Laurelines

Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere: why I love toned paper

 

Yesterday, I posted on instagram a sketch I made of a still life in our new/old house on that cold, rainy afternoon. I made this on a Stillman and Birn gray Nova sketchbook, using colored pencils and other assorted materials.

This sketch took me right back to another interior still life I made at the house of dear friends four years ago at just this time of year. Atmosphere!

 

These started me looking back at the many drawings and sketches and some paintings I've made on toned paper for many years. 

Gray and tan paper automatically provide a lovely mid tone to give lines and colors a soaring start in life. This has many advantages. For a traveler like me, who takes only a carryon suitcase even on long international trips, I can pack a few pens, crayons, pencils and still have the range and flexibility I want.

Crucially for me, this paper guarantees the kind of atmospheric work I strive for.  And since I love to travel to, shall we say, atmospheric places like Norway, Wales, and Iceland, quite often in atmospheric seasons like winter, it is perfect for the task.

I have used three kinds of toned paper over the years: kraft paper, pastel paper (very rarely), and both Strathmore and Stillman and Birn toned paper in sketchbooks.

When I went to Alaska for an art residency a few years ago, I took along some high quality kraft paper to use for landscape studies. The ability to make atmospheric drawings with an economy of means was critical. Here are two of many from that project:

Toned paper has traditionally been used for pastel drawings/paintings. I'm not a pastelist, but I have used it occasionally, for my own purpose. Here I've used watercolor on pastel paper. The toothed softness of the paper gives the watercolors a texture boost and the bright colors against the gray/tan paper come to life.

Finally, I have so many of the above-mentioned atmospheric travel sketches to show you that I'll have to sit on my hands and just pick a few. Before there was Stillman and Birns toned sketchbooks, there were Strathmore ones and I used them plenty. Below are examples from both brands.

If you've seen this blog before, you've seen scores of my cold weather outdoor atmospherics on toned paper, so I won't repeat them, but here's a link to work from a recent December trip to Norway.

 

Atmospheric indoor scene at a Norwegian café in December:

Woman waiting at the Vienna train station on another chilly December day:

Blue jellyfish washed ashore in Abersoch, Wales. I adored how the cool colors and degrees of opacity behaved on the warmish gray Stillman and Birn paper!

New Year's Eve warmth and light in our seaside cottage on Whitesands Bay, Pembrokeshire, two years ago:

Hot chocolate helped ward off the cold at an outdoor market in Vancouver a while back in a Strathmore sketchbook:

I'm now sitting on my hands. Enough atmospherics! I do have other uses for toned paper, particularly in the making of expressive drawings and museum drawings!  Let that be a story for another day.  

New house, new studio, new work, and a new poem from a friend

 

As I've written here before, I'm researching the history of our new house and its people.

A quick background recap:

The one-story farmhouse was built in the 1860s in Smithfield, NC, by Burkett Jones, a cotton farmer and entrepreneur, an exConfederate soldier, who had been injured early in the war and sent home. The structure was moved to its present site in Hillsborough in 1997 to prevent its demolition at the expansion of the Smithfield airport.

Since the house's story is now part of mine, I want to weave its history into my art life. First steps in this process have been making loose portrait drawings of the original owners, drawing a cotton plant from life, collecting red clay soil to turn into paint for use in the coming weeks.  Below are a couple of early examples.

Cotton bolls and stems bought at the state farmers market. Acrylic, ink, soft pastel on paper.

Drawing from a copy of a copy of a copy of an original photograph of Burkett and Mary Ann Jones, provided by the Johnston County Heritage Center in Smithfield. No doubt these faces will appear again in different format and media. Graphite, water-soluble crayon, and soft pastel on toned paper.

Recently, Rachel Victoria Mills, a local poet and a new friend, as yet unmet in person due to Covid restrictions, saw on Instagram my image of cotton above, and, in her words, "the fields opened up", and, after a long period of quiet, a new poem emerged. 

