« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »
As it happened, I was too busy wielding either a trowel or a whisk to get much sketching done this weekend, but last Thursday, Ippy and I drew lovely Rachel. Here are two of my drawings and three of Ippy's. 
As often as I've observed this phenomenon, I still love to see the differences in working artists' styles, especially when I'm one of them (she said, egocentrically!)
I'm madly trying to plant a zillion flats of annuals to fill in the spaces between perennials in our newly-redesigned garden (redesigned as of last summer) in time for K's wedding on June 2. In the midst of this, the stonemasons arrived ( a couple of weeks late) and are filling the garden with stone dust and wheelbarrows---but it's all to the good! I promise to post photos when all is done. For now, here are two sketches from this morning.
There should be some good sketching opportunities this weekend, so come back, won't you, and see if I've managed to steal some time to draw!
...tell him Aloha.' I much prefer my version of the ninth century Zen koan to the original that enjoins you (figuratively speaking, we assume) to kill the Buddha. 
While it rained rivers outside and before Amanda joined me for lunch later that day, I sat inside a Chinese department store and drew some of the many Buddhas and boddhisatvas for sale there. It occurred to me on this latest trip, as it has occurred to a couple of readers, that I'm attracted to certain kinds of things to sketch wherever I am. Fountains---check ( though no fountains in Chinatown that I saw!) Figurative sculpture... check. Lanterns and lamps outdoors and in---check. People---but of course! Meals----absolutely. Masks----check. They're a subset of figurative sculpture, I guess. And I'm apparently a Buddha-seeking organism. In Chinatown, I hit the jackpot. I sketched a couple of old world Buddhas, too, that I saw at the Rubin Museum, but those can wait.
I hope some of that Buddha mind rubbed off on me---the next few weeks are going to be hectic in the extreme as we prepare for our daughter K to be married in our garden, with the reception in our house, as our daughter C graduates from college, as I scurry to finish a couple of art projects. Hectic, exciting, gratifying.
Chinatown is full of dragons and many of them are outdoors in the shape of statuary and images on signs. Since we were experiencing Noah's flood, Part 2 in New York last Sunday and Monday, I had to look indoors for those imposing creatures. I found several. Here is one:
Amanda and I sought shelter at the Rubin Museum of Art. There was a display of papier mache masks that reminded me very much of the Mexican masks I'd sketched last month at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
I have more Chinatown sketches but will post those later. In the meantime, I made a very quick sketch of my beautiful daughter K (who won't sit for me as often as my daughter C---I had to take advantage of the few minutes she spent on our computer last night to do this quick drawing of her.)
I also just now substituted later versions of the Peking duck and signs and lanterns sketches below for the ones I originally posted. I wasn't happy with the quality of the first images. I'm a Capricorn, can you tell?
We already knew what fate had in store for us---- the storm of the century was coming Sunday, so Amanda and Walt and I headed straight for Chinatown the afternoon I got to New York. It was my sole chance at outdoor sketching on this trip.
I first sketched a fortune teller who played an erhu, a two-stringed violin-like instrument, in between fortune-seeking customers.
While Amanda and Walt were sketching a storefront in one direction, I looked down the street to a vista of lanterns and signs and sketched it. 
The other two went to Pearl Paints to buy supplies. I sketched a display of peking ducks hanging in a restaurant window. I got some weird looks from patrons and workers alike, but as much as I sketch in public, I'm used to it. 
That night, Walt, Amanda and her husband Jimmy and I ate at a Thai restaurant on Bayard Street. I sketched Walt while we waited for Jimmy to arrive. He looks very poetic and ethereal here, but don't you believe it. He's spreading vicious rumors about me on his blog. Winona Ryder, indeed.
I'm having a lovely time, in spite of the weather and Walt's calumny. More sketches to come!
Ippy and I prevailed upon our lovely friend Elizabeth to sit for us the other afternoon. What possessed me to draw this exquisitely elegant woman (think Southern Grace Kelly) with a clunky charcoal pencil is beyond moi. The result is a drawing of a generic elegant woman, as Elizabeth said, "She could be my sister," (not sure she HAS one, but you get the point.) Ippy said "you usually really get likenesses, but... "
I spent too long on this one, so had only a few minutes to sketch her with my usual 8b graphite pencil. Here I got a slighty better likeness. Click on her name and you will see that Elizabeth is also a supremely accomplished photographer. She has several books to her credit as well. Check Amazon.com to see. I can't post a link to her on Amazon without giving access to my account. (I'm one of the few of my friends who hasn't produced a book! Sad, isn't it? I'm trying, I'm trying, working on my Paris sketches for publication. If you are a publisher and you are reading this, my answer is yes!)
Finally, using a large ( size 12) brush, I made a green and yellow sketch this morning. Now to pack for my trip to NYC this weekend. My next post will be from Chinatown!
Continuing my Old World/New World sketchbook project, I'm heading for New York this weekend to visit and draw Amanda (Crack Skull Bob will be there, too---haven't seen him in way too long!) and to make sketches of Chinatown.
Today I made a couple of Asian-inspired sketches to get in the mood.
I'd made a really quick sketch of this buddha at Spice Street before.
Using orange acrylic paint on paper and a white Sharpie pen, I made a sketch from a Japanese woodcut, and will add it to my 101 Faces collection.
Ippy and I are making drawings of our world, friend by friend. We drew Lynne on Thursday and our drawings couldn't be more different. Ippy's was full face and done in graceful, loose, Matissean, Ippyean lines. It was beautiful and it captured Lynne's strength and her sensuality. Mine is a 3/4 profile and shows, I think, the spiritual and idealistic Lynne. I didn't set out to do that, but it happened. I'll see if Ippy will let me share hers and if she does, I'll add it to this post on Monday.
Temperatures here are falling into the mid 20's this weekend. Last night, I harvested a purple-freckled iris blossom from my garden before the cold could blight it. A parrot tulip from the farmers' market this morning has stunning red-striped petals. These flowers make me think of the 1877 poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called 'Pied Beauty.' You don't have to be a religious person (I am and am not) to be moved by its power and loveliness.
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1877)
...and Laurelines on pencil.
Last night, I needed a lift of spirits so my husband took me to Spice Street, one of our favorite restaurants. Lucky for us, there was a wonderful musician playing on the terrace, so we sat near him and I drew while Glen Ingram played 'Stardust'. I was so happy to be drawing that I forgot to eat!
Please ignore the bad posture in my self portrait from yesterday. Concentration will do that to a person.
I'm thrilled and humbled to appear today on Qarrtsiluni, a literary and artistic e-zine, along with excellent and much-published poet and novelist Marly Youmans! Marly has written a stunning poem in response to a sketch I did after a Botticelli self-portrait---that fact in itself will have me firmly ensconced on Cloud Nine for the foreseeble future!
Thank you so much, Marly and the lovely people at Qarrtsiluni, for this honor.
by Marly Youmans 
Botticelli
A sketch after Botticelli by Laura Frankstone
This head's more proud and sparkling than the one
Sandro painted—something like the sun
Blossoms in the face, as if acclaim
Five hundred years to come could flare as flame
In him; he is a mirror reflecting lights
From God and Medici, a moon on nights
When mythic paintings char by his own hand,
Jumbled with lutes, rouge pots, and gilded fans
In Lenten bonfires of the vanities.
And yet the face that's swerved toward us espies
Neither magi, baby, nor company
Of nobles near the girl—he turns to see
In dazzled eyes across the near and far,
His picture glowing like the Christmas star.
Recent Comments