Paper and Threads

An Alexei Jawlensky exhibit just opened at Neue Gallery and Pat, Benedicte and I began our Art Exhibits day there.  I was only familiar with one of his portraits before seeing the exhibit, and really liked most of them.  I was less impressed with his landscapes and didn't like most of his abstract art.  This is a photo from the stairwell at the museum, since photos are not permitted.

I really liked the portrait of The Gardener and sketched him, adding paint from an online image when I reached home. 

After lunch we walked several blocks to the Met for the Seurat Circus Sideshow exhibit.  It was also a good exhibit, featuring many of Seurats' conte drawings (which I first saw at MoMA several years ago and love more than his paintings) and several of his circus pointillist paintings.  But it also contains works from his contemporary artists and their circus art - including Daumier.

I definitely will return to the exhibit to sketch more, but at that hour of the afternoon I just sat in front of a HUGE mural painting by Fernand Pelez and sketched a great clown.  There are 3 groups of life-size circus performers across this very large painting and the clown captured the feeling from this exhibit best for me.

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The first 4 classes of my Watercolor Comps Illustration class at FIT were designed to teach, or review, painting with watercolors.  We had two classes with nude models, and several exercises using very limited palettes.  The first model was painted with only French Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna, and the second model was painted, in two poses, with Alizarin Crimson and Viridian Green.  The other exercises, in the first 3 weeks, also used limited palettes and photo illustrations to copy.  This week we had a demo using liquid Frisket and then were each given a color copy of a painting by Eli Rosenthal to try to reproduce.   We expanded to a full palette of our choice in an effort to maximize the lightest lights and darkest darks - beginning with an underpainting in some areas - and using varying amounts of water to soften edges.

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We had a great day at Weekday Urban Sketchers last Tuesday, and a big crowd of artists.  At 10:30, in spite of the cold, we gathered in front of Lincoln Center to draw the Hippo Ballerina in Dante Park on Broadway.  She is 15 feet tall and 2.5 tons and really cute!  I sketched a frontal and lateral view.

The group then walked around the block to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church for a Juilliard Historical Performance where Juilliard students played period instruments in a free concert.  I loved every minute of it and especially seeing a theorbo played for my very first time.

After lunch at the Rubenstein Pavilion we went to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to see Curtain Up which celebrates 40 years of theatre in New York and London.

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I Love Francis Picabia's drawings and paintings, but not of machines!  The current exhibit at MoMA is huge and it covers every aspect of Picabia's art - through the twists and turns.  There are several tours of the exhibit, lead by a museum curator, an artist curator, and an artist on the MoMA website.  And if you want to learn something about Picabia, these are worth watching.  I went back to the exhibit with my friends and sketched and painted one of the earliest paintings in the exhibit, and then a portion of one of his Monster Series.

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On Wednesdays I have Figure Drawing at Battery Park City in the afternoon and a Watercolor Comps Illustration class at FIT in the evening.  I really enjoy both of these classes, and look forward to dinner at Brookfield Place between the events.  Here are two figure drawings from last week - each were 20 minute poses.  I used a soluble graphite pencil for both but only had time to add water with a waterbrush to the first one.  I spent way too much time trying to draw his feet in the second pose.

Our Illustration Instructor gave us two photos to work with as he makes sure that the entire class gets some instruction with watercolors.  On the left is Sargent's preliminary watercolor painting of Madame X that we had to draw as homework and paint in class.  On the right are fruits to be painted in class after Madame X.

We had to paint Madame X with only Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine Blue with a little Viridian Green for the couch.

And were expected to paint the fruit with combinations of colors, including the complementary colors for shading and shadows.  

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