Paper and Threads

Our youngest Grandchild spent the weekend with us in New York City - we don't see her nearly enough, so it was our first opportunity to see her walking.  On Saturday morning her sneakers and my son's sneakers were next to each other, requiring a quick sketch and journal page.

She played wonderfully by herself when all of her cousins weren't surrounding her in a whirlwind.  The wooden peg set that we bought in Zurich and that her father loved as a child was the biggest hit.  My son took a photo of her squatting, and carefully placing two pegs back into the board!

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This is a drawing of my tote/book bag that I use for work.  It is made of a heavy canvas and has one zipper pocket and two mesh side pockets - one of which always contains my umbrella.  It is black and I decided to draw it with a Pilot Varsity pen and then brush water over the non-permanent ink.  I just felt like playing!

Tuesday was my birthday.  I spent the day in New Jersey with my 90 year old mother and then returned to Manhattan to have dinner with my husband and oldest grandchild.  Henry graduated from kindergarten last Friday - and came to stay with us -across the Park - for a few days because his siblings were still in pre-school each day.  We had a wonderful dinner at Naples 45 and then as we were walking back to the entrance at Grand Central Station, I took a photo of Henry and my husband carrying the left over pizza.

After getting Henry into bed, I only had enough energy to sketch some 90 second pose maniac figures - this time in different colored pencils,

The next evening I sketched from the photo.

I am currently doing a countdown until I retire - 40 years after I started my first full time job!  I have only 7 more work days - scattered over the next 2+ weeks!

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As a Grandmother of 5, ages 1-5, sticky to me means lollipops or melting ice pops.  This was one  just waiting for Callum to want/need it.  I'm told that Dylan's Candy Bar in Manhattan is amazing!

My husband is a Do-It-Yourself guy who can fix anything.  It was really easy for him to produce screws of almost any type or length for me to draw.

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We are off this morning for a mini beach vacation.  When we return, I will post my last two sketchbook pages from Every Day in May, and hopefully lots of travel sketches in my new recycled book.

At the end of a long day, with two hats out next to my bag on the bed, I decided that I was only capable of getting these two hats sketched and painted.  The colors really also clash in real life.

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Real life schedules got in the way of daily posting again this week, so I have 3 days of journal pages being uploaded this morning.

I made lemon squares for dessert on Tuesday right before bed and was too tired to draw anything except the small, very fine strainer that I used to add the powdered sugar on top of the squares. 

No time to even consider something more than a 5 minute figure drawing sketch at bedtime.  When will I learn how to guage the size of the paper, or scale down my drawing even more?  It is really hard to make ballet "turnout" convincing in this position unless you can see the position of the back foot!!  Another lesson learned.  This was sketched with a watercolor pencil and then "painted" quickly with a waterbrush when my timer rang at 5 minutes.

A full day at work yesterday and then to the theater to see Jeffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon to see "Exit the King."  I planned ahead for my daily journal page and doodled during a 90 minute morning meeting.  I usually don't leave drawings unpainted, but it was fun to sketch in pen (without a quick pencil sketch) and I wanted to remember my graphite-free page.

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