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!

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.

Journal pages, June.

 

I'm coming to the end of volume two of my 2012 journal. I use, as you may remember, a Stillman&Birn Alpha series, 8"x12" hardbound book, because it is stoic, sturdy, hardworking, and loyal. 

This one, this April-June one, has been mostly written, with fewer images appearing.  I've been painting more in the studio, so that energy has gone to finished work, work to be hung, not work on pages in a book.

At the moment, I'm a bit stumped on how to proceed with some color illustrations I'm working on, so I did some warmup exercises in my journal. Early this morning, I picked some flowers from the garden and plunked them in a vase. I opened some ink bottles, picked up a brush, and let it flow! My work problem may not have been solved, but I sure feel better!

 

Earlier in the month, I was just starting to play around with ink and wash as a medium for illustrations. I want looseness, but more focus than the rough sketches here... and I want more color.

Dear Laura, get to work. Signed, Laura.

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!