New York City Urban Sketchers met at Lincoln Center last Saturday. It was a gorgeous day, with hints of Spring, but also with wind blowing early tree pollen around the Plaza. I took a seat at the Met Opera end of the Plaza and enjoyed drawing the David H. Koch theater which is home to the New York City Ballet. This was a double page spread and scanning the image highlights the center of the page.
The Museum of Modern Art has a great Senior Program - a combination of gallery talks and art studio adventures. Last time, in conjunction with the Brancusi exhibit, we created sculptures with Paper Clay. This week we played with liquid watercolor, ink, and vellum to create layered images to explore color. We looked at layered paintings by artists hanging in the museum, and then, with supplies provided for us, played with many types of mark making tools on watercolor paper. We also used various dry media to create designs on vellum, which I cut up and collaged on the watercolor.
Asia Week in New York City 2019
My friends and I love the Southeast Asian Modern and Comporary Auction Previews at Sothebys and Christies. These are painters from the 21st C, and several of our favorites were in a group that began modern Indian painting. I went to both big auction houses to see the auction previews during Asian week, and just painted portions of a few of my favorites. The paintings on the left were from Sothebys. The paintings on the right were from Christies. All of the images are from India, except the middle figure on the right. That was copied from a very long Chinese scroll.
My major reason for making books is to have a watercolor sketchbook that meets my needs, and isn't expensive to make. I make cased in books with dyed fabric covers for my standard watercolor sketchbooks, but this month my bookbinding student and I made Coptic books. They also open flat.
I made this book with a single sheet of Fabriano Artistico 140 lb soft press paper (3 signatures with 2 folios for a total of 24 pages) and a paste paper cover. It is approx. 7.5 inches square and watercolor can be used on the front and back of each page. The paste paper was made with a corn starch recipe and inexpensive acrylic paint. The end paper is a piece of decorative paper in a similar color. The stitching was done with 3 ply linen thread.
Coptic Book
I chose this stitching method because there are two loops of thread through each cover hole, and the last signature and the front cover are sewn on separately.
Inside
End Paper
We used a large awl to make the holes and it was hard to punch through the cover binder boards. I'd love to know how easy it is to punch holes into Lineco 0.067 binders board with a Japanese screw punch - and what size punch is best. This is only my 4th Coptic book in 5 years, so I haven't invested in one.
Jasper Johns: Recent Paintings and Works on Paper
Matthew Marks Gallery has a wonderful exhibit of Jasper Johns art until April 6th. I like his art more with every exhibit I see, and I chose to combine some of his well known images, to remember my visit to the gallery with my friends Pat and Benedicte.
Jacob Lawrence: We saw this exhibit at DC Moore Gallery one day before it closed. Jacob Lawrence did 41 tempera paintings in 1938 on the Life of Toussaint L'Overture, leader of a rebellion in Haiti, followed by a campaign to draft Haiti's first democratic constitution. Between 1986 and 1997 Lawrence made siik screen prints of 15 of the paintings and a complete set was in the exhibit. This one depicts him opening the rebellion charge.
