Laurelines

Rome again, Rome again

For this trip, I limited my art supplies to:

3 waterbrush pens filled with Payne's Gray, sepia, and cerulean ink

1 Pigma brush pen in burnt sienna

My blue Portuguese laundry pencil

2 Cretacolor oil pencils in sepia and soft black

a  lightweight plastic travel palette with manganese blue, burnt sienna, transparent pyrole orange

1 travel watercolor brush

A big Pitt Artist pen in warm gray

Then I bought a box of cheap colored pencils for children at Poggi's. I used the orange one a lot!

I left my Stillman and Birn sketchbook at home (!) in my packing haste and had to buy a Daler and Rowny Ebony one, also at Poggi's. 

Here are more of what I did with these:

Here's my stepson Lee, at lunch with my daughter Cecelia and me. I put that orange pencil to work!

As a reminder, here's an earlier scene of that same cafe

I have a few more sketches from Rome. Soon!

Here & there & everywhere: two books from the Great Sketch Movement

About nine years ago, something wonderfully sketchy happened. In 2003, Danny Gregory's book 'Everyday Matters' was published and a year later, Danny founded an online group of that same name. In his original and powerful book, Danny promoted the idea of sketching your life as a way to live it more fully.

In the same period,  Enrico Casarosa started his Worldwide Sketchcrawls, where participants spend a designated day sketching and afterwards, share their work with each other, again online. Danny's and Enrico's stunningly successful groups showed us what 'going viral' meant, back when that phrase was still in its toddlerhood.

In 2007, Gabi Campanario had his own brilliant idea, creating an online group called Urban Sketchers, with correspondents he'd selected from all over the world. The goal?  "To show the world, one drawing at a time."  Talk about going global. Gabi and his website have done it.

If Danny and Enrico were the founding giants of the sketch movement, and Gabi their successor in the Big Ideas category, Cathy Johnson, with her books on sketching and illustrated journaling and her various websites, has been the movement's wise woman, teacher, and generous mentor. Her encouragement, both private and published, has drawn many, many into the sketching fold.

Several books have come out of the movement already, in addition to those by Danny and Cathy, but I want to talk about two very recent ones that are as inspiring as can be: 'The Art of Urban Sketching' by, who else, Gabi Campanario and 'Here & There,' by Miguel Herranz.

Gabi's book features the work of dozens of Urban Sketchers, including, I'm proud to say, my own. It's handsomely designed and laid out and, with the variety of styles and approaches it includes, it has a near-encyclopedic reach. It's such fun to see the kind of things sketchers can get up to! AND it's the Number One seller in books on painting at Amazon as of this writing! I won't go into great detail about it, because it's already much touted, but just in case you've been distracted lately, I wanted to bring it to your attention. You need this book.

Miguel Herranz's 'Here and There' is at the other end of the encyclopedic spectrum. It is Miguel's work we see here, and only his. Like Gabi's book, Miguel's is artfully composed. Production quality is very high, which, it must be said, is not all that typical of independently published sketchbooks. And then there are the drawings themselves. You'll want to see these not only for their vitality and charm and luscious technique, but because you can trace Miguel's evolution as a sketcher on these pages. Mind you, he IS a professional illustrator, but you can still see a significant evolution in his drawing tecnhnique as he, having taken up drawing as a daily practice, gets better and better and even better. All of the drawings in 'Here & There' are lovely, fun, and full of personality. There are some drawings that will simply take your breath away.

We like sketches better, sometimes, than paintings because they are so direct, so here and now. They're personal, they're handmade, and really, anyone can produce them. You may not be another Miguel Herranz or Cathy Johnson, but you CAN sketch, you know. (Read Danny's book, if you don't believe me.)

Or you can just look at and enjoy the work you'll find in these two books.

Oh, go ahead. Either way. And let me know what you think.

 

Lines, colors, shapes: January

I was only able to dip my toe into the great sea that is lithography during my two-day workshop in Austin, Texas.  I would like to find a way to continue working in this medium. I really like it.

Here are two very different first steps in lithography. One is a face roughly derived from my sketch of the adoring angel below. It sort of just appeared on the plate as I drew.

