Laurelines

Hawaiian sketches, part 2

I struggled at first with the images of water in Hawaii---how to find my own idiom to render them?  This isn't something you can exactly pre-plan, or at least, I can't. I flubbed many sketches, did lots of pencil studies of the movement of water, before I hit on a way to make the thing work for me. I've just begun to figure it out and thank heavens for all my studies. I have enough from my scant five days there to allow me to experiment more and try to put to use in larger work what I learned from the pieces below.  And then there's the next mystery destination, which I'll go to in June. There will be LOTS more there to challenge and stimulate me!

Hawaiian sketches

I worked in several different formats at once: a small ( 4 1/2" x 6 1/4", but I used double spreads mostly) accordion sketchbook in which I recorded vignettes of travel, the larger ( 6" x 8 1/4") accordion sketchbook of sea and water life that you've seen before (scroll down after clicking on the preceding link to see the sketchbook), loose sheets of watercolor and drawing paper in which I made studies for later, larger work.
For now, I'll just show some from the small sketchbook and some sketches on loose sheets. Even though water is my central theme this year, I continue to draw and paint those other subjects I love---people, small moments of everyday life, figurative sculpture, flowers, etc.  Here we go:

I found that I was more interested in the abstract shapes I could intuit from moving water than in a literal recreation of the subject. There are zillions of plein air painters who make faithful renderings of such things. I've never had that particular impulse, though I admire the work of many artists who do.
More to come!

Aloha, at last!

I've been so busy with Hawaii that I haven't wanted to take time away from sketching and painting! I don't normally post photos of myself, but I wanted you to see the artist at work in Onomea Bay, one of the most beautiful spots I've ever seen. That's an outcropping of lava rock I'm perched on. It's  eight in the morning. There's no one else around, except for my husband and some sly Pacific crabs tap dancing on the rocks below me. It's 70 degrees. The air is soft as chiffon.  All I can hear is the wind slicing through the palms, the thrust and parry of the waves, bird calling to bird. I join the centuries' long list of people enchanted by this place. We're staying at the town of Hilo on the Big Island. It 's very low key and charming, a real place as opposed to a resort.  The town is notorious for the rain that falls here--- lots and lots of it, 140 inches a year, to be exact.   We've managed five days of pure sunshine somehow, though, and I've tried to make good use of every single moment. Here are some of what I've done. More to come in the next days to come.

I'm now in the airport at Honolulu and have run out of time. I will be posting my work starting tomorrow, when we return home.  Internet connection has been very spotty. Aloha until then!

 

Hawaii bound

Some (practical and sane) people pack when they're about to go on a trip. Some other kinds of people make packing still lifes and sketch them. So there you are. (Click on image for bigger version --you can read the captions there. If you can read my handwriting at all.)

We're leaving WAY too early Tuesday morning aka way too late Monday night, for Hilo, on the big island of Hawaii. We're staying at a b and b that has its own waterfall! Outside, one assumes.
We leave next Monday, returning home Tuesday, February 26. In addition to the items pictured here, I'm taking my laptop. I'm taking lots more art supplies, but you've seen all that before (except now I use Schmincke paints.) I'm  taking more clothes than just these,  of course, and some toothpaste. I've got a smidgeon of couth, you know.

I will be posting while in Hawaii, so check back, won't you?  I'd like to thank, before I go, the wonderful Katherine Tyrell, artist and author of the inestimable blog Making a Mark, for featuring my 2008 quest for water in her today's "Who's made a mark this week?" post. You'll see many other artists mentioned,  including several of my artblogger co-conspirators like Casey, Wally, Felicity, Dee and oh, just go and see for yourself! Somebody around here has to pack!

A little postscript: Laurelines turns three years old on February 26th! And here we are, still toddling along.

It rained!!!

I drove home last night in the dark and the blessed rain---well, it was more drizzle at that point, but  it was WET! This morning, as I painted, I tried to remember what it looked like on the bypass, flanked as it was by dark, hulking trees and with car tail lights floating like low flung, bright fireflies. My trusty rain gauge reported a total of 1.1 inches of rainfall---yay!!!!!!! Not a deluge, but something nevertheless!

I added some sketches of shells to my accordion sketchbook featuring water life. This will be the book I use to record flora, fauna, flotsam, jetsam in and of the sea, rivers, streams,and ponds that I encounter this year. I LOVE the accordion format---it makes a story of my images without my having to add a word! You know me, though---I will add those words. I apologize for the poor quality of the photos. I didn't have time to obsess over them.
I leave for Hawaii next Tuesday, a watery land, indeed!  I'll post with particulars before I go. Thank you so much for your interest in, and support of, my search for water this year.

