Paper and Threads

My husband gave me this antique gold Elgin ladies' pendant watch as a wedding present.  When very pregnant with our first child, I sat down for a cup of coffee and the watch, which was hanging down over my big belly, plunged into the cup.  Ever since then watchmakers have been puzzled by the rust on the movements and no repair has lasted very long.  I still wear it to work and use it to attach my required ID - not to tell time.  It has a wonderful patina and still has great sentimental value.

Posted by Shirley at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

In the mid-60s my husband sent me a series of 12" by 16" animal cards and we matted them (couldn't afford framing) for the baby's room when our first child was born.  They remained in the boys' bedroom for the 4 years we lived in LaJolla, California and then they were put away with some other prints for safe-keeping.  Last weekend, and two homes later, I found them and decided to sketch and paint all 5 animals - the first 3 across a double page spread in my Moleskine watercolor journal and the last 2 on separate pages and subsequent days.  These were from a commercial card company and the back half of the cards with the publisher's trademark are long gone.

Posted by Shirley at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This is one fish from an entire row of fish (face to face and back to back) in a stone wall that forms the entrance to the main door of the Ukrainian Institute at 5th Ave and 79th Street in New York City.  It was much more difficult to sketch than I thought because I kept getting lost in the flourishes.  I also wasn't able to show the 3-dimensionality of it as much as I wanted because I needed to keep the stone lighter in color than the background.   I decided to post it anyway and then sketched and painted 3 of my favorite fish designs just to be colorful and playful.  This image was taking from a small area of the background on a Tibetan painting at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. 

Posted by Shirley at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Finding something to sketch every evening is sometimes hard.  I feel like Danny Gregory when he said that he sketched everything in his apartment.  Sometimes I work on faces and figures.  This week I also painted animal faces from my reference photos.  Here are my giraffe and rhino!  I specifically wanted to work on watercolor glazing, although I'm really impatient and don't always allow layers to dry properly!

Posted by Shirley at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

I still practice sketching a few faces and figures each month - and try different pencils, pen, and watercolor washes as one of my goals for 2008.  Although I am still doing one sketch/journal page per day, my sketchbooks are really eclectic and I only have a few pages like this to upload each month.

The next two figures were sketched using photos in Mark Edward Smith's book The Nude Figure: A Visual Reference for the Artist.

These 3 sketches were made from photos in a small Yoga book I bought just for this purpose - to make quick, loose sketches/paintings in many different positions.

Posted by Shirley at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)