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!

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.

Copenhagen sketches, part one

I'll be eking these out in smallish doses... only because, as was predestined to be the case, the life we returned to has been busy to the nth degree!

Copenhagen was the perfect choice for a short, celebratory trip. It's not too large, and it's not too small. It's pretty and lively. The food---and  I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, France-- is the best in the world now. There's a whole new and brilliant way of thinking about food and preparing and presenting it in the Nordic countries these days and we were lucky enough to be able to experience a tiny bit of it while we were there.

And though I always say this, there really IS more to come. It was indeed a short trip, but it was a sketched one.

I made this sketch on the grounds of Rosenborg Castle on our last day. It was the most tranquil time of our visit. Copenhagen is not the countryside, though one could be forgiven for thinking it is, while seated on a bench in the Rosenborg gardens.

I asked the bartender at the Nimb Hotel where this was sketched, what was the meaning of the mural featuring women and birds. 'Something to do with the history of Denmark,' said he. Oh, really? Wasn't that helpful.

A gorgeous covered food hall opened in Copenhagen this past winter. It's called Torvehallerne and I couldn't wait to see it. We went, we saw, we ate, and I sketched. Bicycles and good food... this is Copenhagen.

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.

Three from Lisbon

I went to Lisbon primarily to spend time with my daughter, who moved to Germany last February, and who now is living in Barcelona. We had planned a rendez-vous in Lisbon a while ago, so rendez-vous there we did. I don't have as many sketches, therefore, from this trip as I normally do. Here are three and more will follow.

My daughter has caught the sketching bug. Here she is sketching in the garden of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antigua our last afternoon together.

By the way, how do you like my new banner and the blog's new look? I like them! I think the greens of the first sketch look pretty swell with the reds and blacks of the header image---complementarity works!

San Francisco in June: sketching with Jana

I hate having to break up this long sketch into two parts, but there's no going around the space constraints of page and blog. Jana and I sat under the bright blue bowl of sky and sketched the Conservatory of Flowers at Golden Gate Park. All that white against the blue and the building's delicate gothic tracery were so compelling that we HAD to park ourselves on the lawn and go to.

My scanner is too small to fit the whole sketched spread, so I shot it with my digital camera and could NOT get the blue right. I used cobalt acrylic paint mixed with white for the sky---the color in the first two images is more accurate. 8 1/2"x 22":

Jana and I had gotten together on the spur of the moment. She had the day off and I had an open afternoon. What a perfect opportunity for us to finally meet, after years of cyberfriendship! And here are our two versions of a couple of the scenes we drew. I always love seeing someone else's take on a subject, don't you?

I just discovered Jana's post on our adventure... please do check it out! Her finished sketches are gorgeous!

Later in the afternoon, the weather turned cold and gray, so we tucked into the tea house at the park's Japanese tea garden, for hot tea and cookies. Can you find the little double portrait of the two artists in this sketch?

I had such fun sketching with my new/old friend! Thank you for taking the time and trouble to meet up with me, Jana! More sketches to come from this trip!

Berlin Zoo sketches/new art supplies

I'm not a fan of non-habitat zoos, but the Berlin Zoo is one of the best of its kind I've been to. On the day my daughter and I visited it, we were charmed by the monkeys and the hippos. Here, I think you'll see why:

I used to run in every city I traveled to. Now I go to art supply stores. Ah well. For everything there's a season.

Here's my stash from a couple of such stores in Berlin. I had a yen (no pun intended) for the yellow-topped brush pen that looks like a Pentel color brush pen after reading about it on Rolf Schroeter's blog. The pen is from Yamashina, a Japanese bookstore there. The other goodies are from Philographos. I was so excited to find J. Herbin brush pens that are filled with brown or black ink cartridges. The nibs looked (and are) supple and fine. The ink, I discovered later, is water-soluble, so that's not great for my purposes. I guess it's back to filling Kuretake water brush pens with acrylic ink for me. I'd seen Hahnemülhe sketchbooks mentioned online. In my eternal sketch for the perfect sketchbook, I grabbed one.. we shall see how near to perfection it approaches!

Last, a view to the east, sketched from the rooftop terrace of the Reichstag:

Berlin in March, sketches

March in Berlin is quite different from autumn in Berlin, of course. Colder, more raw. Indoor sketches predominate. This was a super trip... I was there to see my daughter, but she and I also had great fun meeting up with Rolf Schroeter and Olga Prudnikova, fellow Urban Sketchers correspondents, for dinner, some wine, and, well, sketching! (Click on their names for links to their own sketches from that evening--it's always such fun to see how different artists respond to the same setting.)

I have more sketches from Berlin to post---and, I hope, a little report on some art supplies I bought there... coming soon!