Here are Rachel's own words as they appeared in a recent blog post of hers:

On the nowhere road between home and office, those 18 years I lived in the Eastern part of the state, this time of year the fields flatten and turn to short-haired flax, much like the farmers driving their loads along the highway next to me.   Along the road, the cotton workers go about their work, hatted and gloved, darker and more serious as they gather the seed-specked balls in combine-waves across the landscape.  Trip by trip, I must have absorbed that common scene until years later it has impressed itself indelibly in memory.

But it is Laura Frankstone's Instagram photo of her painting, yesterday's "warm-up" (as she calls it), which brings that vision back to me.

 

Cotton, in its various envisionings, has been a sort of opening of the field, to borrow Robert Duncan's phrase. Laura has been writing about the slow work of getting back to art after a long time of personal trials and removals, and her days finally in her new studio,"warming up" again to the field of making.  Whether, like her, there is now a new, big bright space to work in, or like me at this small table before a window which looks out, just as brightly, to garden beauty, insights come from all the windows we look out of.

 

I feel happy and deeply moved by Rachel's response. Who knows what will prick the creative spirit and when? As for me, I have light and color, rich stories, new energy, and lovely new studio windows to look out of. 

Colors! It is not only red clay that is warming up my world. Christmas flowers in the new place have thrilled me. Ink and wash on paper:

Quick sketch of flowers I'm adding to my new garden. I will document this new creation of mine in the next blog post. Ink and watercolor wash.

 

And last, a glimpse of my beautiful new studio, until recently a two-car garage. In 2021, may you, too, have new windows to look out of and opening creative fields.

Happy new year!

Starting the New Year in Wales, a glorious beginning

There's a lot of story to tell, too much to try to share tonight. 

But before I post a few sketches, I will share quickly some memories: my exhilarating polar swim in the Irish Sea on New Year's Day; seeing the Quadrantid Meteor showers on my birthday night while wrapped in many layers and sitting on the front lawn of our cottage on Whitesands Bay; with the help of a traveling professional astronomer on the same birthday night, seeing nebulae, a galaxy, the Milky Way in bright form, many constellations, the fuzzy green comet 46P/Wirtanen; at Evensong of the first Sunday of Christmas at St Davids Cathedral sitting in the choir stalls with choir and clergy, hearing hymns and the liturgy in both Welsh and English.

I walked and walked and walked and walked some more until my heart was overspilling.  My husband and I slept deeply in that quiet, safe, numinous place. 

It's been another rough re-entry to real life (like the one from Norway last year) but I have several paintings going, a few from before the trip, but several newly started ones, all inspired by Wales. This circular and multi-pronged approach has me nudging each one along until I finish one, then another, then two more, etc. I'm happy in the studio.

So, sketches, just a few. I spent more time being, being outside, walking, resting, being with my husband, taking it all in.

Looking out over the Irish Sea to Ramsey Island and beyond, from the warmth of our cottage by the sea. This is white marker and pencil on brown paper. In real life, the sketch goes across the gutter of the sketchbook, making a double spread. I will add the other side later. 

Brush pen sketch made on site at Whitesands Bay, color added later.  These rocks and the ones below are old friends. They figured in the 12' long concertina sketchbook I made in May 2017, part of my Caledonian Orogeny project!

The first thing I bought on New Year's Eve day were two votive candles and holders. With these and the wood fire burning in our cottage living room, we had light and warmth.

After the polar swim on New Year's Day, I was cold and starving, so David and I repaired to our favorite St Davids café at Oriel y Parc and had lunch. I drew the family at the next table.

Sketch of St Davids Head, made standing on Whitesands Beach in the cold and wind. This and the one above are roughly and quickly drawn (the cold! the wind!), with color added later.

I'll be staying at home more this year, finishing paintings, being with family and friends, walking and trying to get more sleep! Wales spoiled me in that way and in so many others.

A tardy, but very Happy New Year's greeting to you!