In search of...

In search of what I had

what I have

and don't have.  The trees are dying. The days left in the water supply are in the double digits. We use as little as we can. We are not allowed to water our gardens.

I dream of rain

but it does not.

So I'm going to watery places---

Hawaii next week and Paris next month, and in June, a place very like Hawaii, but very different. I'm making art about rain, about my daily use of water,  about life that lives in or on or from (don't we all?) water, in acrylic, watercolor, ink and pen, and who knows what else.

If I paint it, will it come?

You ask me when I am coming, I do not know
I dream of your mountains and autumn pools brimming all night with the rain
Oh when shall we be trimming wicks again, together in your western window
When shall I be hearing your voice again, all night in the rain?

Li Shang Yin
translated Witter Bynner

And the kitchen sink

I've had a really frustrating week in the studio, trying to finish an acrylic painting... and NOT managing it!! (Fill in imprecation of your choice here.)  I almost never give up on a painting, but this one may HAVE to go.  Ick.
In the meantime, I've had some relief and fun in wielding pen and watercolor brush, working quickly, instead of obsessing as I've done with the acrylic piece.
In this sketch of my husband, I painted it on site,  unlike the sketches in the previous post, where I looked hard and thought about color on site, but painted later. I was interested to see that there's not much difference in overall effect. Maybe a few more nods to light  and shadow, but that's all. Do you agree?
Here's another face for my 101 Faces project---playing around with dip pens and Higgins russet ink, drawing loosely and quickly.    I'm enjoying this project SO MUCH more this year than last. I feel freer and happier with this imagery, who knows why.
And, yes,  here's that kitchen sink .

This weekend, probably on Sunday, I plan to post the answer to the Mystery Theme riddle! Could be Monday, but I think Sunday. See you then!

Drawn together by drawing

I'm often moved by how the act of drawing can connect stranger to stranger. Yesterday was a day of such connections.
In the morning, my husband and I went to a café for breakfast. With a busy day ahead, I hadn't planned to sketch, but an older couple in my line of vision grabbed my attention. The stoic stiffness of the man's body, the way the overhead light robbed him of local color, bathing him half in warm, half in cool light was compelling. His companion was a woman, much smaller than he, birdlike of feature, blue of eye. Her heavily-accented English accent broke in and out of earshot. I tried to be unobtrusive, but after a time she noticed what I was doing. She left her seat and came to our table. She said 'I noticed you were sketching me. Are your sketches for the public to see?' I apologized for intruding on her privacy and handed her my sketchbook. She looked at it, was quiet for a few seconds and said, 'The last person who sketched me was my father. I was seven years old.'
We talked a bit more before she left. My husband recognized her. 'She is Mrs. M,' he told me, ' a Holocaust survivor who lost her entire family in Germany in the war.'
I'd scheduled a morning of sketching with Sue, a wonderful woman and fellow artist who lives in a nearby town. We'd connected on the internet a couple of years ago, through my blog and her Flickr account--- drawn together by drawing.
We went to a different café and drew. Here are my sketches. After I finished this one, I showed it to the girl who who was the subject, as she got up to leave. She hadn't known I was drawing her. She smiled and said, 'You picked the right person to draw. I'm an artist, too. I do pet portraits to help pay for college.' I asked her her name and gave her my business card.

As Sue and I were winding down our sketching session, a man appeared at my shoulder and said, 'I've been watching you draw. Can I see what you've done?' I showed him and we introduced ourselves. His name is John, he said, and he draws, too. In fact, he's illustrated a book. I asked him for the particulars and he gave me this website link. We talked about local figure drawing opportunities and said we might see each other at one of those sessions. Drawn together by the act of drawing again.

Waylaid by an artichoke

Make that two artichokes. I'm in the midst of working on my mystery theme and making acrylic paintings and things, being very earnest and sincere. But these two wizened artichokes in my countertop vegetable basket kept casting baleful glances at me each time I walked past. Cook us, they implored, but it was too late---dessication had begun to set in. Oh, all right, they pouted, if you're not going to cook us, pick up your dip pen and draw us.
Reader, I did.
I give you two artichokes with some sassy habanera peppers thrown in for good measure. Violet Higgins drawing ink and Schmincke  watercolors on  9" x 12" Italia acquerello 140 lb. cold pressed watercolor paper.

I know I should have included in today's post one of my cadaver drawings or a painting of putrefied buzzard to balance out the cute overload of these images. Reader, I didn't. Here's a baby face for my 101 Faces project. This baby is not a doll, though she looks like one, even in real life. I've not quite captured her here, but I'll have more chances when she and her mother come for a visit next month.