Laurelines

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:

I had a plan

A year ago, I had a plan. It was to create twelve themed sketchbooks, one for each month of 2006, with one drawing for each day of the month. My goal was to increase my drawing fluency. I wanted to be able to respond immediately and strongly as an artist, whenever I could, wherever my pencil and paintbox led me.

I laid out my topics with an eye to the weather, light, the seasons, my travel plans.
The topic list was flexible. I knew I’d alter it as I discovered what worked and what didn’t, what interested me and what made me crazy.  Other factors came into play. I learned firsthand, for example, that the deep woods are not a safe place for the lone female sketcher, so I abandoned my plan of doing a month of drawings there. This, too, is life.
I learned that I loved drawing animals from life. Of all that I did this year, it was in sketching cows, goats, turkeys, swans, my dog and cat, that I felt most spiritually charged. I wasn’t looking for this and I can’t explain it. But it happened.

On the other hand, and equally surprisingly, I learned that I don’t much like drawing trees. And I’m a gardener and nature lover, too.  But I didn’t really connect to this topic and that’s that.

Interiors were the most challenging and that’s why I tackled them first.  I grew to quite like drawing interiors---at least my version of them, which is intimist rather than strongly architectural.

I took a Photoshop workshop and have lots more to learn on that score.  Someday, when needs must, I will.

All three of my local figure drawing groups disbanded, but I kept to my plan to continue with them as long as I could. Drawing people, nude or clothed, is something I’ve done for as long as I can remember, so the month of people sketching was fun and comforting.

And Paris! I rented an apartment in the 7th arrondissement and spent every day of October on the streets, in the parks, in cafes, in museums, sketching.  Spending a month in that city of beauty was a dream made true. I slide into sleep at night now, reliving those bright moments.  Laurelines in Paris is a To Be Continued story and you’ll see it and read it here!
Here on the second to last day of the year and of the project, I can tell you I’m so glad I did this. I made a plan. I stuck to it. It was worth it.  It wasn’t always easy, living up to the assignment I’d set for myself. Some days I dreaded the prospect of sketching… whatever… because I had to. Many days I was exhilarated.  And, you know, I did what I’d hoped to do---I became more fluent in drawing and in sketching with watercolors.  I compare my work from 2005 (you can click on Archives at right to see older posts) and I can see how much stronger the recent work is.

Tomorrow I’ll post the plan for 2007.  It’s different. I’m delighted with it.

I'll post the last sketches for the year tomorrow morning, too.

If you have questions about the project, please ask. I look forward to your comments, as always!

Finishing up 2006

Now that I've sort of recovered from Christmas, my thoughts have been multiplying and colliding in the anteroom to 2007. I've got so many ideas about what I want to do with my art next year, and my life, too. I'll be posting about all of that on Sunday. In the meantime, I've made a few sketches and here they are. First, a giant whirligig on the grounds at Fearrington.

Then, a Kaimeri brush penned sketch of a tree bedecked with twiggy globes, also at Fearrington. I guess they're a cliché now, but I still love to see those lacy orbs all lit up against the night sky. Or bare and black, as here, in the late afternoon.

Then a view of my winter garden from the bedroom window. This is where my daughter K will be married in early June. 2007 will be an important year in many ways!

Yesterday, I asked our son L (I've been so lucky to have been his stepmother since he was 10) to sit for a sketch and he did. He's one of the wittiest and nicest people I've ever known. And patient, too, like his father.

On Saturday, I'll post the last drawings of this year and will review and assess my 2006 Art Plan, before embarking on another. See you then!

One or two quiet moments

We're having a busy and full Christmas and I'm grateful for every family-gathering, party-going, present-wrapping, table-setting bit of it. The quiet moments, though, are my favorites.
Early in the morning yesterday, before much was going on, I made Mrs. Vincent's Snickerdoodles. 

Last night, my daughter C read a magazine in our cozy family room while I sketched her.

Today, I hung sunflower and suet ornaments in our star magnolia tree for a birdy Christmas feast.   I hope you, too, can  find some quiet, contented moments in the days ahead.   Happy holidays!

