Paper and Threads

I continue to sketch figures - from many different types of images - for practice.  Some are inspired by famous artists, others are from photographs in current periodicals.  The only thing that can be said is that I probably am not destined to work in a series anytime soon!  My tastes are too eclectic and I like to try a little of everything.

Picasso One-Liner:  Taken from a small book of his that I covet.

Contour Drawing of a Fashion Photograph as I work on Contour Drawings for exercises in a Charles Reid book [The Natural Way to Paint]:

Yoga Photos:  I'm still working from photos in the very small second-hand yoga book that I bought last year.

Inspired by Donald Hamilton Fraser's series of Dancers that I purchased at the Royal Academy of Art in London:

Fashion Sketch:  Taken from a Bloomingdale's Newspaper Ad to try these techniques and proportions.

Leonardo and Venezia:  Copied from a set of cards that I bought from Palazzo Grassi in Venice.  These were sketched in my Michaelangelo Sonnets recycled book so some of the Michaelangelo sketches are included on the paper that I glued in to cover the gap between signatures.  These were some strange, but interesting faces!

My Feet:  My only drawing from life! 

Roman Statue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

I'm interested to see what October brings.  My choice of subjects on nights when I do my daily sketch is very spontaneous - and fortunately I have collected some images that I keep near my sketchbook so I can play with them.

Posted by Shirley at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This is a child-size, really soft, light blue bear - really gentle and cute in spite of the scarey face I seemed to give him.  Between grandchildren visits to our apartment, he sits in a little car that we gave Henry (now 4) for his first birthday.  When Henry outgrew it, the car came to our apartment for all of our grandchildren to use.  I take them for walks around our busy Manhattan neighborhood when we don't need to have a stroller with us.  It is a perfect toy for an urban baby! 

Posted by Shirley at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There is nothing that I appreciate more than my programmable coffee pot.  The coffee is ready every morning when I wake up and I thoroughly enjoy my first mug of coffee of the day while slowly waking up and planning the day's activity.     

Posted by Shirley at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I try to practice sketching figures whenever possible and love to use my recycled Michaelangelo sonnet book (1948) for inspiration.  These were all done from museum sculptures or photos using a Derwent medium wash pencil (gray) or Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil (walnut brown).   

Posted by Shirley at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

We took our grandchildren Henry (just 4) and Sydney (2 1/2) to the Central Park Carousel this week.  We arrived just before 10AM so we were able to see it before it started running.  I even took Sydney to see a nice little horse - but there was no way this otherwise adventurous child was going to get on that horse!  So grandma had a ride on a big horse, all alone, hoping to change her mind - but no.  "When I'm bigger" was all she said!  Henry was also very cautious and rode in the cart behind one of the horses with Grandpa. 

Tonight's dinner salad.  I really did have to sketch and paint it before eating.  I wasn't looking forward to this, but like most EDM challenges I'm glad I did it. 

Posted by Shirley at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)