Laurelines

Portland in March, some sketches

On a recent trip to Portland to see my daughter Cecelia and some friends, we had great luck with the weather... not one day of rain! The cherry trees were in full glory and the Portland Urban Sketchers and I met at the riverside to catch them in their prime:

Here are two of the afore-mentioned Portland Urban Sketchers, having at it!

I had MORE fun with my Koh-i-noor Magic Pencil (see it in my New York sketches here). It comes in several colorways and the ones I don't have are on their magic way to me even as we speak! There is something so beguiling about the way color(s) appear as you draw, as if by (wait for it...) magic! I have just begun to explore the possibilities of this unique drawing instrument!

One more drawing for today. I have several more to show, but don't want to clog up this post. I'll be back in a few days with the rest!

Sketches from inside cold New York City!

So cold in my brief not-quite-two-days there this week, that the only sketches I made were inside.

Inside Grand Central Station, having a delicious lunch at Cipriani with dear friend Amanda:

Inside our hotel, at breakfast, breaking out the fun, multi-colored Koh-i-noor 'Magic Pencil' I bought with Amanda at New York Central Art Supply to sketch fellow diners:

Inside our hotel room, looking at the building across the street, sketching its frills and furbelows:

Inside the Asian collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Inside my sketchbook, drawing my husband with the 'Magic' pencil, mentioned above. It is great fun because you have no idea what colors will emerge (note his eyebrows!) and there is no control over values and tones, either, of course. I wish the lead were more deeply pigmented, but you can't have everything in this life, can you?

February again, on several fronts

There's the fall show front, here represented by a color, texture, and composition study of hyacinths made in my ever-present portable studio, also known as my Stillman & Birns Alpha Series 8 1/2 x 11 sketchbook. This is the fun part! Who knows what relationship the final pieces will have to these studies. We will all find out in time. Oh, and that's a sweet gum ball at the bottom of the page. More fun with textures!

There's the illustration front. This is a portrait of Zach Clayton, a columnist for Walter Magazine, making his debut in the current issue (February 2014.)  He was easy to do. He has lots of facial architecture, unlike some of my other subjects. Do you sense a smidge of frustration in that last phrase? Clever you.

 

 

 

The last two are images from my personal drawing/painting front, a project I started earlier this month. It's a long story, that one, and I'll tell it soon.

 

 

 

 

Norway 2013 sketches, resumed!

My scanner seems, for now, to be working again, so I've decided to postpone the 2014 Plan post so I can, at last, share these! We are turning back to Norway, where I was this time last month.

There is something so profoundly calming about the northern Norway coastal landscape in winter. It is the opposite, in my mind, at least, of Icelandic landscape, which teems and pulses with energy.

 

The café in Ersfjordbotn was the one warm and open place we found during our stay in that small fishing village near Tromsø. We walked through the snow to this cozy place every day and ate things we should not have.  They were delicious ;D.

Lanterns and candles are used everywhere and all day in Norway, in a valiant effort to illuminate the dark December days. I loved this cozy café corner, with its candlesticks, lantern, strings of lights.

 The Oslo Opera House is rightfully noted for its stunning architecture. An equally stunning sculpture, all crystalline and icy-looking, seems to float in the fjord behind the Opera House. 

And here is one last look at the rugged mountains and valleys of northern Norway, drawn quick, quick, quick as our ship made its stately progression ever northward.

Next up: the Plan! It's still January, it's definitely still 2014. All is well!

Rocks, paper, scissors for Norway

I use big (18"x 24") pads of decent drawing paper (Borden & Riley Vellum) to test colors and textures when I'm making paintings.  I used to feel a bit guilty about 'wasting' decent paper that way, but it is a key part of my painting process, so I carry on.

One day, trying to solve a compositional problem, I cut a shape from my test paper and taped it to a painting to see how it worked instead of the shape I had painted there. This way of trying new compositions without making permanent changes on paintings' surfaces was fun! AND the more I looked at the energy and incidental force and flow of the marks on those papers, the more I liked them. 

So I began to use them in my illustrations. Here, in a recent illustration for Walter Magazine...

the oyster shell was cut from one of my test papers. I added a little more directional movement to the shapes... and voilà.

I've fallen in love with the idea of using cut paper (as below)

to add to sketches and illustrations and maybe, who knows, bigger paintings?

Clearly, the painted shapes in my Iceland paintings are related in some way to these paper shapes. Though which came first? It's the old chicken and the egg conundrum.

So where does Norway fit in? In a few days, I'll be there and I'll be sketching. And I'll have some loose sheets of paper already painted on, in the colors and textures I know are what I see when I'm in Norway. As here, a glimpse of just some of these colors and these textures, in a sketch from a couple of years ago:

And in Norway, looking at that icy and snowy fabulousness and trying my best to capture SOMETHING of it, I will, among other techniques, cut shapes from these papers, as the spirit moves me ----and paste them into my sketchbook and draw and paint on and around them. And it will be fun!

Lots of people work with cut paper in their sketches and paintings.

I'm doing nothing new.  Just new to me.