Christmas sketches past and a wish for all of us

I am putting discussions of painting on hold until I return from Wales in a couple of weeks, but I wanted to make a December post to wish you happiness, a festive spirit against daunting odds, and to thank you for your support and interest, still. I feel and cherish the warmth you send in your messages to me and in our real world encounters. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Being the cold-seeking missile that I am, I travel in the winter a lot.  Here is my Christmas card to you, some sketches from such travel over the past years.

Here we are in Bruges, on one December a while back. I sat quietly in front of our hotel's lovely fireplace and Christmas tree, sipped a glass of sparkling something, and drew:

Next, a trip to Vancouver in early December one year found David and me running for cover from a rainy late afternoon walk on the harbor. The Fairmont Hotel bar had empty seats. I had great fun drawing their winter-themed lobby:

Oh, Copenhagen, how we love you! This was another time we headed for warmth on a cold winter night. It was Tivoli Gardens in December, where explosions of millions of lights and colors vanquish the dark.  My sketch was made in a bar in the gardens, where a stately tree dominated the impressive room.

For love, there is no equal to Norway in my heart! Here's a glimpse of a very cozy café, we repaired to when we were staying in a small village near Tromsø:

And how we love Munich, too! This was from the first of two trips we made in successive Decembers. We couldn't stay away!  Orlando Café is busy and touristy, but nevertheless beautiful and the pastries (and beer!) (and soups!) are superb.

Finally, here we are in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a village where I spent important time with my family in childhood.  Walking from the parking lot just outside the village toward the center, I suddenly felt the intense presence of my late father. The last time we were there together, I was 6 or 7. His very real presence, and the memories of all my life with him, overcame me and I sobbed and sobbed. 

Later, having collected myself, I drew this scene from the warm interior of Restaurant Alpenhof.

 

Love and joy come to you, no matter where, and no matter how or what, you celebrate. 

See you next year! Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

 

 

Back on track:Norway story, continued

Summer heat has cast a pernicious spell on me, it's clear, but the winds are changing, the light is changing, and, finally unwilting, so am I.  Weather aside, reentry to normal life has been very difficult after such an exalted and inspiring time in Norway.

My chief reason for going on this trip was in pursuit of my Places Project,  to see and draw another vestige from the Caledonian Orogeny, circa 450-250 MYA.  I had fewer days to do this than I had for my first two drawings, made in Wales, one in Pembrokeshire, one on Anglesey.

The accordion sketchbook I drew in here was custom made for me by book artist friend Josh Hockensmith. It is 10 1/2' long when stretched to its full length and each page is bigger than those in the Seawhite of Brighton concertina books I used in my first two drawings. The paper is ivory and slightly toothed, not white and smooth, and so the resulting drawing has a slightly different look from the first two.

The rocks I drew were very different, too. The rocks in Wales were faceted, sharp, angular, with mostly smooth surfaces. The rocks in Norway were flowing, textured, and multi-colored in shades of grays, ochres, some siennas and subtle blues. These outcrops will lend themselves to later studio pieces, some collages, some linocuts, perhaps,  and I am looking forward to seeing what will emerge!

 

In between my days of Caledonian Orogeny drawing, I sketched, as you will have seen in my last post. Here are some miscellaneous moments, caught in my sketchbook. On a remote island in the Barents Sea, magenta saxifrage grew improbably and brashly between rocks in the tundra.

Later, in the Lofotens, I drew another view of the majestic Olstind mountain, seen from our cabin near Reine.

My husband and I love Bergen and it was in Bergen that I had this delicious vitello tonnato dish for lunch at a café near the Kode Museums. Note the candle, lit in the middle of the day in sunny, summery Bergen. This is one of the things I love about Scandinavia, the use of candles, a profound celebration of light, at all times of the year, at all times of the day, in the Polar Night or in the time of the Midnight Sun. I have taken this to my heart and I do the same thing in our home in North Carolina.

