Paper and Threads

Although my sketchbook is in part a visual journal of my daily life, it is also the place that I practice drawing and painting.  This year, one of my goals was to practice figures and especially faces, and I found that I could instantly make a toddler look like a teenage as soon as I sketched in a face.  Yuck!  I couldn't stand the page I did Friday so I tried again in pencil the following morning.  So this shows my "old" child's face and a slightly more youthful child face in pencil along side.

Yesterday I went to the preview of the new Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night).  I like to draw from the Masters, and like to do at least one sketch at art exhibits,  Yesterday I chose an 1878 shaded pencil drawing that was in a glass case.  It is such an early drawing of Van Gogh's that it isn't even included in the huge VanGogh gallery of drawings on the web.

He shaded in pencil, but I used gray watercolor to try to achieve the same tones.  In a note included with the drawing, Van Gogh said that he loved buildings lit from within during the evenings when workers were at rest.  I also love to walk by homes lit from within during the evening hours - canal houses in Amsterdam and brownstones here in New York City - so this drawing really resonated with me. 

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I finally had to skip the peanut challenge and move on.  We don't have peanuts in our house and I haven't seen any around during the last few weeks.  But we do have multiple packs of disposable razors - yellow for me and blue for my husband.  I enjoy doing sketches from multiple angles so this razor was fun for me to draw. 

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 I lived in a 3rd floor garret apartment in a private home (1965-1969) when I was a poor medical student in Philadelphia.  The neighborhood was delightful, the house was on a bus route connecting to school, and the price was right.  I made this sketch from an artist's pen sketch on a notecard, so I'm not sure about the details.  The floor plan comes from my memory.  Oh how I wish I had taken more photos when I moved from place to place!  I lived here between college and Chicago - so it is out of sequence in the "My Homes" category on my blog.

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Domenic left this message for me on the EDM message board and that led to our agreement to each sketch more figures and specifically faces by September 13th.

It was helpful for me to have the challenge because this was my usual fall back behavior when practicing figures.

I started the challenge immediately by sketching one figure with a face from a magazine photo, and then a face from an old master art book that I have.

But a real challenge for me was to sketch from the photo of a dancer, and actually feel confident enough to add a face.

Yesterday, while at the FIT Museum looking at the Gothic Fashion exhibit, I decided to even sketch the face of the mannequin when sketching a fabulous silk evening coat.  Her eyes are wonky, but I could have resorted to my "blank face" and didn't.  I love Margaret's frames that she puts around her journal pages - and quickly discovered that I'm not patient enough to do those fabulous frames, not even her dots!

This was a good mini-challenge for me.  I definitely need to have a specific goal to keep me stretching my daily sketches.  Hopefully Domenic hasn't forgotten and we'll get to see his figures from our challenge before long.

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I spent a fabulous day with Casey and her husband - who are visiting New York City as part of their trip to the US.  Casey and I did some sketching in the morning, then had lunch with her husband, and walked down through Central Park to the Museum of Modern Art to see the Kirchner exhibit and the permanent collection.

Casey and I have very different styles and I love to watch her work.  Although she won't be back in France for several weeks, I hope that she posts her two drawings that were done of the same subject as mine.  If I could work side by side more than once each year, my sketches might get a little looser and my watercolors more brilliant!

We went to the Central Park reservoir and sketched the skyline on Central Park West.  Here is my journal page of the ElDorado.

Then we walked to the Delacorte Theater and sketched the Romeo and Juliette sculpture in from of the theater which is used for Shakespeare in the Park during the summer.

Lunch at the Central Park Boathouse Restaurant was as lovely as usual and here are two photos from our time there.  Casey did a lovely panaoramic painting from her seat looking out over the water towards Bethesda Fountain.

While they enjoyed their first visit to MoMa since the big renovation, I sketched several more Kirchner women from his sketches that are in the exhibit - some in his sketchbooks.

We had such a fantastic day with them, that my husband and I both look forward to future visits.

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