Paper and Threads

We took my 6 year old grandson Henry to Lincoln Center for an open rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic.  He takes violin lessons and is very interested in music - and seemed excited when we invited him.  He read some great children's books about composers and I sketched before the rehearsal began.  It was the first time that I sketched live musicians while they played.

Yesterday I went to a panel discussion about creativity and sketchbooks - presented by Rice Freeman-Zachary (whose 2 books I loved), with my friend Melanie Testa, and Wendy Hale Davis.  Rice is such a colorful character that I just had to sketch her while I listened.  And I didn't even put on all the jewelry that she was wearing.

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Although the Meet-up Group usually sketches in Central Park during the non-winter months, this past Saturday we sketched at Bryant Park which is located behind the New York Public Library.  It was a beautiful day and the Park was full.  We sketched in 3 separate areas in the Park and shared our sketchbooks at the end of each.  Here are my 3 watercolor journal pages from the afternoon.  This is the fountain on the west side of the Park.

There are umbrellas, chairs, and lamposts everywhere!

These were the flowers blooming in the big planters that were scattered all around the Park.

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I am uploading the last 2 page spread, acknowledgements, and the back cover of my mixed media journal.  It was a great project and I'm already making another one of these 8 X 10" watercolor paper journals, although I'm not sure how often I will work in it. 

Single Page Plus back of Rear Flap: 

Over the past several years, I celebrated my love of coffee while doing Every Day Matter weekly challenges.  It seemed like the perfect topic to use to finish this play project.  The collages were scanned, printed, and cut out from sketchbook pages that show how many ways we have to make coffee at home.  The square stamp is actually 4 small square stamps of different sizes that can be combined using different stamp inks.

Inside Back Cover and Back Cover Flap:

I wrote myself a long note about the circumstances of this challenge by Melly and Pat, and my process and the fun that I had.  I decided that I definitely needed to acknowledge my muses and used pieces of a photo of the 3 of us on a recent field trip to see Art Quilts at the Morris Museum.

The Back Cover:

I looked up the 3 Graces and the mytholocial muses and decided that this was a perfect image for my back cover.  I previously did the drawing in the Greek and Roman Galleries at the Met, and scanned, printed, and collaged it to this page.

This was a fun project, and an interesting watercolor journal to use.  I made it from Teesha Moore's YouTube video of the 16 page journal (really 12 pages plus flaps which are slightly narrower).

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I have many sketches of ballet dancers in my journals - all from photos since I can't draw fast enough to catch them in action.  This is a single page spread: the dancers on the top right and bottom left are collages of pages that were scanned, printed, and cut out.  The dancer in the center was drawn on the top layer.  This is another new stamp that I made.

Next:  A 3 page spread of Central Park Zoo animals with many, many penguins.  All of the animals were collages made from prior journal pages made at the Central Park Zoo, except the penguins that appear right above the words "Lots of Penguins."  Those were drawn on a top layer.  I used pieces of a zoo map for the first layer of collage, Neocolor II watercolor crayons, gesso, acrylic paints, and stamps.

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I posted this page several weeks ago - it is actually the first flap in the Teesha Moore 16 page watercolor journal - and when opened it leads to my full "Les Fleurs" page.  The flower image was scanned from my sketchbook, printed in color, cut out and added as a collage.  The stamp is one of the new ones I created when making this journal.

This is a two page spread in the journal - the back of the flap and the next page.  Each of the flowers except the iris were collages taken from sketchbooks.  The iris was drawn onto the top layer when I was finishing the page.  This is a photo because the page was too big for my scanner.

I think I'm finally figuring out how I want to use my journals/sketchbooks.  From the time I began this adventure and joined Every Day Matters, I've considered my sketchbooks as visual journals - sometimes used for practice, as when I did exercises from art books, or copied drawings of the masters, but most times used as a daily visual journal.  I don't want to change that.  But making the mixed media journal allowed me to see that I can print previous sketchbook pages, and use others as inspiration for redrawing images, to be used in mixed media journal book pages or artwork that is separate.  However, image resizing with Photoshop, a scanner, and a color photo printer are necessary and my dining room table was full of paints, brushes, gel medium, gesso, stamps, stamp pads, calligraphy pens, acrylic inks, Pitt pens, scissors, rulers, and exacto knives. If I'm drawing at home, I do my evening journal pages with my sketchbook, pencil case, waterbrushes, and travel watercolor kit on the couch - a much simpler process!  

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