The second image comes from a recent sketch done in my studio here and is a way of seeing how my normal gestures and lines behave under lithograph conditions. The plates were small, 7"x9", so it was hard to get real momentum going.

Here is the mixed media sketch of the protea mentioned above:

And finally, a little loosening-up sketch from this morning: This loosening up is necessary because I'm going to Rome next Tuesday to see my daughter Cecelia (she who never stands still) and hope to get some sketches of Rome (think fountains) done while I'm there. She, as you may remember, is an avid sketcher now, so we can enjoy this together. I'm also meeting up with Concetta Flore, lovely artist and very nice person. She lives in Rome and wants to sketch with me...I'm really looking forward to it. I'm going to prepare some loose sheets for sketching by applying acrylic washes like the one I used for the Greek/Roman head below. Then I'll use ink and crayon on site. Playing with mixed media outside of the painting studio keeps me open to new ways of doing things inside it.  I'm taking a travel sketchbook, too. Ciao, Roma!

Museum sketches, North Carolina Museum of Art

The newly-renovated North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh is a real stunner. The permanent collections are displayed in the best possible way in exquisitely designed, ethereal spaces, with lots of natural light. 

I had time on my last visit to make two brief sketches. Color added later, as per the museum's rules.. no wet media allowed, of course.

This is a heartbreakingly beautiful angel, Bavarian, 18th century, in polychrome and gilt.

And here is an antique head, Greek or Roman... I didn't note at the time, unfortunately. It looks very pristine, I'll say that.

Off to Austin, Texas tomorrow for a lithography workshop, cold-addled head and all.

Achoo!

What I know

I know well now that I can't control my world and I know that I can't predict what will happen to me, my loved ones, or anyone else. In light of this realization, I won't make detailed plans, as I have done here in years past.  There are, though, some things I know:

In 2012, I will paint. There are six paintings in my studio, begun in October and November, that beg to be finished. I'm eager to get back to them and see where they will take me next.

In 2012, I will write in my journals. I start a new one tomorrow, having filled four hardbound 8 1/2" x 11" Stillman & Birn books this year. What a lifeline that journal writing is.

In 2012, I will sketch and I will travel some, too. I go to Rome the first week in February to visit my roving daughter Cecelia. I go to Italy again in midsummer for the wedding of a dear family friend. There will, I hope, be a trip back to the cold parts of the world next winter. This I don't know, but I hope for it.

In January, I go to Austin, Texas to take a lithography workshop at Flatbread Press. I realized last fall that there are some ideas and images I have that would lend themselves better to printmaking processes than painting ones. I'm very excited about this. I took an etching course at university but have never done lithography.

2012 will be what it will be. Following my courageous daughter Kate's example, I am able to look to the new year. I hope, though I do not know, that it will be a good year, a productive year, a year of blessings.

I know, too, that I'll be here, sharing what 2012 brings. Happy new year to you.

They teach you

I've always said that my daughters have been my greatest teachers. Oh, I know a fair amount about child development and I have strong values so, of course, I guided them. But, really, they taught me what they needed as they grew. I learned to pay close attention to, and follow, their signs.

So it is now with my materials. My paints, my brushes, my grounds are leading me on a path I didn't consciously set out on. Oh, I have my ideas and I have imagery I've been drawn to forever, but now when I paint, what comes from my hand surprises me. I'm paying attention to the signs and I'm following them. All I knew when I decided to return to painting earlier this year, was what didn't interest me...rendering the world realistically, for example. I've dashed back and forth between abstract and representational for years, without following any one path to the end. Not this time. This time I'm betting on the process and I'm going where I have to go.

So now, wherever next? I guess we'll find out, won't we?

Here are the latest pieces, working backward chronologically. You'll see that the influence of the Pondshiners' process on what followed it. 

Detail from below:

detail from above:

I'll be leaving for France a week from tomorrow. The Lot River valley and Paris are my destinations. I'll check in here again before I go!

Journal pages, June

Now it's July. No doubt this month I'll be doing more playing with line, more transcribing the calligraphy of my garden, more pushing paint and ink around, all of which activity you see in these pages from June's journal.

 

 

 

Hope your summer (or winter, if you're antipodean) is happy!