Circling back to Longyearbyen, here is a drawing of a bus passenger, who was a wonderfully monumental figure, compelling to draw:

On the painting front, two recently finished pieces.The first is another work belonging to my Places Project. This is a Copper Mountain sunset painting, inspired by my artist residency in Alaska, fall before last:

The second is an example of What I Did for Love, a snowy owl painting requested by my four-year-old grandson Miles. I have two more requested owlish pieces to finish, but I am returning to Norway in the studio in the next days, too.

I won't wait so long to post again. Soon I am taking a shortish trip with two dear friends to Yorkshire, not on the trail of the Caledonian Orogeny. The main focus will be to spend time with my friends in the birthplace and childhood region of one of them. Though I have lived and traveled widely in the UK, I have never been to Yorkshire. It turns out that my long-ago ancestors from Norway, settled in Yorkshire (coincidentally near where we will be), before much later emigrating to the US, so I will be, in some small way, returning home. Who knew??? See you soon!

Norway in May and June: first glimpses

Well, those were three glorious weeks! My Inner Adventurer emerged big time, much to my delight! i'm still crowing with pleasure and pride over kayaking in polar waters! We went just beyond the 80th parallel, as I mentioned we would and it was all that I had dreamed of! It was celestial. It was never to be forgotten.

More later about all of that. For now, a scattering of sketches,  quiet glimpses of things we saw and did when we weren't being swept away by magnificence. 

A large carved wooden sculpture called Kongetorsk, (cod is one of the traditional mainstays of Norwegian cuisine, commerce, and culture) located in a small square in Bergen, is a favorite subject of mine.  David and I woke up early so I could draw it before clumps of view-obscuring tourists arrived.

I had *drawn this one December a few years ago, so it was fun to revisit and draw it again! See below for earlier drawing.

Oh, man, trying to capture the splendor of that scenery in a little sketchbook seemed futile, but I made what I call little mnemonic devices... images that endlessly reopen to me the moments of being there.

 

We visited a toy museum at the tiny village we stayed in near Reine, in the Lofoten Islands. I made friends with Dagmar Gylseth, the owner of Sakrisøy rorbuer (fishing cabins and cottages) there and drew this little scene from her marvelous museum. What a moving experience to be surrounded by her collection of hundreds of artifacts of Norwegian childhood.  Their stories and their meaning were palpable in the atmosphere there.

While in the Lofotens, David and I had our evening meals at Underhuset, the fabulous restaurant which is owned and run by Dagmar and her son Michael. Fresh seafood was offered in abundance! In fact, I ate seafood and fish three times a day most days throughout the trip. I expect gills, fins, and shells to sprout on my person at any moment! And I'll put my current Omega 3 count up against yours any day!

We went to a lecture on the geology of Svalbard given by a French geologist on board our ship and while I listened, I drew. Geology! Svalbard! Caledonian Orogeny! All my favorite subjects!

Rounding out this miscellany of moments on our Norwegian trip is a sketch I made in Bergen, at one of the city's art museums, during the last days of our visit. Shiny, compelling objects that here, too, arrested my eye and my imagination.

I have several more sketches as well as the accordion sketchbook I made of Caledonian Orogenic outcrops and will share those in the next days. I have begun some studio pieces as well, deriving from the images I lived and breathed and stored in my mind's eye.

Balancing my accordion sketchbook... Laura on the rocks! More to come! Come back soon!!

 

*Here's the same cod sculpture pictured above, but drawn on an earlier, winter trip. 

*

January/February, on paper and in color

I've had a good beginning of the year so far, a combination of studio time (feeling my way with matte acrylic paint, which I love) and drawing and sketching, some examples of which follow! 

