Laurelines

December trip sketches and thoughts

(Please click on images to see them in full.)

 

The days after our return from Bavaria and Austria raced by. I felt breathless trying to get everything ready for the holidays. But part of me is still there, in lively and friendly Munich, elegant Salzburg, and imposing, glittery Vienna. The sketches I made this time were idiosyncratic and totally self-directed. It was cold out and we were traveling with friends, so I didn't have, or didn't arrange for, many urban-type sketching opportunities.

I took a limited mix of art tools: big Pitt artist pens, a smattering of Inktense pencils, a couple of micro pens and a Pentel pocket brush pen. I wanted to add color on site, get it done! I  often take gray or brown toned paper sketchbooks when I travel to cold climates in the winter time and I did this again this time. The toned paper gives an atmospheric quality to what I draw that is just right for those cold places.

My first sketch of the trip was in Munich, at a little café in the Viktualienmarkt.  We were on a glühwein quest and we found a fun, spartan place to sit and celebrate the first night of our trip.

Another successful glühwein stop! This was the second night of our Munich adventure.

The wild boar mounted on the wall at Goerreshof restaurant in Munich took me back instantly to memories of our first trip to Sweden, to Gothenburg to see our daughter Cecelia, where I sketched another pig's head in the food market there:

Here's my Swedish pig from 2005:

And here's my Munich pig from 2016:

 

In tiny Frielassing, where we had to drop off our rental car, we had dinner at a family-run, cozy restaurant. I made this sketch in the darkish interior, using dry Inktense pencils. 

 

At the Naturhistoriches Museum in Vienna, I was compelled to sit and draw skeletons from the long- ago past. 

 

Leaving Vienna for Munich again and our flight home, I drew this lovely woman at the Hauptbahnhof very early in the morning.

 

 I admit that I have had mixed feelings about starting to write this post. My cheerful words and images seemed inappropriate at best. A few days after we returned home, 12 people were murdered in Berlin and 56 were injured at a Christmas market very like the ones we went to in Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna. I had, in fact, at first hesitated to return to Munich this year, after last year's terrorist events in Munich and other parts of Germany ...and elsewhere. In the end, I decided not to let fear guide our plans and so we went. We were lucky this time. Others, tragically, were not.

That we live in highly dangerous times is obvious to everyone. Hatred and violence manifest daily around the world. It is easy to feel hopeless and I often do. It is not a state of mind I can sustain and yet what is there to replace it with?

For my own comfort and with that stubborn human hope that, against all evidence and against all odds, there's a better world coming, I repeat to myself these words from the Buddhist Metta prayer, the prayer for lovingkindness:

May all beings everywhere be happy, be safe, and be free from suffering.

May all beings everywhere be at peace.

 

Love and peace to you.

 

Alaska, part two, sketches and studies continued

Here is the second and last batch of studies from Alaska. I wanted to post them before September completely sweeps me away with planning my drawing classes for the Nasher Museum of Art and pulling things together for David's and my trip to coastal Wales two days after the 3-part series ends!

I have some painting ideas growing out of my time in Alaska and evolving from my sketches and studies... and I need to get the rough lineaments of these down in the studio before I head for Wales. So, hurrying along I go.

For now, here are two more gestural mountain studies. The sky in Alaska was where most of the actual, visible energy of the place manifested. The mountain peaks held and exuded their own energy, of course,  but what was surprising in Alaska was that the water itself was pretty calm. This is not always the case with Lake Clark, but compared to the sea, the lake's drama is simply going to be more subdued in most cases. Somehow, this had not occurred to me before I went!

I had packed a Strathmore sketchbook filled with gray-toned paper, but I used it less often than I thought I would. That brown craft paper was so much sturdier!

The angular peakiness of the mountains became more and more apparent as I drew. My curving, swooping gestural style ceded to the reality of those chiseled shapes as the days went by.

Sitting on the deck of the bathhouse one late afternoon, I grabbed some pencils and sketched a view of the mountains, seen through the branches of an Alaskan spruce.