Journal in February

Interesting (for me, anyway) to see how different subjects written and thought about elicit different drawing styles. I'll continue to document the process of clearing out my mother's house over the next weeks. In this way, I can feel as though I'm keeping something of the details of her daily life, her house. It helps.

The illustrated journal as lifeline

One of the unintended consequences of keeping this blog (six years old this month!) is that I stopped keeping a regular journal. For various reasons, I've started up again and am including imagery of a personal kind in it. I'm not making illustrations of my daily life, such as you find in my brilliant friend Kate Johnson's work---and in the journals of most of my fellow contributors who will appear in her upcoming book, Artist's Journal Workshop. I'm making images that spontaneously occur to me while writing, or I'm jotting down thumbnail compositions or making color notes. And, unlike in years past and with my sketchbooks, I'm putting everything, art and life, in one place. 

Oh, how lifesaving this writing and drawing is. I can pull myself back from the cliffs of panic and depression, I can get clearheaded and centered. I can keep track of ideas that flash like comets through my brain and fix them on paper. For the past few years, those meteoric thoughts too often evaporated as if they had never been.

And I can share with you some of these words and images from my journal, when, as now, my other work is in process, or is interrupted by business and family concerns.  

Yes, I know we all know this about journal keeping, that it is a lifeline for its creators. There's nothing new here.  But sometimes I forget basic things--- and stumble upon them again with the enthusiasm of a learning-to-waddle one year old. 

The only downside of this particular journal is its relatively large size for such a thing--- 9" x 11". There's no slipping this book in a small bag or unobtrusively sketching in it in public. Still, it's what I need right now. I hope you will find these occasional glimpses interesting.

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2008, my watery, wandering, wonderful year

2008 has been the best of years, the worst of years. On the world's front, not the best---though there's reason now to hope for some relief. On a personal front, a meaningful, stimulating year as far as my artwork is concerned.

Travel has been, since my childhood, a huge part of my life and my art, so, not surprisingly, travel figured largely in my world again this year. Our area had suffered from drought on and off since at least 2002, with 2007 as the driest, deadest, saddest, scariest year of my adult memory. I'm a gardener as well as a painter, so I was deeply affected by the brown, sere world outside my windows. The specter of global warming and increasing scarcity of water on our planet shook me to my soul.  I needed to go where there was water and I needed to make paintings about water, half hoping that I could seed the clouds, could become a kind of rain maker myself.  As is my wont, I made a plan.

Hawaii and Iceland beckoned to me. These waterfall-studded, rain-blessed, sea-surrounded volcanic islands were perfect locations for experiencing water. Paris,  coastal mid-California, Montréal, Barcelona and even Austin, Texas were on my itinerary, as I explored both the sublime and the ordinary aspects of water. I wanted to avoid making obvious paintings. There are few subjects so prone to cliché as the one I'd chosen. I gave myself lots of leeway---I could draw and paint sea life, fountains, bottles of water, running water in sinks, in tubs, water in all forms and occurrences. Though I filled up many sketchbooks and renewed my commitment to more sustained paintings, it is clear, from late December's vantage point, that I've only just begun to get my sea legs. I'm beginning to understand what there is about water that calls to me and I'm feeling my way to a personal visual vocabulary for expressing it.

I'll be continuing on this watery path in 2009, working on my series of rocks and water paintings, being fully receptive to following new currents as I go. I've found a topic in water that is deeply important to me. As far as travel goes, I dream of Newfoundland and Labrador and Cornwall. I want to spend September in Brittany, to paint and to be. I have other hopes and plans for travel which I'll tell you about in time, but our global recession may freeze all, most, or some of my wanderings. We shall see. I have enough sketches, photos, studies, and memories from this year's explorations to supply me with subject matter for months of painting. There's more to tell, more about other art projects I've got on tap, two group blogs I participate in and love,  some really exciting new directions, not expressly water-related, but these will have to wait because... I'm leaving Monday to spend the last days of 2008 and the first of 2009 in Paris, with a side trip to Bruges to celebrate my birthday. There'll be sketches and stories to share with you. Thank you so much, dear friends, for your continued support and interest. I've cherished your company this year and every year. Happy 2009 to you, each and all.