Another early morning warm up in my studio: I loved making this tea light sketch with acrylics and brush pen on toned Stillman & Birn paper:

Stillman & Birn journal again, this time a collaged spread, with deep red accents on that matte gray paper:

Finding energy and joy in small things, such as this arrangement at my dear friends Jeffery and Stanley's house. Their place is full of artfully and heartfully arranged objects from their charmed lives. I will go back often  to draw there:

Here's a shift in mood! Just returned from a whirlwind trip to New York to see the David Hockney show at the Met, and made some sketches while there. I was delighted by several marble portrait busts of men with cascades of curls (wigs, of course) and wish I'd had days to sketch more of them! Drawn on site, red and blue gouache added later.

Breakfast was a sketchable affair, I felt, with those gestural pearly white globes, Vermont farm poached eggs, and other fun colors and shapes:

Last trip sketch, my patient, calm husband at JFK, waiting for our flight back home, reads on his Kindle:

Finally, my illustration for the Winter 2018 issue of Charleston Style & Design Magazine, accompanying a lovely essay by Patrice Gopo, writing of her travel and fulfillment dreams for her young daughter. This will be my last CS & D illustration until summer when I look forward to getting back on board with that lovely magazine. For the next months travel and other work will be on my front burners.

Brush pen memories

Help! I'm working on illustrations to go along with the essay on my garden that I wrote for Charleston Style & Design's upcoming fall issue. Deadline: NOW or a time very much like it.

I have made dozens and zillions of drafts for these, mainly because I can't settle on the technique I want to use. My collage approach doesn't fit with this subject and the format of these images. My studio floor, the repository for rejected drafts, is a mess, 

What to do??!! Last night, I thought, "brush pen, why not?" I love working with my Pentel pocket brush pen. It feels almost like an extension of my drawing hand. I've used it for lots of sketch subjects and some illustrations over the years. I looked back at my Flickr account to remind myself of the ways I had done this and was waylaid by memories.

May I share some of these rediscovered images and memories with you?

Below: In Pasadena,a cactus garden, part of the larger Huntington Gardens, that I visited with my friend and brilliant artist Virginia Hein on a sketching jaunt fall before last. This brings back such wonderful memories of our time together.

I had hesitated to try brush pen with my current assignment because I wasn't sure I could get the nuances I want with it. But this sketch managed nuance!

Next a scene from Oakland Bay from 2015. I was visiting my daughter Cecelia. Looking at this, I am instantly back in that day, in that place. And I miss my daughter so much. Some nuance here, too!

In another vein, a portrait sketch of Sir Walter Raleigh for the cover of Walter Magazine in 2013. I submitted several images. They chose another one for the cover, but I have always loved this Sir Walter's sassy and flourishy attitude.

Jumping again to a quite different topic, here's a pretty atmospheric, nuancy sketch of a scene in Iceland. Drawing in the twilight, especially the Northern twilight.. aahhh. Heaven. 

The sketch below is another one-way express ticket to the past. David and I were traveling in the Dordogne with our friends Moreton and Drake. Moreton drew me as I drew this scene on the river near Bouziès. I spy nuance! Fabulous memories here, too!:

Finally, speaking of being overtaken by memories, I saw this pen and ink and crayon drawing of our Miles three or so years ago and, though it's not a brush pen drawing, it IS a drawing of a beloved baby, so that counts for a lot, doesn't it? Memories.

Back to work now, keeping my fingers crossed that my brush pen and I will get this done!

Copper runs through it

Well, here I am with a post from February, which cheekily ended way too soon! 

For months I have been elatedly immersed in thoughts of copper and copper-related minerals and copper-related colors, ever since my residency in Alaska last August. One Alaskan sunset in particular was seared forever on my mind's eye and heart... the sky all tints and hues of orange, pink, red, and the glacial waters of Lake Clark looking like pale oxidized copper,  and then the mountains, Copper Mountain, in particular (yes! That is its name!) was set on coppery fire by that sun. It was one of those holy moments; I felt lifted to a world of thrilling and pure beauty.

And then, everywhere I looked afterwards, I saw copper... in the salmon leaping from the water, in the colors of the native blue geranium leaves as they turned autumnal, in the bonfire flames, and on and on. My work started to be filled with burnt orange, cadmium oranges and reds, phthalo turquoise, cobalt green, teal, burnt sienna, ochre... the orange/blue- to- red/green world I saw when I thought of Alaska.

