I can't Dance but I can Sketch

While healing from an injury I've been less active than usual. 

I especially miss my dancing. 

But having my art has been a saving grace. 

I've been sketching directly in my daily journal 

(InkPressions book, Tomoe River paper) more than ever. 

Sketching from observation is still so pleasurable, 

but I've also added memory sketching into my practice. 

Often it's a combination. 

Wishing you all a Holiday Season filled with beauty & kindness! 

More Card Making Process

I have fiber artist friends

who experiment wildly with mark-making, 

 media & formats. 

I love their work 

& love learning from them, trying some of their techniques.

But in the end, I come back to drawing

&  "coloring" (Gasp!!) as my favorite mode.

These days I use watercolors & Prismacolors, 

but I'm still connected to the childhood pleasure 

I had with Crayola crayons.

I pulled an image from an older journal sketch for

December greeting cards.

In the end, what I love most is 

that I be authentically expressing myself

& finding pleasure in my process,

ignoring that old inner critic.

Recently I did a jigsaw puzzle of an illustration

by my favorite illustrator, the French Sempé.

 I found great joy in learning more about how he uses

ink line & paint & felt affirmed in my way of working.

I am fascinated by grids & boxes lately. 

In the end, my idea for Christmas cards, 

(in the above photo)

evolved to these trees without the boxes.

 

China Marker Resist: Autumn Flowers

Remember crayon resist in elementary school?

Such magic when the wax lines (Crayola crayons)

got revealed by painting over them with water paints!

Here I drew with white china marker on white paper.

I loved not being able to

see exactly what I was drawing. 

A bit like blind contour drawing.

You rely on feeling the movement of your subject 

instead of the exact outlines.

Late summer sun has been intensely illuminating neighborhood gardens and flowers.

Sometimes I think I've never in my whole life

seen such beauty.

 I 'll post here as long as I can...

Still not sure I want to be forced in the new platform...

Experimental Sketchbook Class: Time & Space to Create

Some of my work during the weeklong class.

It was perhaps the best art class I've ever taken at University. 

We were encouraged to experiment.

Push out of our comfortable ways.

I started getting scribbly & messy (not shown here)

so it was a relief to do some minimalist drawings.

Zoom grids became an integral part of my experience.

I wandered out of my familiar box.

I cut up one of my watercolor "still life" grids

and pasted fragments into a booklet.

And then, relief, back to the familiar~ 

except with a bit of a grid.

A grid containing The Tiny Fears of Rita

Les miniscules craintes de Rita

We tried a wax resist/ink wash/charcoal layering technique

that Maine artist, David Lewis, uses.

(His drawings are very sophisticated & refined...) 

We collected shadows by tracing actual shadows.

Some of the students turned their results into imaginative

imagery, unrelated to the original subjects, and then 

turned them into handmade books.

I loved my Swedish Ivy design & didn't transform it,

except to put it into an accordion format.

Last class exercise: Do 20 versions of the same object, 

using various papers & drawing materials.

I got 3 done in our half hour allotment...

But THIS is the idea which I most want to continue

at the moment...20 objects? 50? 100? 

Maybe they would be painted and drawn, then,

hand sewn together into a paper quilt that folds 

into a book. We shall see...

The beautiful thing is that I have SO many wonderful

inspirations & directions with which to continue.

Thanks to my instructors & to the class, composed of

young undergraduates, graduate students,

& some oldsters like me. 

So much inspiration,

& this is only the tip of the iceberg...

The Sketchers Get Together (but apart)

The Sketchers went down to the Library Park in Camden

(in separate cars.)

It's been many weeks since we've gotten together

(but apart.)

I usually forget to pack one item.This time: watercolors!

It turned out to be a blessing!

I loved focusing on values, lines, forms!

I would have missed seeing some wonderful qualities

if I had been distracted by paint & color!  

And I would have missed the feeling of my pen

dancing on the paper.

Behind me,
a waterfall, right in town, flows into the Harbor.

Yes, it's almost mid-May 

and I'm wearing a parka and gloves.

And loving it!

Finding my Sunflower Voice

I have been continuing to sketch my sunflowers.

One artist suggests to draw something100 times in order 

to really get to know it. 

I've been re-finding my ease with sketching

after not doing it for awhile.

I probably won't make 100 versions of my sunflowers,

but I did make 3 more renderings this morning.

And I did notice new things each time.

I didn't enjoy the above rendering 

(2 posts ago) which was made

after a long period of not drawing.

Not because I thought of it as good or bad, 

but because the process & end result

didn't reflect my spirit. 

It was a labored study 

rather than a more dancing,

free-flowing, good-feeling process.

It was important to do, to start somewhere,

but I am happiest when I am sketching lightly. 

Why do I draw? 

It's the feeling I get. 

It's in my whole body,

rather than just in my eyes.

And it's the feeling of my calm mind.

I respond to gesture & movement

in a subject.

When drawing the sunflowers 

on the back patio this morning 

I loved the flickering, changing morning light, 

the delicate fluttering 

of the petals, the cool air.

The vivid yellows & greens 

against our still gray landscape.

And the flow of water on my brush,

 the luscious paint.

The freedom of not thinking about what my 

picture would look like. 

Sometimes I draw to bring pleasure to others,

with more focus on product,

as in a card or sketch for sale. 

But even then, I need to find pleasure 

in the act of drawing itself. 

Why do I draw?, I ask 

as I watch snippets of drawing lessons 

on YouTube.

(I've been writing answers in my journal.)

I'm happy to be drawing again,

& to come back around to my true

Sketchbook Wandering self. 

If you are a draw-er, 

what is it that you enjoy about drawing?

A Gift of Sunflowers

My neighbor dropped off a gift

of a big bunch of sunflowers.

