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!

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!

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.

Sketches from France, more of them!

Oh, these're just my usual subjects: wild boar, elephants and giraffes, giant chandeliers, assorted two-legged creatures...some tamer than others. I would have drawn fountains, but my favorite ones in Paris were all dry, so most of the fun there was missing. (Wish the blog could show the elephant drawing truer to size, but, alas, non. Click on image to get to Flickr and larger sizes!)

Elephant, giraffe, rhino et al in the parade of animals, La Grande Galerie de L'Evolution, Museum Nationale de l'Histoire Naturelle, Paris.

Lots of you are familiar with Rick Tulka. My husband and I met him in Paris a couple of years ago and we had a fun lunch with him this time! Here and in the drawing of my daughter below, I used a big fat laundry pencil I bought in Lisbon. It gives a nice, robust line and you can't be finicky with it, which is good.

My daughter, right side of spread:

My daughter, left side of spread:

View across the Lot River, Cahors:

Couldn't resist this *ahem* reconstituted sanglier and friends in a vitrine at les jardins Marqueyssac:

I was wowed by this chandelier at Le Bourbon in Paris:

And not least, but last, our friend Drake, whose deadpan face is a perfect foil for his Rabelaisian sense of humor:

Hope you've enjoyed the sketches!

Next stop: Copenhagen in midNovember, a 20th wedding anniversary celebration. And then put-staying for a very long time.

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!

Be good. Do good. Wonder. (And travel light.)

This is what the sidewalk told me this morning, as I made an intense hour-long power walk, hoping to clear my head and calm my mind. 

  In the midst of a summer that continues in too many ways to be... trying, the exhortation to be good and do good and to keep my sense of wonder is perfect, just what I needed to be reminded of. 

 Wednesday, I'm off to Portland, Oregon, you may remember, for the Urban Sketchers Symposium and I can't wait! I know I will come back bursting with energy, inspiration, and creativity. I will certainly have many images to share here. 

Here's my newly streamlined sketching equipment---I HAD to go lighter. I had way too much stuff to lug around in Normandy in late May! Here you see my travel Schmincke paintbox, altered to hold some full pans, Kuretake brush pens filled with acrylic inks, Cretacolor oil pencils, various other brushpens, and a couple of Maruman sketchbooks, both of which Jerry's Artarama has insanely decided to drop from their inventory!!

 I have been trying, these past two weeks, to collect myself, to be tranquil and to let my artist's soul be filled again. That process continues.

See you in a few days! 

Hello from Normandy!

I have lots of sketches and will share them with you next week when I return, but here's a little glimpse at my Normandy sketch paraphernalia. I also have some cool videos of gardens we went to.  I'm beginning to feel the videographer in me surfacing, which should strike fear in all of your hearts ;D.
I'll have to wait to post these when I can go through all the YouTube hoops that Typepad makes you go through before posting.

As you can see here, I'm working on two sketchbooks at once: a little Maruman accordion one for daily slices of travel life and a larger one for garden scenes. 

We leave for Paris tomorrow, just for a brief stay--- and then home to family, garden, real life.

2010, The Plan!*

It's time to shake it up, baby.

I'm not challenged by my normal sketching ways. I want more fluent, stronger linework than I can get with my Faber-Castell Ecco Pigment pen---my primary drawing instrument for the last two years. I want to sketch faster, I want to capture movement.

AND I've become even MORE eager to get on with painting paintings, after another year of getting off track on this front. Of course, life this year has put the squeeze in often distressing ways on my studio time, but I can't continue to accept that as an excuse. If not me (to paint my paintings), who? If not now, when?

So, here's the plan, broken into three parts, sketching, painting, travel:

Sketching:

The lines  I want are less scritchy-scratchy than my Faber-Castell lines and more like these from 2006:

or like these from the recent Norway trip: or like this Memory Brush and wash sketch from 2008:This means using the Cretacolor oil pencils I told you about last time. It means using Memory brush pens, Pentel pocket brush pens, Pitt artist brush pens, dip pens.

 I want to sketch more urban scenes and include more architectural aspects of the world, these desires a result of my participation in Gabi Campanario's  brilliant blog Urban Sketchers. If it weren't for Gabi and my fellow USk correspondents, this last goal would NOT be on my life To Do list, but they are and it most emphatically is! 

