Laurelines

San Francisco days, wet and dry, March 2016

Well, it looks like I'll be heading back to the Bay Area end of April because my daughter Cecelia is having her first art show there and I can't miss the opening! I'm SO proud of her!

I hope and trust the weather will be better than it was on this recent trip. It rained, rained, rained... rain with the weight of chicken soup... every day except my last.

So, here are some indoor sketches first from the rainy days, and then some from my happy, busy last day on the coast with my dear friend Kathleen, whom I've loved since we were freshmen in college.

I stayed in a charming, slightly quirky, but very commodious bed and breakfast place in north Berkeley. The decor was heavily Asian and very tranquil. Here's a peek:

 

Cecelia and I had lunch our last day at a Spanish restaurant on Shattuck Street. Inside: bright and dry. Outside: rain.

We went to Chinatown to an Asian art supply store so I could buy some BIG calligraphy brushes. Afterwards, we sketched on the staircase. Here is Cecelia:

Finally, three sketches from the day trip Kathleen and I took to the coast near Pescadero. I was in absolute heaven, witnessing this craggy magnificence and making attempts at capturing something of it. I can't wait to go back!

April is going to be a busy month, what with another trip to California, leading a sketching session at Duke's Nasher Museum of Art, finalizing plans for a very special trip to Alaska that I just got word I'd be making this year, and diving into my personal project for the year! More about all of this soon! A bientôt!

February in the studio: collecting, dreaming

I've been collecting images this month, fossil images relating to the places I've been to and hope to go to. This is an offshoot of my desire to make artwork with and of the numinous places of my life. I plan to paint and draw with found organic materials, as I've mentioned before. I won't be using fossils themselves, I hasten to say, but will incorporate that imagery somehow into my work, if and however it works out.

I've also been generating lots of images for illustration projects, one of which I finished, but can't share until it is published in April. But I CAN and do keep the leftover bits and pieces and recycle them in the pages of my  journal.

First, though, the drawing below. It's throwback to an old, old theme of mine from my early years of blogging, in which I collected interesting objects found on my walks, brought them home and drew and painted them. As usual, it was the textures and gestures of the objects that captured me.

I have birds! My most recent illustration assignment for Charleston Style & Design centered around singing birds in a cherry tree. I put my cd, A Field Guide to Eastern Bird Songs, on the laptop and played it as I drew. Perfect inspiration!

Here are some of the aforementioned illustration leftovers, pasted on a page in my journal:

Below, more leftovers, from two different projects, appearing together in the pages of my journal.  A happy pairing, I thought:

Below, a spread of the fossil studies I mentioned earlier:

There is something very compelling to me about connecting in my artwork, in any way I can, to the deep energy of the world we stand on. It's that old sweet song... channeling the ch'i.

In a few days, I'll be back in the San Francisco to see my daughter and my dearest friend Kathleen. I'll be sketching there, you can count on it. 

I'll tell you then about the place I've recently added to my plans this year, a country connected to Norway by virtue of the events of the Caledonian Orogeny. What's four million years' separation between friends? I'm beside myself with glee, thinking of the new place!

See you soon!

2016: Time out. Time in. Begin again.

 

It’s late for my yearly post about my art (art AND life. I don't separate them any longer) plans for the new year.  That’s because I am moving into a new phase, one in which there are no clear roads and goals.

And that, for me now, is a GOOD thing. Control? Let it go.

The primary direction I’ll be taking, as I hoped it would be last year, will be inner.  The work I’ll be making will come from me and not for jobs. There are millions of people who can make illustrations, but there is only one person who can paint the paintings that are inside me, waiting to take shape and draw breath. 

Of course, this is close to what I said LAST year:

and some from the year before. I got off my intended track, but that, too, is life. Nothing is lost. I learned a lot.

As for my work, I (almost) don’t have a clue what’s waiting to be born and therein lies the excitement as well as the anxiety. I have the mountain series in mind, as with last year, and I’m going to get back to it. But maybe re-addressing this idea, to this point not fully realized, is itself just a step along the way, maybe it will point me in other directions, whatever and wherever they are.

 

To support this inward journey, I’m doing all sorts of things: meditating daily, reading widely on the topic of mindfulness meditation and lovingkindness meditation, books by Tara Brach and Pema Chödrön. I’m taking a year-long online course called Foundations of Wellbeing by Rick Hanson, author of another of my favorite books, Buddha’s Brain. I’m thrilled by all that we are learning about the brain and Rick Hanson, as a noted neuropsychologist and author of several books, is in the forefront of that field.

