Paper and Threads

One of my Art Goals for 2007 is to practice drawing people - real people, photos of people, photos of nude models, and Greek-Roman statues.  Here are a few sketches from August.

This sketch was made from a photo in a pregnancy magazine that is distributed at the medical school.  There are great photos of babies and pregnant women in the advertisements!

These two folks were sitting separately reading at the Cafe at the Toy Boat Pond in Central Park.  I loved her hat and then needed to find a suitable male wearing a hat for balance! 

This was sketched from a photo in my Nude Models for Artists book.  Although the graphite smudging doesn't show up on the watercolor paper, it really does in the scan.  This is one of the liabilities of being left-handed for sure.

A sketch from the Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I went on my own Sketchcrawl today and did 3 projects that I planned for my next museum visit.  The New York group was meeting at South Street Seaport for their Worldwide Sketchcrawl - and it is a hot, humid day.  The Museum. in contrast, was beautifully cooled....  Ah, I'm getting old and fussy!

Posted by Shirley at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

We had to disconnect our scanner to have a window air conditioner fixed and then developed modem problems with our computer - so I'm finally uploadng last week's and this week's Everyday Matters Challenges at the same time.  I bought this peach just for the challenge and unfortunately can't eat it because of allergies.  It looked delicious! 

Posted by Shirley at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

One of my goals for 2007 is to sketch in my own city as if I were on an exotic vacation.  Manhattan is so large and so varied, from neighborhood to neighborhood, that I will never tire of the scenes.  This is one apartment building on 5th Ave - in the 80s - as seen looking Southeast through foliage in Central Park.  I think these are terraces associated with the penthouse(s), but the roof watertank is also probably housed in one of these structures.

Posted by Shirley at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I always love doing the EDM Challenges and try to make them a learning experience.  I still have a great deal of difficulty with reflections, so I chose my clear green plastic spray bottle for this sketch.  I think the transparent surface is recognizeable, but the few light reflections that I saw aren't very apparent.  More practice needed!! 

Posted by Shirley at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I love books, journals, paper, and almost anything sold in stationary stores - so buying school supplies was always a thrill.  Now my purchases are year round, not just in September, and I love it when we start a new project at work and need to look through catalogues for new supplies. 

At home I'm currently obsessed with the Levenger catalogue and new items for their "circa" notebooks.  Although I have some in all 3 sizes, and even a leather cover for my junior size notebook, I carry the compact notebook that contains index cards in my purse and use it all day long.   I have a punch that makes those great holes along the edge of the card (two pages can be cut from each 5 X 8" index card) and then the tabs wrap around the black circle discs.  Pages are really easy to add or remove - which is the beauty of the system.  The cover of this compact notebook is translucent plastic and I painted a daffodil on watercolor paper which shows through.  The pen that I use for everything is a medium Pilot Easy Touch - I don't have the obsession that many people have for fountain pens!

Posted by Shirley at 5:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)