Laurelines

Journal as palate/palette cleanser

I use my journal for lots of things, one of which is as a sort of palate cleanser. Before or after a long session in my painting studio, I can grab my Stillman & Birn 8 1/2" x 11" Alpha journal and do a quick, fun drawing... it feels like having a mouthful of sorbet between heavy, rich courses. And it's a palette cleanser, too. My painting palette is heavy on the reds and oranges and dark neutrals right now. My watercolor palette lets me lighten up, in all ways.

 

These daffodils and pussy willows are my first bouquet of the season from our local farmers' market. 

 

 

Here's a Flickr slideshow, just for fun, of many of the quick floral and botanical sketches I've done over the past few years:

Happy spring, whenever it finally comes your way!

Bringing the far North closer

When my beautiful daughter Cecelia won a scholarship to live and go to high school in Germany at age 16 for a WHOLE YEAR (!!!) I missed her so desperately that I started painting paintings of her at all stages of her childhood. In a miraculous way, those paintings brought her back to me during the endless 12 months of separation.

In a similar way, the paintings and studies for paintings I'm making for my upcoming show bring Iceland and Norway back to me. The studies below are quick and gestural, drawn from sketches and from the images in my mind's eye.

 

The trick will be to make finished works that share some of the energy of these studies. If I could, I'd spend one whole year just making large scale study after study like the last one shown here, acrylic on board. I wouldn't worry about producing a certain number of finished pieces, I'd just paint my heart out. And at the end of the year, I'd see where I'd been. Maybe that will be what 2014 holds for me. We'll see. There's a still-fresh 2013 to live first!

January! We're new again!

Because my birthday coincides with the new year, I'm always ready to get clear of the past and start again, with hope and gusto!

And so, here we are, starting again. My primary goal for the year is to get paintings painted for my show next fall. 

But, of course, I will always have drawing and sketching and writing in my journal and occasional illustrating to do. Once I have shared these images with you, two from my new Stillman and Birn Alpha  9 x 12 journal (this is my eighth!), two from a drawing session I had here yesterday with two friends, I'm going to finish tidying up my painting studio. And THEN I'm going to paint.

These drawings are of my young friend Meg, who is obviously quite beautiful. But there is a quality to her that has made me really want to draw her from the first time I met her. I can see the tiny child Meg still there in her features and I can also see the spare beauty of a Byzantine saint as well. Her soul is both old and new.

Finally, some palette cleansers, as I call them... today's sketches from my new journal. I make these images first thing in the morning in my studio, as a way to sweep away yesterday's struggles, to invoke new energy for the day. I love the natural calligraphy inherent in flowers, so when I have them, I draw them.

2012 was important... and busy!

This has been a significant year. I've worked on several fronts, most art-related but not all directly involved with the making of art. 

It all began on January 2nd. A friend I saw at a party urged me to apply for a show at a great local venue. I was between galleries and so I thought, "Why not?"

In February, I made an illustration for The Morning News and fell hard for volcanoes as subject matter. I carried on with volcanoes as images for paintings and started a painting series as part of my application for a solo show.

 

So now, I'll be having a show fall of 2013! I'm a slow painter, so I'll need all that time to get the paintings done.

I had some illustration jobs to do, small and large. In addition to the volcano one for the Morning News, above, I designed the logo for a new literary prize that is launching in a few days. My friend Maxine Mills, a brilliant graphic designer, tweaked and fine-tuned. My reading pig looks very polished now, don't you think?

I illustrated the second edition of a local foodlovers' guide.

I curated the first group exhibition of Urban Sketchers, a brilliant idea proposed by Alice Southwick of the Ackland Museum Store in Chapel Hill, NC! My fellow Urban Sketcher correspondents were so generous in donating their work to this successful fundraising show.

I traveled a LOT in 2012. First was Rome in February to see two of our children and to sketch with Concetta Flore!

 

In late June, it was back to Italy again, this time for the wedding of a dear, old friend's son.

In October, compelled to visit the land of volcanoes again, my husband and I went back to Iceland.

Then, in early December, it as off to Vancouver for a brief celebration of our 21st wedding anniversary!

Putting it all together like this, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for what WAS, clearly, a very important year. I'm reenergized and I'm ready to begin again! I thank you for sticking with me through a year of infrequent blog posts. Life, the blogging world, change...and we change with them. I'll be back with more in 2013! Happy New Year to every single one of you!