I'm going to follow another one of my self-created apprenticeships, this time to some of the the tips, techniques, and  prompts provided by David Rankin in his book 'Fast Sketching Techniques.' I'll tell you more about this as I go along. It should be lots of fun and VERY useful.

I'm also going to try again to take one of Veronica Lawlor and Margaret Hurst's reportage illustration workshops. Here's what happened last time. Their quick, dynamic, exquisite sketches are an unending source of inspiration.

Painting:

I'm continuing with my watery theme into this third year. I've got a whole logjam of koi paintings, for example, that are about to burst the dam. I want more texture, more layers, more transparency playing against opacity, bigger sizes, more movement, more fun, more, more, MORE! I'm sorry to be so greedy, but there you are.

Travel:

 Opening disclaimer: these are the major trips I WANT to take this year. We shall see if I am able to, what with ongoing family matters that require my presence here, the rotten economy, and so on. One can (and this one does) dream.

Trip to Turkey in April! Casey, Ippy, and I hope to visit a lovely friend of mine who lives in Ankara. We'd all four travel around a bit, sketching all the way! 

Trip to France in late May: this will be a relatively short trip to Normandy and Paris, to see gardens and friends. Of course, I'll be sketching all the way here, too!

Trip... to coastal Norway again in late December!! My husband and I were both absolutely smitten and we would dearly love to spend a bit more time in that area.   

So, those are my three heart's desires for trips in 2010. These are my plans for my art life. Of course,  I will have less time each week to make art, due to the aforementioned family obligations, but I'm not going to let that get me down! 

Let us go onward into the new year!

May you accomplish everything your heart desires!

* This is the fifth yearly art plan I've published on Laurelines. 

Here is 2006, the Plan.

Here is 2007, the Plan.

Here is the plan for 2008.

Here is 2009, the Plan.

2007, the plan

In 2006, I had a single focus in my art life. Drawing was what I did, and although I started out using various mediums such as colored pencil, crayons, pen and ink, I settled halfway through on pencil and watercolor.

In 2007, I feel the call to go inward and deeper, but also to be more multifaceted. I‘ve got so much I want to do, so many different levels I want to work on!

Here are the various projects I’ll be pursuing:

A 101 Faces series:
I’ll make a series of 101 paintings/drawings of faces. The faces will have the same format---  about 7” x 10” on a support like masonite or 300lb watercolor paper mounted on board--- but I’ll be using different mediums. I’ll draw and paint from life,  from photographs, from faces in the art of museums I visit, from memory. And I’ll install them as a narrative, from left to right, in rows, as lines on a page, on a blank wall--- in my house at first, but with an eye to a later public installation.  I’m really excited about this project---it is very manageable, it will be ongoing through the entire year, and it will encourage me to be loose, experimental, playful. It will tell a story, but I have no idea yet what that story will be!  And, best of all, it will provide structure without being restrictive. I can imagine that I will have one or two such series, with different focuses, each year from now on.

Two Women Drawing Together:
My beautiful friend Ippy Patterson and I are going to draw together for a year, on a collaborative project. I will say more about this later. I’m very excited about this and I think you will be, too.

A return to acrylic and/or oil painting:
This will require a completely different state of mind from the one that has been lately dominant in my life. This is the most introverted of my 2007 paths, especially at first, as I begin the process of going deep down and seeing what is there to be painted.

A travel sketchbook project: I’d like to make a sketchbook exploring the nexus between the old world/Europe and the new world/North America. I haven’t quite worked out the details of this one yet or the places I’ll be going, but I will within the next few weeks. Watch the blog for it!

Two art-related trips to France: details to be revealed!

My homely, local sketchbook:
How I’ve enjoyed, in 2006, making drawings of my town, my home, my garden, my family, my pets, the surrounding countryside. I can’t stop now! There’ll be weekly posts from this sketchbook.

And so, the plan for 2007. Unlike last year, when my project was under my control completely, some elements of the 2007 plan call for working with others and some depend on several external factors.  Many of my ideas are more open-ended than last year’s, so the exact shape of what’s to come is unknown.  Isn’t that exciting? I leap into 2007 with a sense of great possibility and the commitment to work really, really hard.  Come along and let’s see what happens!  And thank you from my very heart for all of your support and enthusiasm. Happy New Year!

Four sketches from yesterday:

A purple cabbage from my garden:

Early morning narcissus:

Two crowd scenes, drawn quickly and in increasing dark and chill: