Paper and Threads

Last night Galleries participating in Master Drawing Week had openings from 4-8PM.  I took my husband to one of them because I wanted to see the travel watercolors, and he hadn't ever been in any of the townhouses that we always pass on our way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  For those in or near NYC, it is an unusual opportunity to both see wonderful art and visit galleries in some gorgeous townhouses. 

Hilda May Gordon traveled the world for 7 years in the 1920s, and painted as she went.  Whenever she had accumulated enough paintings for an exhibit and sale, she would visit a large city, sell her paintings, and use the proceeds to finance more travel.  The exhibit was very interesting and the Gallery was welcoming. 

Each year they publish a book of the participating galleries on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan, and you can go to their website for the list, and a map.  The booklets can then be obtained in the first gallery you visit.

http://www.masterdrawingsinnewyork.com/ 

Today I went to Sothebys auction house to see the previews for their Master Drawings auction, and they had many more than most of the galleries.  I loved a Goya ink drawing and sketched it in pencil.  I'll add ink and paint it with ink, sometime this week, but wanted to put a photo of it here.  Sothebys is open tomorrow afternoon, and 10-5 on Monday and Tuesday, as the auction takes place on Wednesday.  My little Goya from the 1600s, entitled "Don't Make the Basket Too Heavy," has an auction estimate of $1,000,000-1,500,000!

In March there is Asia Art Week, and we repeat the process to see wonderful art from a different part of the world. 

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I love figure drawing and look for any opportunities to practice drawing hands and feet.  Deliberate Practice is one way for me to do that - saving images whenever possible just to draw both, and hope that this practice will carry over to times when I'm drawing live figures from observation.  This month I decided that I need to search my reference photos, clipped usually from ads in magazines, to draw some more feet.

If anyone has a good photo source for feet photographs, I'd love to get the link.  Here are feet from the only two ads I had, and one drawing of two hands together - another one of my goals.  

2

Two Hands Together - one in an ongoing series of my practice drawings - moving from single hands to two.

More about Deliberate Practice:

In his best-selling book “Talent is Overrated,” author Geoff Colvin writes about the concept of deliberate practice and how by adhering to this principle, the practitioner can attain expertise far more rapidly than they could through repetitive methods of practice that focus on already sharpened skills.  From Huffington Post The Blog 05/24/2016

Here is another link discussing the definition - and since I don't have someone critique my efforts, I may or may not be using the concept correctly.  https://3starlearningexperiences.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/370/ 

But it works for me - VERY slow progress has been made. 

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My husband and I went to the NYC Womens March on Saturday along with 200,000 other people.  The weather was great after our weeks of Arctic Chill, and the crowds were just as wonderful as last year.  Both years I was impressed with the comraderie, and the lack of conflict  People were genuinely happy to be marching.  Husbands marched with wives.  Parents brought their children.  And everyone waited patiently in large crowds even to get on the main march route down Central Park West.  After the Womens March in NYC in 2017 and the Science March in DC in 2017, I am so impressed with the number of truly creative signs, all of which express our dissatisfaction with this administration.  Here are a few of the photos that I took. 

Waiting for the bus to the Upper West Side.  After last year's Womens March I sent it to my Grand daughter in DC, and then needed to borrow it back from her for this year.

Beginning with "Women Are in Charge of Their Own Bodies,"  this sign says it all for me!

This Father marched with his little girl - and he is carrying a sign with sponsorship from the Girl Scouts.

And here is his little girl.

By chance I met one of my favorite friends - Robin - who is part of my 4 person Quilt Bee.  Her sign of course is the Statue of Liberty.

After more than an hour waiting on W68th St., we were fed into the main March route on Central Park West.

This was again an amazing experience!  And I will turn out every year to make sure that the world knows that we are no longer proud of our country, and will resist and persist. 

I didn't even bring my sketchbook, but on Instagram you can see some of the reportage artists' drawings.  They are amazing and really capture the crowds and the moods.   Here is the link:

https://www.instagram.com/artistsfordemocracy/ 

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While in DC, we went to see Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting at the National Gallery.  This was the Dutch Golden Age of scenes of daily life of refined Dutch Society.  Here is a link to the National Gallery website for the exhibit.  There are many paintings on the website as well as a long video by the curator.

https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2017/vermeer-and-the-masters-of-genre-painting.html 

Johannes Vermeer:  Lady Writing from 1665 

There was a very, very long line, winding around both sides of the main second floor hall, but it moved enough that I couldn't sketch a sculpture and instead did a messy drawing of two people in front of us on the line with an available colored pencil.

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Before leaving for a weekend with our son and his family in DC, I sketched two more Rodin sculptures before the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed.  I walked the corridor that houses the Met's Rodin collection many times every year, and until I go back to the Museum, I won't know whether these two pieces that are owned by the Met will still be on view. 

I loved this marble sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice, it is beautiful from almost every angle.  However, I decided to sit down on a bench in front of it because of the amount of traffic walking through the area to get to the Michelangelo Exhibit, and the view of Eurydice from the bench was not as good as that from either side.

This is a very small sculpture named Despair, one of many that I didn't remember, although it is from The Gates of Hell.  I loved the position of the figure and just had to draw it in case it disappeared.

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