Sending you love! Laura

Vancouver BC sketches

Last week, we took a lightning-quick trip to Vancouver to use up some airline credits we had and to see that beautiful city and region we'd long wanted to see.

It was quite rainy, it being late November/early December and all, but we didn't mind. I made some sketches. 

Here they are.

 

 

My gray toned sketchbook from Iceland came in handy here, too. I have a thing for cold and wet climates, have you noticed?

The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia is one of the world's best. Do go see it, if ever you have the chance.

The Public Market on Granville Island is a great place to go on a rainy day. There are lots of enclosed areas and lots of places to sit, snack, and sketch!

You'll get an idea of the size of these monumental masks by looking at the second sketch posted above.

Happy December!

Introspection

It's been an in-drawing month, a time for introspection and reflection. I'm still here, though, and I'll be back more visibly soon.

 Norway from a moving ship, December 2009.

 

    All in calmness---

the earth with half-closed eyes

    moves toward winter

                            Dakotsu

Iceland, interrupted.

I was on my way. I'd left my home airport and was at JFK, waiting to board my flight for Iceland. But wait, my passport.... it was gone. GONE. VERY gone.

I, a most meticulous and frequent traveler, obsessive about my passport, had lost it... and then someone must have picked it up and kept it.  I, along with my husband, airline, airport, and TSA employees at JFK AND my home airport looked everywhere. Gone.

SO. My husband and I drive to DC Monday for an appointment with the US Passport Agency where, I HOPE, they will give me a replacement one. Then we drive home.

Then, the very next day, we begin again our journey to Iceland. I have rebooked all hotels, flights, etc. exactly the way they were... just seven days later.

Cross your fingers all goes well this time!

This forced hiatus has allowed me to test drive some of the supplies I'd packed to take. I was very eager to try  a Strathmore sketchbook with toned gray paper, my new Stillman & Birns Delta sketchbook with heavy-duty cold pressed paper.. and to use again my old trusty favorite drawing tools from art school, Caran d'Ache watercolor crayons. I figure I'll be sketching fast and loose (even more than I usually do) and in inclement weather... so the crayons will be perfect for getting down tones, gestures, textures FAST. I'll use them with other drawing materials, too.

I made sketches from photographs and sketches from my last Iceland trip and from references I found on the internet...just to get the feel of Iceland again. Some of these remind me of my sketches of Norway, which makes complete sense.

Here are some I've done. It will be so interesting, don't you think, to see how the ones done on site will differ from these? These do have, of necessity, a slightly generic feel about them.

 

Loosening-up drawings

I'm working on some stuff for other people and that stuff is not finished yet. At times like this, when the images I need to work on may not be... shall we say... right up my alley, I procrastinate and I pout. I fidget and I cast about for the way to produce what I need to produce. Ugh.

 

But if I, first thing in the morning (pre-dawn, in my case,) pick up my pens, my brushes and just play in my journal, draw what's in front of me (mostly flowers right now), without thinking, I'm happy.

And by playing, by trying this line and that,
by picking randomly from among my vast collection of drawing tools and putting down marks, I find myself again. It's quite simple. You try it and see if I'm not right.

Okay, but then it's back to drawing pigs. 

Italy sketchbook, part two

Someone recently asked me for my advice about travel sketching tools and paraphernalia. I've been asked lots before... and I had answers. But I'm in such a muddle now over what to take where, I can't even give myself advice!

Here you'll see I'm all over the place--- with brushpens filled with acrylic ink, Copic brush pens, colored pencils, Memory brush pens (which I love but they've long been discontinued, so no more when these give out,) Faber Castell Ecco Pigment pens, Portuguese laundry pencils! See... I'm a mess! So don't believe a thing I say on this subject. I should be asking YOU.

 

There's at least one more batch after these. Ci vediamo più tardi!

Italy sketchbook, part one

Well, I imagined I'd be largely impervious to Italy's charms, I who am an ardent Francophile and Scandinavia lover, too. Ha! There's a reason why people love Italy, you know. Actually, there are hundreds of reasons---you trip over one everywhere you turn.

It was hot as ANYTHING though, so I sketched not quite as much as I normally do. And another reason is because... I just let myself enjoy BEING there. That's a novel thought in this age of obsessive, manic sketching! After seven years of being one of those obsessives, I needed to lean back and remember why I loved sketching, for myself, all those years ago. I'm getting there.

 

 

I have more sketches, I do. I'll be back in few days, so stop by.