Oh, I had fun drawing with charred wood from our bonfire! Here are two more found charcoal sketches:

And a quick shot similar to the one I posted last time, of two sketchbook spreads, the pages of which won't fit on my scanner:

I'll be posting work made by the participants in my drawing series at the Nasher over the next three weeks. I had forgotten to take photos of the drawings last time and I won't make that mistake again. We are going to have a wonderful series and I want to share it with you!

Alaska, part one, sketches and studies, means and materials

Note: You do have to click on the thumbnails here to see the full pieces. They are too wide for this format.

 

Well, Alaska was humbling! And thrilling and unforgettable. I'm so grateful for the time I had there.  I wish it had been longer.  

Humbling for the obvious reasons of the place's grandeur and uniqueness, but on a work level, too,  because constricted packing space and travel exigencies naturally limited the kinds of materials I could take with me. The upside of that is that I made do with what I had... and that is a very Alaskan trait!

Here are samples of studies and sketches I made, direct and immediate responses to what I saw, in no particular order. 

At the last minute, I decided to throw in a pad of heavy craft paper and I'm very glad I did! It is so sturdy and, being toned, it provided instant atmospherics and drama.

 

The paper's brown tones seemed to bring out my hitherto completely unsuspected inner Maynard Dixon, a twentieth-century painter of the American west!

 The craft paper stood up well to the charcoal stubs I harvested from a fire pit, using them as drawing tools:

I brought loose sheets of heavyish watercolor paper and was able to make some studies with paint made from soil.I brought back soil, rocks, and found charcoal to continue these experiments at home.

I collected wild currants and smashed them and used their pulp to add color to this ink sketch of fireweed:

In a sketchbook made for me by a good friend especially for this trip, I turned to more colorful subjects:

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More to come of Alaska and its aftermath!

July: images and experiments

All images after the first one derive from Peregrine Farm, first of the places for my Places Project, which I began a few months ago. Alaska in August and Wales in October are next on my agenda.

But first: For the Summer 2016 issue of Charleston Style & Design Magazine, I was to illustrate an essay by Judy Kurtz Goldman on mothers and daughters and their gardens, in particular, the story of the garden of the author's late mother. Her mother had had an unusual way of waving the garden hose in arcs above her head as she watered her flowers and this is something the daughter does, too. "I wish [my mother] could stand beside me on a hot July afternoon and feel the spray from my garden hose.  I'd thank her for this wonderful things she's passed down to me, as we both squint at the arc of water crossing itself over and over."

 Continuing with my plan to use materials from the places I immerse myself in, in combination with the elements earth, air, fire, and water... in one guise or another... I made another cyanotype with love-in-a-mist from Betsy's flower fields. The image, an arrangement of flowers and cut paper placed on photo-sensitive paper, is developed in sunlight.

Later in the month, I sat and drew in the celosia fields. Here I fell for the brash and blazing reds of the blossoms as well as for the accidental beauty of the white mesh fabric used to support the tall stems as they grew. This was found sculpture! On Strathmore toned paper, I used paint made from soil I gathered from the farm as well as crayons and pencil.

The days I visited the farm to draw celosia flowers were very hot. I tried to convey the sense of red hot air in this drawing, made on site using a multi-leaded colored pencil, with red acrylic paint added later in the studio.

Drawing with charcoal made from charred blueberry branches found on the farm, I sketched a plowed and open field edged by a road leading to the Alex and Betsy's house. The reddish paint was made with field soil and the ochre paint was made with soil I collected near the farm's creek beds.

 Here's another drawing of celosia flowers growing through a grid of white plastic mesh. Drawn with watercolor crayons, painted with paint made from field soil and a final layer of acrylic paint.

Not all of my experiments were successful, but isn't that what experiments are for, to try stuff and see?

Here's a case in point,  a collage I made of purple and red lettuces growing in a field. I had been attracted to the wavy, concentric shapes of the lettuce heads, and to their jewel-like colors.  For these, I drew from my studio stash of leftover painted paper, cutting the paper into lettuce-inspired shapes.  As in the images above, the field's earth is painted with earth from the field itself!  That is what I love about this project... playing with found, organic materials in combination with more conventional media, to try to render the energy and essential nature of these places that are meaningful to me.

I leave for my art residency in Alaska in a few days! Trying to work out which art supplies to take is my challenge. I will report back on what I chose soon! Happy August!