Paper and Threads

I am very busy in Oct, Nov, and Dec - anticipating all of the Christmas sewing and quilting that needs to be done.  So like Santa, I put out a call for reindeer help.

My son Jason had a pet iguana during college and most of medical school.  We all grew to love Pablo as long as he was safely looking at us from his fabulous terrarium that was built by my son.   This photo was an excellent inspiration and challenge for me - especially drawing a figure with a face!

My husband and I worked as volunteers all Saturday morning sorting books for the upcoming Goddard Riverside Book Fair and then spent the afternoon watching our grandchildren enjoy the Halloween Fun Fair that my daughter organized as a fund raising event for their nursery school.  After carving a pumpkin with my grandchildren at dinnertime, we came home and collapsed.  I almost didn't do a journal page for Saturday - and then picked up my sketchbook, a washable graphite pencil, and a photo of Lin's kittens and did a very loose sketch in the few minutes before bed.  I try to sketch daily and rarely, if ever, will give in to being too tired or too busy.  But some days, a 5 minute sketch like this seems like a huge accomplishment.

Posted by Shirley at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

A hard challenge - and I'm not sure how or when I should reveal the full drawing....

I don't think that this should be very hard, based on the portion I chose to include, so I will post the full version as soon as there are a few comments.

Casey immediately saw that this detail was from a train engine - so I'm adding the full drawing today to finish the challenge.  My daughter chaired the Halloween Fun Fair for the nursery school and one of the highlights was a train ride for adults and children in the New York City playground that was used for the event.   

Here are 3 of our grandchildren enjoying the day. 

Posted by Shirley at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I picked up this leaf and nut from the sidewalk in Capitol Hill, Washington DC, last weekend.  These huge trees lined the street all around the park and there were multiple nuts that looked like acorns until you noticed that the caps were really spiculated - not at all like a traditional oak acorns.  On the left is the inside of an empty cap  and on the right a drawing of a cap with the nut facing up.  The cap actually has the spicules covering it entirely.

The leaves were as long and narrow as I depicted, but the veins were actually symmetric - and I didn't manage to keep them that way when I painted the leaf.  I have no idea how the leaves were placed on the branch or what the bark looked like.  None of the tree identification web sites helped me identify this tree, so I'm hoping someone in EDM can do it.  Lin? 

Posted by Shirley at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

We spent the Columbus Day weekend with our youngest grandchild in Washington DC.  When she was born I started a Cachet Linen watercolor journal for our visits to DC - the same journal that I used for my 3 London travel journals for my other grandchildren.  I try to do a visual journal page for each day of our visit,

We went to the annual Navy Day when we arrived Saturday, but Annabelle slept through it while my two oldest grandchildren, who were also visiting DC, had a fabulous time climbing on huge military vehicles.  But she now loves her Exersaucer and while we were babysitting for her spent many happy minutes playing in it.  Here is a cropped version from my position in a nearby chair. 

Sunday morning we took Annabelle for a really long walk around Capitol Hill and saw Halloween decorations whereever we walked.  One house even had pumpkin vines tied up to their wrought iron fence and many pumpkins in various stages of growth.  I captured one of the bigger pumpkins and the vine in one of my drawings.

On Monday we took Annabelle up Pennsylvania Ave to buy some new books for her and then I visited Capitol Hill Books (in a row house across from Eastern Market) for the first time, to survey their incredible collection of used books.  I found a book about the history of Chelsea - in London - which is where we stayed during our year traveling back and forth to London to visit my daughter and her family.  It was a great read for the train coming back to NYC.  What is not in my drawing are the stacks of books that completely obscure the front windows upstairs and down.  Yet inside the collection is wonderfully organized over 3 floors.  A must visit now for me for all subsequent trips to see Annabelle.

Posted by Shirley at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

We were in Washington DC this weekend visiting our youngest grandchild.  I took some great photos of floating vehicles at Navy Day in the DC Navy Yard, but when we got back to my son's house, I found this really cute Dr. Rubber Duckie among Annabelle's bath toys and decided that this would be my answer to the challenge.  One duck - 4 views.

Posted by Shirley at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)