I can't wait. Rocks, paper, scissors, Norway... here I come!

 

 

Journal sketches... and Portland, here I come!

Trying to get back into the habit of sketching before my trips to Portland and to Norway... and just because I miss it!

Truth is, when I'm not painting or illustrating now, I seem to use my journal more for writing than for making images. But this won't last. I've been drawing since at least the age of 3. I'm sure not going to stop now.

You know I've have used this kind of floral imagery in my journals and sketchbooks many times. Drawing my flowers helps me loosen up in the studio first thing in the morning. Plus, it's fun.

Sometimes there appears an object in your life that you've got to sketch. This vintage hen figurine was one. I'll let you read about it on the page itself:

Looking at this sketch on toned paper I just shared, I realized it's  a convenient segue to my Portland trip.

I LOVE my gray-toned sketchbooks, especially for trips to the cold, snowy, and/or rainy places I'm besotted with. So this is what I'm taking with me to Portland tomorrow, a Strathmore gray-toned sketchbook and, of course, my Stillman & Birn Alpha series book, for those moments when I'm not being rained upon, in case there are some! Here are a couple of images from Iceland and Vancouver... cases in point:

My trip to Portland is a short one...my first visit to my daughter Cecelia since she moved there last August. I'll be going a lot. Not sure how much sketch time I'll have under those circumstances, but I KNOW we'll be meeting up with some sketching buddies at the Portland Museum of Art to sketch there, at least! Portland, I'm ready for you!

June miscellany

So busy offstage (slinging paint), but wanted to say hello here before the month ends. 

 

First, some different ways of drawing Sir Walter Raleigh... and why not? These are images that weren't selected for an illustration job. I'll show you the ones that were when I have the green light to do so.

Here's Sir Walter as a louche and world-weary kind of guy:

 

Here he is, looking awfully Cobbe-portrait-of-Shakespeare (I am convinced the Cobbe portrait of "Shakespeare" is really of my guy Sir Walter, but there we are:)

Here's Sir Walter looking oddly like my brother:

And here he is, dour and bleary-eyed:

And, as if these varying images of Sir Walter weren't miscellaneous enough, here's a page from my journal, just to show I am still at the process of sketching (however hastily), writing, and thinking. On that last point, you'll have to trust me.

Happy *summer! This is the eighth year I've wished you all a happy summer, a startling fact that is no less sincere for all that! *or winter, depending on, of course, your hemisphere.

Journal as palate/palette cleanser

I use my journal for lots of things, one of which is as a sort of palate cleanser. Before or after a long session in my painting studio, I can grab my Stillman & Birn 8 1/2" x 11" Alpha journal and do a quick, fun drawing... it feels like having a mouthful of sorbet between heavy, rich courses. And it's a palette cleanser, too. My painting palette is heavy on the reds and oranges and dark neutrals right now. My watercolor palette lets me lighten up, in all ways.

 

These daffodils and pussy willows are my first bouquet of the season from our local farmers' market. 

 

 

Here's a Flickr slideshow, just for fun, of many of the quick floral and botanical sketches I've done over the past few years:

Happy spring, whenever it finally comes your way!

Bringing the far North closer

When my beautiful daughter Cecelia won a scholarship to live and go to high school in Germany at age 16 for a WHOLE YEAR (!!!) I missed her so desperately that I started painting paintings of her at all stages of her childhood. In a miraculous way, those paintings brought her back to me during the endless 12 months of separation.

In a similar way, the paintings and studies for paintings I'm making for my upcoming show bring Iceland and Norway back to me. The studies below are quick and gestural, drawn from sketches and from the images in my mind's eye.

 

The trick will be to make finished works that share some of the energy of these studies. If I could, I'd spend one whole year just making large scale study after study like the last one shown here, acrylic on board. I wouldn't worry about producing a certain number of finished pieces, I'd just paint my heart out. And at the end of the year, I'd see where I'd been. Maybe that will be what 2014 holds for me. We'll see. There's a still-fresh 2013 to live first!

January! We're new again!

Because my birthday coincides with the new year, I'm always ready to get clear of the past and start again, with hope and gusto!

And so, here we are, starting again. My primary goal for the year is to get paintings painted for my show next fall. 

But, of course, I will always have drawing and sketching and writing in my journal and occasional illustrating to do. Once I have shared these images with you, two from my new Stillman and Birn Alpha  9 x 12 journal (this is my eighth!), two from a drawing session I had here yesterday with two friends, I'm going to finish tidying up my painting studio. And THEN I'm going to paint.

These drawings are of my young friend Meg, who is obviously quite beautiful. But there is a quality to her that has made me really want to draw her from the first time I met her. I can see the tiny child Meg still there in her features and I can also see the spare beauty of a Byzantine saint as well. Her soul is both old and new.

Finally, some palette cleansers, as I call them... today's sketches from my new journal. I make these images first thing in the morning in my studio, as a way to sweep away yesterday's struggles, to invoke new energy for the day. I love the natural calligraphy inherent in flowers, so when I have them, I draw them.