Main
Page 232 of 327

May 3, 2010

Every Day in May-3

Yesterday I went to see the Watercolor Society of America annual show at Salmagundi several hours before it closed.   This is the second year that I went to the exhibit and again I was overwhelmed by the talent of the group and their beautiful handling of watercolor.  My fish were inspired by fish that I saw on two of the paintings.  Following the show, I walked across 12th Street in the Village to Utrecht art to get a 9B pencil to work on David Rankin's Fast Sketching Techniques and saw this beautiful tulip growing in front of a brownstone. 

             WSA2010.jpg

 

May 2, 2010

Every Day in May -2

Sydney and Callum came to our apartment yesterday afternoon while big brother Henry went to the Yankee game with our daughter and son-in-law.  The afternoon ended with Cal and I playing with the Play-Doh factory!

Playdoh.jpg 

April 28, 2010

Central Park Sketching and Art Meet up Group

Our Meet-up Group is now meeting twice each month - and because of a very rainy Sunday, we met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this week.  I went over early so I could see the Members Preview of the new Picasso exhibit.  It is a collection of the Met's Picasso holdings and it is really impressive.  In the second room they have the collection of small caricatures that he did of his artist friends in Barcelona ca 1900.  I fell in love with these when they were in the Barcelona Modernity exhibit several years ago and took a few minutes to sketch one.

               Picasso4.25.jpg

Our Meet-up group then did several 30 minute sketching sessions in the American Wing of the Museum and shared our sketchbooks after each one.  I sketched a sculpture in the Atrium, an art nouveau Roseville Vase on the Mezzanine, and a painting by Robert Reid in the Gallery.

                         Fragilina.jpg

            RosevilleVase.jpg

                   RobtReid.jpg

 

April 23, 2010

Museum of Modern Art Visit

I spent several hours at the Museum of Modern Art today - primarily to see the Tim Burton exhibit before it closes on Sunday.  There are hundreds of drawings and many sculptures.  Many of the drawings are from sketchbooks and many are preparative pieces for his movies.  The exhibit was sold out today, and the crowd was young and enthusiastic as noted in the NY Times piece below. 

Tim Burton Retrospective:  THE mouth of a giant monster, its razor-sharp teeth glaring overhead and its tongue forming a long red carpet, ushers visitors into the Tim Burton retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Although the intentionally lighthearted chronicle of the filmmaker’s work received only mixed reviews when it opened in November, Mr. Burton’s fans don’t seem to care. More than 450,000 people have already attended the show, and by the time it closes on April 26, attendance is expected to exceed that of recent blockbusters like the museum’s “Van Gogh: The Colors of the Night” last year and “Dali: Painting and Film,” in 2008.  

Visitors to the show are relatively young, somewhere in their 30s on average, which makes them a decade younger than usual for MoMA, recent surveys showed. And a surprising one-third of this audience had never stepped foot in the museum before.
I loved this sculpture entitled Robot Boy, 2000.
                Tim%20Burton.jpg
Marina Abramovic:  The Artist is Present  Marina Abramovic has a controversial exhibit at the Museum, that I did not see.  However, the performance artist herself is sitting all day, everyday in the large 2nd floor atrium as described in the New York Times piece below.

From The New York Times  March 11, 2010  "She’s scheduled to sit there all day, every day, during museum hours, for the run of her show. The museum estimates that, if she can stick to the plan, she will sit for 716 hours and 30 minutes, earning her a record for endurance in the performance art sweepstakes.  And every now and then someone will slip into that chair across from her — that’s what it’s there for — and spend some time exchanging stares, or energy, or going blank, or thinking, maybe for the first time, about that hard, high-flown, funny word “endure.”

Today there was a line of people who wanted to sit and stare at her - usually for 30-45 minutes each.  Someone I spoke to said that she sat with her 3 times already since the show started- it is like meditation!  I don't get it, but it was fun to sit there and sketch her.  She never moved a muscle!

 

                 MarinaAbramovic.jpg

 

April 19, 2010

More Dodson Drawing Projects: Chapter 3

I am slowly working my way through the Dodson Keys to Drawing book projects.  I have two more projects in Chapter 3 and five more chapters total.

I posted Project 3A - Standing Figure - in January. 

Project 3B is to draw a lounging figure.  I used a photo from my book The Nude Figure by Mark Edward Smith. 

Horizontal%20figure.jpg

Project 3C is to draw a reclining figure (foreshortened).  I used another photo from my book The Nude Figure by Mark Edward Smith. 

Foreshortened%20Figure.jpg

Project 3D is to draw a full face portrait.  I used a photo of Obama and practiced using a grid system.  The drawing can be seen here.

Project 3E is to draw a three-quarter view portrait.  I used a photo from morguefile.com.

Three%20Quiarters%20Portrait.jpg

Although there is a section on drawing profiles, there is no project for drawing a profile in the book.  But I decided that I needed the practice.  I used a photo from morguefile.com. 

Profile.jpg

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327