In a complicated world, experienced by a complicated mind (mine, to wit), it is well from time to time to simplify. What could be simpler than pencil on paper? And it's so much fun, the pencil. Here are colored pencils in action at the Audubon Gallery at the North Carolina Museum of Art. I usually find taxidermy distressing and depressing, but the birds at NCMA are lovely. Their spirit remains.
I commend to you, in addition to the Audubon Gallery at NCMA, the Iris restaurant where, along with bright and tasty food and polite fellow diners, you get to rub shoulders with one of Patrick Dougherty's sublime site-specific branch and twig wall sculptures. Pencil with a bit of added wash happened here.
Why do I like blue pencil so much? I have no idea, but there we are. At a workshop I went to last weekend, I blue penciled my fellow attendees. And on blue-lined paper, too. I sense a theme evolving here.
On the other hand, we have non-blue pencils and here is one very dandy example ... I used a multi-colored, swirled-together leaded pencil for a quick drawing I made of my daughter Kate on her birthday. Those multi-colored pencils are delightful... they're rainbows in pencil form.
And here's a nude guy from a figure drawing session I went to, drawn on 18" x 24" paper. Brown pencil here, I don't remember which kind.
People and countries behave badly often, but pencils... they're low-key, they're steady, they're workhorses. On the cusp of July as we are, with its heat and its relative quiet (Northern Hemispherically speaking) and in the midst of global troubles, it's worthwhile to consider pausing with a pencil or two. That's what I'm doing.
Well, Cathy, YOUR own lines are incredibly inspiring, too! I really love the last batch of sketches you posted on your blog. They are dynamic and complex but with such an appealing, natural line!
Posted by: Laura | June 29, 2016 at 07:14 AM
Beautiful lines Laura, you always make me want to go out and draw!
Posted by: Cathy Gatland | June 29, 2016 at 04:59 AM
Thank you so much, Ann! And I have long enjoyed your juicy watercolors! Isn't it nice to have longtime cyber friendships?
Posted by: Laura | June 27, 2016 at 05:35 PM
I seem to have lost my comment? My apologies if this is a repeat. This is a beautiful post and drawings. I, too, find art comforting and I have long enjoyed your mark-making vocabulary. So much life in your drawings!
Posted by: Nemcoskyart.blogspot.com | June 27, 2016 at 10:58 AM