This is my Italian hero sandwich, purchased at a local market for lunch last week. My favorite sandwich is a prosciutto and mozzarella panini - but I don't have a good local source! The cherry tomatoes were added at home for color - and challenge - when sketching and painting my sandwich.
Today I had an hour to go back to the Eternal Ancestry exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to sketch the wonderful faces on these Reliquaries. They are 1-2 feet in height - some are full figures, but most are just heads on a standard base. They are mostly earthcolors with some gold, bronze, silver, and even feathers.
I walked through with my Moleskine watercolor notebook and walnut brown Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil and just sketched pieces that I really liked. The digital photo image below shows all of the faces across a double page spread in the Moleskine. I originally intended to add water, but then started using the pencil for small details meaning these strokes would be lost if I painted over the pencil.
Here is the first page in more detail (scanned):
Here is the second page in more detail (scanned):
I wasn't at all sure what would happen if I sprayed these pages with Fixative, so I sketched another page with another mask and tried it. There was no running or smearing of the color - and in fact I couldn't get the pencil to rewet so I could add color.
The exhibit doesn't close until March 2nd, so I hope to have time to sketch more of these beautiful 19th and 20th C. sculptures from Central Africa.
Two journal pages from my Figure and Face practice. The nude is the on the last page of my Michaelangelo sonnet recycled book. The Beefeater is sketched from a London photo and was done in my recycled Elizabeth I book.
New York City Brownstones are really red-brown and have wonderful, decorative columns and porches for their front stairs. This sketch was made from a photo that I took in the East 80s during the spring (hence the flowers blooming so nicely).
On Fridays when I take ballet class, I have time to have coffee and sketch before going to pick up my grandson at nursery school. I try to use this time to practice figure drawing of dancers from photos in ads in magazines.
Here is my painting from today.