A Wednesday in December

Yesterday was one of those inexplicably deeply gratifying days. Not much happened. I was stuck at home for several hours waiting for the delivery of a new worktable for me (yay!) I needed to be elsewhere, but what could I do?  I could sketch what was before me on my coffee table, the accoutrements of present wrapping and a David Hockney dvd shared with me by Cin of Learning Daily and Jana of Jana's Journal and Sketchblog. I could sketch my sleeping dog Abby, who moved her head before I could finish. And later, after the day had wound down, I could go to dinner with my husband and sketch him in the dim light of Spice Street. So that's what I did.

Between two covers!

My sweet husband took it upon himself to have my Laurelines in Paris sketches printed in book form and I'm so excited! It's 44 pages, 8 1/2" x 11", soft cover, with glossy pages. The quality of the reproductions is not what you'd find in a professionally published book, of course, but it isn't bad at all.  He had only three copies printed (one for both of our mothers, and one for us), so we could see what the product would look like.  There are some mistakes in spacing and pagination (he's a lawyer, not a book designer!) but, all in all, it looks good. I'm going to make corrections and see if I can't change typefonts  (I hope there's a choice of type) and alter some of the images sizes on the pages (again, I don't know what is possible at this point). Then I'll a print out more copies. I have some book proposal ideas floating around in my brain and am hoping that having these sketches in print form will help me persuade an agent to take me on!
The costs were reasonable and the turn around time was very short.  Here's a link:

http://www.blogprinting.com/

You can sell copies of your blog book from your blog via a link to Blogprinting's website. My husband is urging me to do this, but I won't even consider this unless I can make the corrections I want to make.  We'll see. I'm just not sure what kind of interest there'd be in such a thing.
Anyway, here's the front cover and a spread from the book.  This is so much fun!

December, inside and out

I sat in my living room early this morning and looked at our Christmas tree, its lights reflected in the window behind it. It was the work of a minute to fetch my paints and pencils.

It has been a balmy day, so I headed for the botanical gardens and found my old friend, the bottle tree,  looking splendid and cheerful against the clear sky.

Underneath today's sketch is a sketch of the bottle tree and environs from last June. And, from that same post, here's a bit of bottle tree history: Malevolent spirits are lured at night inside blue bottles on a bottle tree. When the sun's first light touches the glass, the evil beings are destroyed. Bottle trees were found in rural, primarily African-American, communities in the southern United States. This bottle tree, underplanted with okra, is part of a collection of historical plantings placed in raised beds at the North Carolina Botanical Garden.

I had a few minutes before meeting my husband for lunch, so I drew an elegant hydrangea, bereft of almost all color, but full of texture, its dried blossoms  overlapping each other in  soft semicircles. I apologize for the misplacement of captions. I can't seem to work out how to match image with words in this case.

A tree for a partridge and a cow for me

Today I went back to the inn to paint another one of their Twelve Days of Christmas displays, at the request of my friend M, who was one of the participating designers. Here's their Partridge in a Pear Tree display. This can count as an Out and About sketch, or, if I get really desperate, a tree sketch!

I saved a cow drawing from Monday and painted it quickly and broadly today, just for fun.

Roots and hooves

I have a thing for root vegetables. I've used their images, and the images of roots alone, in several paintings. Yesterday when I saw these purple kohlrabi at the grocery store, I heard their siren song and I obeyed.

It was a mild and lovely morning, so I carped the diem and went to Chapel Hill Creamery to sketch my beloved friends from last summer, the cows.

You can see my August animal sketches in the gallery of that name at left.

Of hearth and home

Yesterday morning when I woke up at my usual hour of 5ish am (otherwise known as insane o'clock,) it was 15F here. My husband lit a fire and I sat in the dark living room and sleepily sketched light and warmth.

Today, I turned to our entryway and drew a vignette of the tabletop and mirror there.

For comparison, here are two sketches from January, showing the same rooms. Interesting to see the differences?