They cheer me,

especially on these grey, rainy days

in a world that is struggling,

and while I am in most of the time.

It's been awhile since I've drawn on a larger scale,

(about 11 by 12 ").

I did this as an electronic thank you note 

for my neighbor. 

Thanks to YOU for visiting me here.

Please do leave a note.

Drawing Lesson: The Graphic Mark & Roses

 

I'm giving drawing lessons to a friend. 

In exchange, she is coaching me 

on my organizational issues & unfinished art projects.

We began by looking at drawings of Felix Topolski

in his book Paris Lost: A Sketchbook of the 30's.

We used viewfinders to isolate small sections

to observe the variety & sensitivity of his graphic marks.

 

I'm in awe of so-called scribbles that

are an integral part of many drawings.

We then made a sheet of our own marks using

a chopstick with simple fountain pen ink.

  My friend was interested in creating a card with a rose theme

for her friend Rosie's family. 

I happened to have a vase of roses nearby!

A simple, gestural interpretation emerged 

on my marks sheet.

I cut it out to separate it. 

And added Prismacolor color.

V.'s was beautifully alive, almost shimmering.

A lovely experience, relaxed & focused,

with Andrea Bocelli in the background,

because V. is an opera afficionado.

Thank You, Friend V.!  

Lists and Collections

 I recently wanted to buy a new handbag. 

There were so many styles that

I made notes. It was helpful, if not obsessive.

(Here, only a snippet of several pages.)

 This wasn't the 1st time. Some years ago, I had drawn a 

bunch of bags, & eventually cut some of them out

to save in one of my "repository", catch-all journals.

In 2011, at a city Farmer's Market, 

I devoted a page in my small sketch journal 

to various shoppers' bags. Fascinating variety!

An interesting book : Blackstock's Collections. 

He draws collections at a very intense & obsessive level.

Also interesting:

Lists, To-Do's: Illustrated Inventories

Collected Thoughts & Other Artists' Enumerations

A page from Lists, To-Do's...

Collecting quantities verses buying one of something 

has an economic tie-in in our consumer culture. 

Folks on YouTube show & tell us that they have not one,

 but a multitude of 

bags, notebooks, pens, shoes, etc. 

& they encourage us to buy more, more more.

(They are often given these things at no charge 

or at a  discount. Or, it is their profession.)

What does the average person do who can't afford 

or doesn't need too many of an item?

Me: I admit, sometimes I buy more than one...

But drawing is more affordable.

For a related post please click HERE to my post called

26 Mugs, 100 Monkeys. 

What would YOU choose to draw (or buy)

 if you had to have a collection of 100?

Draw What You Love: My New Neighbor

I have fallen in love with my new backyard neighbor:

A big hanging nasturtium. 

(En français, capucine. Po polsku, Nasturcya) 

Each day it grows new buds & blossoms. 

 There are at least 45 at this moment!

 This was not my usual very quick sketching. 

Slower, more left brain consciously accurate. 

I chose only one part of the abundant plant~ a vignette. 

You might call this a study-sketch.

I used pencil, even erasing & re-drawing. 

I was deepening my understanding of individual blossoms & leaves

and how they related to one another. 

My eyes were feasting on the colors.

By the time I finished the sketch, a gentle rain had fallen,

and configurations had changed.

I started with a preliminary contour sketch to help me focus.

I knew I couldn't draw the whole plant. 

The contour in ink was the introduction, a greeting. 

My gaze danced in & around blossoms & leaves, 

getting a feel for rhythms, lines & forms. 

While painting, I absent-mindedly tried out some colors

on this page as it was the nearest paper in sight.

And near the bottom, I seem to have been exploring 
some initial lines of nearby lupines.

The wonderful effect of drawing, 
beside the visual & tactile pleasure, 
is the concentration, the focus, the calm that occurs in me.
I always go back to my early guiding principle,
as presented by Frederick Frank, The Zen of Seeing:
Seeing/Drawing as Meditation, back in the early 70's.

Rose Windows

 My first visit to Paris: 2003.

And my first conscious travel journal, 

with encouragement from my French teacher at

The Language Exchange in Portland. 

Never EVER could I have imagined the complexity,

the grandeur, the art, & the spiritual feeling of

Notre Dame de Paris!

In 2003 I broke down & cried before one of the rose windows,

for its beauty.

In 2019 I cried  to see Notre Dame de Paris in flames.

My 2003 journal sketch of the window is rough & inaccurate.

And along with my notes, private.

But spending extended time in the cathedral was sweet,

& the journal pages bring the experience back.

Recently I've been making ink drawings based on photos. 

But the photos seem to be only a point of departure.

During that 2003 visit, one of my companions said

that the windows are like giant mandalas. 

That & more.

Let us hope that they & the cathedral 
will be restored for future visitors.

Café With a Fellow Sketcher

I met one of The Sketchers at a café downtown...

She is our steadiest & most persistent member

& a total inspiration.

It's so nice to sketch with someone else...

We draw, we chat a little...it frees my process...

Takes the pressure off that my brain wants to impose.

That's my Kakuno fountain pen 

filled with Platinum Carbon waterproof ink. 

The pen is very inexpensive,

but draws super well on Moleskine sketch journal paper. 

It felt like the pen was drawing rather than me!

Sketches From the Back Seat

In early March I got to be a passenger along Route 1 

heading south! 

 So many times I've driven that road, sneaking glances.

So I took the opportunity to sketch! Of course!

Composing sketches while moving quickly is in some ways

like putting together a puzzle. 

I grab elements from the landscape as it whips by

and fit them in on the page. 

By the time I'm drawing individual parts

they are memory images,

but with actual references in the moving landscape.

I added some colored pencil notations in the car

and later I painted lightly with watercolors.

Observation lists 

also come in handy in such fast situations.