Sorry Nancy, yesterday I spent hours and hours backingup our desktop/laptop computers to our new terrabyte external hard drive and never had time to upload this photo.  My only photo of Nancy was in mid-sentence so I thought she would prefer that I mentioned her instead....

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I gathered stuff from the beach during our walks and sketched them later.  I also tried to sketch at the Snack Shack each morning when we were having our morning coffee in the nice cool breeze. 

This is a sketch of the front doors to the food area - and the same man was in his chair reading the newspaper 4 mornings in a row.

One morning we sat at a table behind an artist who was painting the ocean view in oils.  I'm not sure that he even knew that I sketched him. 

Beach Treasures: Shells and Seaweed

Every morning the beach was different.  We were amazed that the types of shells varied each day - and on our final morning there was seaweed for the first time and only smooth shell fragments and small rocks.

Seagulls and Terns kept us company on our walks.  I took lots of photos of them with my zoom lens because they wouldn't let us get very close.  The photos were used to create this page.

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We spent a long weekend in Southampton - and I used one of my recycled books as a travel sketchbook.  There were gorgeous hydrangeas in bloom everywhere and I tried a quick painting of several blooms.

We love walking on the beach and quickly established a daily routine.  Each day we took a long walk on the beach, picking up shells as we went, followed by morning coffee on the covered patio at the Snack Shack.  Just as the beach was getting hot, we were able to move into the shady, cool ocean breeze. 

A quick painting of the beach from the Snack Shack:

Shells and a sea gull feather found on the beach during our walks:

I wanted to continue figure sketching practice, but didn't have any ready models on the beach the first two days - so I sketched from an ad in a Hamptons magazine.  We definitely didn't see her on our walk!

We walked into the Village during the afternoon and from an outdoor cafe I sketched the old Southampton Town Hall building which is now Saks Fifth Avenue.

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We just returned from a long weekend, mini-vacation at the beach.  I wanted to upload last week's challenge as soon as I returned home and then will more slowly post some beach sketches.  

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My husband and I were walking to our grandson's school in London to pick him up when I saw this wonderful row of 4 phone booths.  Usually they were single or in pairs in neighborhoods we visited - so I had to get this photo to later play with perspective.  And I never did!  That is my husband in the red baseball cap - waiting for me to catch up!  It was a nice challenge for me to draw this and I listened to Danny's recent Podcast while I sketched and painted it.  A good quiet Sunday afternoon.

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