Laurelines

A pause before September

I'm taking a few days off  to devote to the ongoing health matters of my mother and to tie up loose ends on one illustration project (and, egads, to start another, new one. So much for saying no.)  I am still moving forward with my plans to leave for Brittany on September 18th, knowing full well that this trip, like my workshop in Orlando, may be cut short. At this hour, on this day, it still looks doable.

I've chosen, randomly, some sketches and paintings from the past few years to give you something to look at here in my little corner of cyberspace. Why these? No reason, really---they just caught my eye as I scrolled through my archives. Remember the man with a constant cigarette, who tended a news kiosk on Ave de la Motte-Piquet, that October I spent in Paris? The boat docked in a Seattle harbor?  My daughter's face from my 100 Faces series?  Probably you do not- but for me, they are one-way tickets on the fast train to the past. See you in a few days.

A lick and a promise, and some peeks

Gosh, this 2009 of mine has had no end of hindrances and hurdles. I haven't felt my world to be this out of control since I experienced my first labor pains with my daughter Kate, years ago in Scotland. But this is life---and I'll take it just the way it is. The good news is my elderly mother seems, again, to be improving and we are taking her out of the rehab center and returning her home tomorrow! She's in great spirits and will be well cared for at home. Please keep all good thoughts speeding her way.

I actually grabbed a couple of ten minute interludes in the studio the past few days, in between trips to Mother's hometown. These involved the use of paintbrushes and the beginning, at long last, of koi paintings! Yay!! 

So, here's the lick and the promise: some quick peeks at what is going on in the studio and an overview, literally, of latest foody sketches for the book. 

Hope your life is going along swimmingly.

Dipping my toes in reportage illustration...

...before I had to leave, very prematurely, due to my mother's illness. See post below. Can't wait to take this up again in a January workshop!

Ronnie and Margaret emphasized making thumbnail sketches, making rapid gestural/ contour drawings of people in motion, using different kinds of marks in one drawing, using the six sides of the box inherent in pictorial space, putting in lots of detail in each reportage illustration ----I was beginning to get the hang of this method, I think, but just beginning. These sketches are too big to be scanned, so excuse the poor reproduction caused by digitally photographing them.

  . At bottom is the biggest and the last sketch I did. It's about 11 x 14 and though the scale of the people is way off (I didn't take the time to calibrate relative sizes, working quickly as I was), I think I was beginning to get what Ronnie and Margaret were saying about drawing crowds and conveying the gestalt of a busy scene. I'm going to work on this on my own and then, as I say, sign up for their January workshop.

Duty called.

My beloved elderly mother's condition has become precarious. We don't know if this is a short-term situation, or if the recent set of events will prove to be the beginning of permanent disability on her part. I had to leave my reportage illustration workshop yesterday, after just two days, to fly back and help my brother take care of her.
I'd looked forward with greatest anticipation to this workshop since last winter, but when duty phones, you take the call.
I'm leaving early tomorrow to drive to her hometown and the nursing home she's just been installed in. I'll be back and forth for a while, until (and if) her condition stabilizes.
So, here's a sketch from my first morning, pre-workshop, in Orlando.

This weekend I'll post some of what I did at the workshop. It was as stimulating and intense as I'd hoped it would be. There's another workshop offered this January, half in Brooklyn, half in Connecticut, which I plan now to attend. I will not let this goal go unmet!

My reportage illustration adventure starts Sunday!

And, yes, this is a *painting of seaweed, and, no, my adventure won't be happening underwater, though it will probably feel like it. Orlando in August---need I say more?

I mentioned a while back that I'll be taking a reportage illustration workshop offered by Veronica Lawlor and Margaret Hurst, fellow Urban Sketchers correspondents, via their Dalvero Academy. Ronnie calls it 'drawing bootcamp,'--ten eight-hour+ days spent drawing on site at Disney World (!!!!). I fell in love with their powerful and immediate way of drawing energy, space, movement and I wanted to learn that technique to see what would become of it, Laurelined! Well, the time has come. I leave Sunday the 9th, return August 20th. I 'll have my computer and digital camera, so I should be able to post some journal pages while there.

So now, I'm trying to figure out what art supplies to take. I hope I have time to make a post on that subject before I go.

I'm really excited! And I'm also really appreciative of all of your wonderfully warm comments of congratulations on my work appearing in Artful Blogging (see post below.)  Thank you, thank you, thank you, lovely people!

* I don't think I've posted this seaweed sketch before. I made it in 2007, in Charleston, SC.

Stay cool, everybody!