I have two favorite kitchen tools. My 36 year old Kitchenaid was posted on this blog in 2006 when I was doing my color project during yellow month. So this time I sketched my 30 year old Cuisinart! They are very reliable machines and have been used regularly for many years. We don't cook as often anymore, but the Kitchenaid was used twice recently when Sydney, Henry, and I baked cookies.
This was a really, really hard challenge for me. I'm not sure that any piece of my popcorn has "volume" and due to the lighting in my favorite painting place, I also don't have shadows. At least the popcorn-eating was enjoyable.
While I was sketching Uno's photo from his win as Best of Breed on Tuesday night, he was winning Best of Show at the Westminstrer Kennel Club annual show in Manhattan. It was the first time in the 100+ year history of the show that a beagle ever won Best of Show. In film clips on the news he was the perkiest, cutest thing - and I'm not especially a pet person!
This sketch was inspired by a photo of my grand daughter after a bath. The blue and white puppy towel probably belongs to one of her brothers, but on this night it was hers. Unfortunately I am not good enough to make the sketch look like her. Maybe next year! For now I can just be happy that I am putting faces on my figures - a huge accomplishment for 2008.
I am really enjoying the recycled books I made (originally inspired by Jan Allsopp - and now made with Martha's methods) and was ready for a new one. My recycled Michaelangelo Sonnet book is completed - full of my "figure and face drawings" - so I was looking for a good replacement. This 1960 $1.00 book purchased on the final sale cart at Housingworks in Soho was a perfect candidate. The cover measures 5.5" X 8" and is really sturdy. I was able to put 4 signatures of 140 lb Arches hot press paper inside. Each signature contains 3 folios of WC paper, one folio of brown Canson paper for sketching, and one folio from the original book. The end papers that hold the page block in place are anatomical drawings.
The spine is not glued so it opens very flat, but this means that in spite of tight stitching there are small gaps between the signatures. I therefore put a thin strip of the anatomical drawing paper over each gap for aesthetic purposes. Martha paints the inside of her Moleskine cover spine black instead.
One of the joys, for me, of recycling old books is being able to include pages from the original text - the cover page and at least a few others. Here is an example of one of the pages, with an illustration that I selected.
I need to overcome new journal angst as quickly as possible or I might not ever want to use the book for fear of ruining it. I immediately added both a figure sketch and a face sketch - and hopefully I'm on my way to a new adventure.
