Laurelines

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 

Fannies from Heaven: BCF #22

Every time it rains it rains
Pennies  *Fannies from heaven.
Don't you know each cloud contains
Pennies  Fannies from heaven.
You'll find your fortune falling
All over town.
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down.
Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers.
If you want the things you love
You must have showers.
So when you hear it thunder
Don't run under a tree.
There'll be pennies  fannies from heaven for you and me

Based on a drawing by Primatice from the 2004 Louvre exhibit 'Italy in the Court of France, 1540-1590.'

And on that cheerful note, let's bid adieu to Blind Contour Fridays 2005! And hello 2006---we're  more than ready for you!

For far more decorous Blind Contour Friday submissions please go to Inkfanny right this very minute!

*A kind reader reminded me that 'fanny' means something altogether different in UK English. Whoops. Sorry! Derrieres from Heaven just doesn't have the same bounce somehow, though that, of course, is the body part in question here.

My 2005 picks

I've decided not to do another entry showing progress in 2005.  The year  is running out of days and I've got my Sketchbook Photo Album at left, with sketches listed from newest to oldest, for anyone who wants to do a quick perusal. Instead, I tried to pick the sketches that have meant most to me. Not the 'best' ones (I'm not the one to choose those, I don't think) nor the ones  that were apparently most popular.

Here they are---and why:

Chuck said he could tell I enjoyed doing this one and he was right. It was a lovely Sunday  breakfast prepared by my husband.

I love figure drawing and I love my 8b pencil. This shows both loves.

This was, hands down, the most fun -to-make sketch of the year. Knickers. Red lace knickers.

These simple white -on- color line drawings were sheer joy to draw.

I'd never been much interested in drawing architecture and wasn't good at it, but with these, I felt I'd broken a barrier.  It helps that they were made in two of my favorite places in the world.

I had no idea when I started this how it would turn out. It was great fun to watch it happen.

My lovely, gentle father. I'm so glad I had the chance to draw him.

Added later: HOW could I have forgotten the Coney Island bees, which, while visiting witty and wonderful Amanda, were so much fun to draw ? We sat in her car with the heat on (sorry, Greenpeace), in the bitter cold, with two ferocious Rottweilers looking on hungrily, and drew away happily together.  A real 2005 highlight in art AND friendship.

2005 progress report: drawing in public

One of the goals I'd set this year was to draw more in public and to become more comfortable doing it. This was important for some projects I'm working on---but also, and chiefly,  for my sense of myself as an artist always at the ready. A large component of this plan was drawing people, but this was not the only focus.  Meals, buildings, landscape elements were all part of the public drawing project.  For now, though, I'll concentrate on the drawings OF the public.

As a point of comparison, here's a sketch from late 2004,  made in the British Museum cafe.  My lines are timid, the faces are very quickly drawn---anxiety at work! 

This page comes from my yellow sketchbook, in late April. The sketches are somewhat stronger here.

Working in the green  sketchbook made for some unusual colors on faces and heads!

When blue rolled around, in late summer, I was getting more specificity in face and figure.

This was done in my purple phase. By then, I'd dropped the idea that I had to draw people in the color I was working on!

By the trip to France in October, I was completely comfortable drawing in public.

And even when I couldn't use color, I loved the careful looking, the losing myself in the act of putting lines on paper, the creation of a small thing that connected me to that moment, that place, those strangers.

I have MUCH more to do on this front in 2006. I want to concentrate more on figures in context, on the composition of these sketches, too.

Tomorrow:  public drawing, part 2

Yesterday, the day before, and today

As you will see, I spent some time preparing food Christmas Eve and Christmas Day---the little sketches are just  small tidbits in the  grand scheme of Christmas food things.  It was fun, though. 

What a difference a day makes. I, who normally get up at 5ish am, was still in bed at 10am, reading the paper, drawing, and vowing not to cook for a very long time.

Under the tree: BCF # 21

Drawn by the sound of my pen scratching on textured paper,  Pearl Cat came and sat on the floor next to me. Instant focal point!

Drawn without looking, painted peeking.

For more of this week's  holidayish Blind Contour Drawings, please visit Inkfinger,  the workshop of Saint Nick's favorite elves, Niff and Sutter.

I've tried to be a good girl

You know--- I think globally and shop locally. I support my local organic farmers' market and I'd never be caught dead eating an out of season tomato. Oh sure, I eat bananas from wherever and citrus fruit from Florida, but even you wouldn't begrudge me my vitamin C and potassium, would you?  But peonies---in December?? There's no principled argument I can make for them, except that they are beautiful, they've got blossoms that are going to look like candy canes when they open and ....I love flowers.  At Christmas or any time. So they came from South America. So what.

Now---may I be the first to wish you Feliz Navidad?

I thought about color...

...and it was fun! One of my art goals this year was to break out of my customary  color palette. I made several sketchbooks focusing on color and one of the recurring elements in these were little personal color inventories, little still lives or vignettes in which the objects were all of the color in question.

Here are a few of these, in the order in which I drew them ( of course,  click on each for larger image):

Orange:

Yellow and yellow:

Greens:

Blue:

Purple:

Red, drawn this morning:

I'm going to do some  summing-up posts about my  2005 artwork next week, but couldn't resist getting a headstart with this one.

Amaryllis

Yes, it is.  An amaryllis, I mean. I have a few sprigs of eucalyptus with blossoms that are wafting celestial fumes through my dining room. Tomorrow maybe I'll draw those. Anything's possible, given world enough and time.

Tempest in a Typepad

This blog and all other Typepad ones were 'degraded' more than 24 hours ago and the problem is still not completely solved. Thus, my Blind Contour Friday #20 drawings did not appear  when I posted them( and still don't.) A whole week of entries and comments vanished, too, just like that.  Now, some things are restored, but not the drawings, which, since this in an art blog, is kind of significant. Let's hope the Typepadders get things fixed today.