Paper and Threads

During our year of London Travel, I filled 3 Cachet Linen spiral watercolor sketchbooks.  I love having the envelope in the back of Moleskine notebooks and quickly realized that I needed to find and buy large envelopes to glue on the inside of the back cover of these sketchbooks.  As we traveled around London, I collected a few postcards from Museum exhibits so I could have inspiration for future drawings.  The postcard that I laid across this envelope, on the inner cover of London #2, is from the Royal Academy of Art Rodin exhibit.   

Here is my sketch from the postcard.  The writing on the page from January 7th says "sketched on a 747 somewhere between London and New York." 

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I still try to do occasional sketches of Manhattan, as if I am a tourist in my own town.  While waiting to meet my daughter and grandson one rainy day this month, I sketched the National Academy of Art - which is just north of the Guggenheim Museum on 5th Ave.  I also did my first sketch of the Status of Liberty - from a poster - using a Juniper Green watercolor pencil.  The head and the uplifted arm had to be redrawn.  

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This is a ship lantern that we purchased on Rue Jacob, Paris, in an antique store specialing in nautical objects.   Many times over the last 2 years I almost sketched it just because I like it so much and see it every day.  This challenge made it the perfect choice.  We had it hanging in our home in Texas, but it now just sits on a surface in our dining room in our New York apartment. 

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I continue to sketch figures - from many different types of images - for practice.  Some are inspired by famous artists, others are from photographs in current periodicals.  The only thing that can be said is that I probably am not destined to work in a series anytime soon!  My tastes are too eclectic and I like to try a little of everything.

Picasso One-Liner:  Taken from a small book of his that I covet.

Contour Drawing of a Fashion Photograph as I work on Contour Drawings for exercises in a Charles Reid book [The Natural Way to Paint]:

Yoga Photos:  I'm still working from photos in the very small second-hand yoga book that I bought last year.

Inspired by Donald Hamilton Fraser's series of Dancers that I purchased at the Royal Academy of Art in London:

Fashion Sketch:  Taken from a Bloomingdale's Newspaper Ad to try these techniques and proportions.

Leonardo and Venezia:  Copied from a set of cards that I bought from Palazzo Grassi in Venice.  These were sketched in my Michaelangelo Sonnets recycled book so some of the Michaelangelo sketches are included on the paper that I glued in to cover the gap between signatures.  These were some strange, but interesting faces!

My Feet:  My only drawing from life! 

Roman Statue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

I'm interested to see what October brings.  My choice of subjects on nights when I do my daily sketch is very spontaneous - and fortunately I have collected some images that I keep near my sketchbook so I can play with them.

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This is a child-size, really soft, light blue bear - really gentle and cute in spite of the scarey face I seemed to give him.  Between grandchildren visits to our apartment, he sits in a little car that we gave Henry (now 4) for his first birthday.  When Henry outgrew it, the car came to our apartment for all of our grandchildren to use.  I take them for walks around our busy Manhattan neighborhood when we don't need to have a stroller with us.  It is a perfect toy for an urban baby! 

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