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.

 

Cold and snowy Rome???

Yes, cold AND snowy Rome is right. That meant, except for the first day, all monuments and museums were closed the entire time I was there.  A lot of restaurants and businesses were, too, but, as you'll see, I found a few places to eat and drink. I mean, what else was there to do??

I did brave the cold with my daughter Cecelia the first day (pre-snow) and the last day (after snow) to make some outdoor sketches. I'll post them in a couple of days.

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I met dear Concetta Flore early on the day it snowed. We got some sketching done and here is one of mine from that day. More to come.

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!

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.

2009, the plan, at last!

 It's still January, it's still 2009, and in spite of a straggling start (see post below for reasons why), here's my art and travel plan for the year:

It's a back and forth dance between drawing and painting.

 

Painting projects:  I'll continue as a main painting focus my pursuit of watery subjects, blogging here about my efforts and on Watermarks, too,  a group blog I'm a member of. I'm sure the other Watermarkers have entertained the thought of tossing me overboard, as I've participated very little of late.  Life has its ebbs and flows and I've been ebbing, but for understandable reasons, I believe, so I hope they'll bear with me. I'm priming the pump, though. Flow will happen.

I can and will, of course, paint other stuff.  We'll see what life brings.

September in Brittany: In pursuit of the above, I'm hoping to spend the month of September painting in Brittany. I'll find a house to rent and take my sketching stuff and my paints and go. Details to follow as they evolve. Much depends on the economy. But that's the plan for now.

Newfoundland and Labrador! Jeanette Jobson, a fellow Watermarker, lives in Newfoundland. Her stories and paintings of the area have made me so keen to go and see for myself! I'm hoping to take a few days' trip there in July. Last year, I fell in love with Iceland, and here I am again, inching closer, from where I start,  to the Arctic Circle.

Drawing bootcamp! My new drawing hero is Veronica Lawlor, whom I met online via Urban Sketchers, another inspiring group blog we both contribute to. Click on her name to see her gorgeous, exciting, dynamic drawings! I want to learn the techniques she's developed for reportage illustration. She and her colleague Margaret Hurst run Dalvero Academy, offering courses in New York City and beyond. Last year, they conducted a two-week drawing workshop in Paris. Every year in August, they do a ten-day workshop at Disney World and, seeing as how there's no 2009 Paris course, that's where I'll be going.

I'm ecstatic about this. Veronica says we'll draw at least eight hours a day! In Orlando, in August! Won't that be kind of like the Arctic Circle?

They also do three-day workshops in Mystic Seaport, Connecticut.  I hope to take one of those this spring. I can't wait 'til August to try my hand at reportage illustration!

Illustrating a food lover's guide to my area: My town was named one of the top food destinations in the US by Someone recently. Someone Official and Fancy, but I can't remember now who. Will edit this post when I find out. Anyway, my friend Moreton Neal is writing it, I'm illustrating it, and we have a contract. Should be lots of fun.

Urban sketching: I am having such a great time thinking of things to sketch for the aforementioned Urban Sketchers, the terrific blog started by Gabi Campanario! It's a thrill to be part of a worldwide network of people as crazy about drawing as I am!

That's the rough guide to Laurelines in 2009.  Hope you'll bring your windbreaker and your dancing shoes and come along!

2006, the plan

As with last year, I'm going to have an ongoing sketchbook project as part of my daily art life. Last year, the focus was color. This year I've come up with 12 topics that I'll devote a whole sketchbook to, one book a month. I like to work this way, lingering on a topic until I've begun to do it justice.

My topics:

• Interiors
• Food and dining
• Trees
• Exteriors
• The woods
• Machines/mechanisms
• Animals
• Human beings
• Plants, flowers
• Fruits, vegetables (maybe)
• Unremarkable things
• Water
• Self portraits

I've got an extra topic and I'm sure some others will occur to me, while others will fall by the wayside.

I'll be using various mediums, including ones I'm not wild about. Changing mediums keeps you peppy and teaches you things you need to know!

January will be interiors. February, food and dining. March, trees. That's as far as I've gotten. Of course, I 'll make other art---paintings, non-topic drawings, etc--but the topic sketchbooks will be my daily discipline.

I'm taking Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign workshops in January and February. And about time, too.

I'm going to visit a local organic farm and make lots of drawings over the months. They grow vegetables, flowers and raise heritage turkeys there, so there'll be lots to see and do.

I will continue my figure drawing group.

I plan to rent an apartment in Paris for the month of October, just to draw---by myself. I got this notion while we were there this fall and I have a series of 'serious' drawings in mind to do. Of course, family situation and other considerations may intervene, but this is the plan at present.  You've got to have a dream, right?

So, there you are. Happy New Year to one and all. Thank you so much for following along thus far. I'll be seeing you.

*drawn with Kuretake brush pen while looking in car mirror