This is a bonfire built the night of that coppery sunset.The magnificent fire was a brilliant celebration of that place, that day, that glory. Here we see my orange/turquoise palette in an early manifestation.

Below are two of many, many studies I'm working through to try to figure out my own idiom for expressing what I saw and felt in the coppery Alaska. In addition to those zillion studies of all sizes and impulses, I have 12 paintings in progress, filling up my studio walls and floor. Who knows which of these will end up resolved? I don't mind, though. This is the slow way I work. I am an eternal pioneer in the studio, scrabbling for ways to get where i want to go.

Here is copper in the vegetal world, spangles of it appearing overnight on the leaves of wild native geranium:

Later, on my trip to Austria, I was thrilled to learn that the Natural History Museum in Vienna has a vast mineralogical collection. I headed straight for the specimens that were copper-related. Oh, those colors, my new colors! I stood my ground there on the cold tile floor, sketching carefully for hours, as rivers of school children flowed everywhere around me. This was the micro view of my copper world and with my love of geology, I reveled in it.  Here are two spreads from my Vienna sketchbook:

Since my return, I've made several sketches, unrelated to my Alaska project, without realizing as I drew that I was still using my coppery palette!

A bystander at the Women's March in January asked me why I'd chosen the colors I used for my sketches. It was then that I realized what I'd done!

I want to finish at least SOME of the Copper Mountain series before I leave for Wales again in May. I'm slow, but I'm optimistic!

2016 turns to 2017

 And so do we all. This year has been a fraught one, to say the least. We have had way more than one year's share of loss, despair, and dread. I know that many of us around the world are looking to the new year for some, for any, relief. May we find it.

On a personal, artistic level, however, this year has been one of the fullest ever, with trips and work deriving from my Places Project. I began to experiment with painting and drawing with found, organic materials. I have a long way to go and, I assume, lots of time to continue with this. Mud, paint made from rocks and soil, sand, charred twigs, berry juice were some of my means along this path.

The red earth of North Carolina, gathered here from Peregrine Farm, is highly pigmented and is a total joy to smear and brush on surfaces. Soil from my area makes paint in this deep red and in various other ochre, umber, and sienna hues.

 Rows of celosia flowers at Peregrine Farm, supported by white plastic mesh made for a striking subject. Mixed media : mud, acrylic, watercolor, found charcoal on toned paper:

Other studies and sketches from Peregrine Farm can be seen here and here:

 In Alaska, at my residency at Chulitna Lodge on magnificent Lake Clark, there was peaty soil and sand to dip into. I brought back some soil I ground and dried for use in my studio this year. I overestimated what I could do pursuing these means in a limited period of time, restricted to materials I could pack in my carryon! I need to be somewhere for an extended period, with lots of space to work and to store materials. I am working on just such a scenario for myself for 2017.

View of Copper Mountain from across Lake Clark. Mixed media: watercolor, sand, soil.

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 There were wild currants to squash and smear to add color to drawings:

This and other spreads and studies from Alaska can be seen here and   :

 

 

In coastal Pembrokeshire, the world was rich with beautiful mud and rocks that told stories 450 million years old. I was in ecstasy there and have just made plans to return for two weeks in May to continue those explorations.

Above, I paint and draw with sand and rocks and below I smear in my sketchbook mud from the source of sacred St. Non's well near St. Davids, with blackberry stain added for color.

Other paintings and studies from the 12' long accordion sketchbook

I used in Wales appear here.

I enjoyed another year of working with Charleston Style and Design Magazine, producing illustrations that allowed me to stretch and play and that were such fun to do

 

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I led my second three-part drawing series at the Nasher Museum of Art in September and it was a lovely, successful experience, just as last year's was. It is a thrill to work with enthusiastic students from all ages and backgrounds.