I’m walking a lot, as usual, working out, and eating really healthy things, even healthier than I always have.

I’m trying to demote myself from Type A to Type C, or at least to Type B-. My immune system is not fond of stress.

I’m continuing to keep my journal, my Big Fat Black Journal, as I call it. As I've said so many times, it is my true lifeline, connecting me with my deeper self and with all the richness as well as the scary awfulness of this world we share.

 

I’ll still be illustrating some, but only those things that speak to me, that make me happy, and that aren’t so time-consuming that I’m knocked sideways. Here's my illustration for the current issue of Charleston Style & Design. I'm working on another for the spring issue, even as we speak. The people there are a joy to work with.

 

I’ll be teaching some drawing classes and leading sketching sessions at the Nasher Museum again. My focus in the fall series will be drawing with nontraditional materials.

 

Some of my work will be in two books to be published this year. More details as I know them.

I’ll be experimenting some with making my own paints and pigments and drawing materials and supports from natural materials. This interest comes from my growing awareness of the importance of place to me.  I would like to draw and paint with the materials that are literally derived from the numinous places of my life. And I’m going to travel to some of those numinous places, too.

 

I’m taking a silk-screen workshop and I’m keeping my antennae up for other new learning experiences, new ways to make art.

 

It’s 2016 and this is my one and only life. I’m raising my hand now and I’m saying, “Here.”

 

Happy 2016 to you. May you find peace, love, fulfillment this year and every year.

December in Bavaria: my sketches and good wishes to you!

Happy end of 2015 and happy tomorrow and the new year! I am just getting this post in in the nick of time... before the clock delivers us to 2016 in this part of the world! The sketches from our trip to Bavaria earlier this month are a fitting way for me to end this year's blog posts. We LOVED being in that part of the world. It is where I spent some of the happiest moments of my childhood and now, of my adulthood. We have already made plans to go back next December. It is not the home of my deep heart the way Norway is, but it is important to me, emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually. Magnificent natural beauty! History! Great art and architecture! Interesting food and drink! Yes to Bavaria! And Austria, too! I'm not through with you yet!

Oh, the delicious confections in Munich! We succumbed, often.

The rococco grotto at the Residenz Museum in Munich wowed me with its rich textures and quirky figures!

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a place personally important to me. David and I spent the day there, wandering, sketching, eating, drinking. Of course!

 

More Bavarian dining and sketching:

And just a quick sketch of the mountain shapes that thrilled me there. I have more of these. They will provide lots of visual and emotional information for later paintings.

I am so excited about 2016. I will tell more in the next few days. Happy, happier, happiest new year to all of you!

Passing through Pasadena and LA with pencils, pens, color

Since I was in the LA area primarily to visit an old friend who is not a sketcher, I made fewer travel sketches than I normally would have.  We went to my favorite kinds of places to visit when I travel, though : museums and garden. The first two sketches here are, in fact, some I made with fellow artist and Urban Sketcher and longtime cyber buddy Virginia Hein! No worries there about taking up HER time while I sketched!

 The cactus and succulent garden at Huntington Gardens was fabulous. I have seen other such gardens, but this surpasses all of them.

Red hot pokers (kniphofia of some description) interwoven with succulents at Huntington Gardens. Eye-stopping.

 

 At the Norton Simon Museum, Rodin's Balzac, with his leonine head and sphinx-like hauteur, reigns over the front courtyard.

Indian sculpture, Digambara Yaksha Sarvahna,  circa 900.

 

Next up (and soon!) Munich, Salzburg, and the Bavarian Alps!! Watch this space!

Moving along: October

October has been a month of transitions. I moved past one big set of deadlines, slowed down a bit and made some really fun Inktober meanders. (Inktober means making an ink drawing for every day in October. I didn't make the daily goals, but I made several drawings throughout the month.)

Then I approached another deadline, did that work, and finally, here I am, ready for travel and trying out new materials and methods for painting and drawing. Will tell more about that later, but for now I'll just say that I'm really, really excited about these new directions for 2016!

And here are some of the Inktober forays. I learned to my delight that I can draw on my interior landscapes of the far north, of Iceland and Norway, and with a few strokes of ink and wash and resist, bring those numinous places to myself again!  It felt like magic!

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In a move of great counter-intuitiveness, I am going to a hot and dry place next week, to stay with an old friend and visit others. I'm so looking forward to the friends, but the heat... not so much.

December will find me running truer to form.  I'll be going to the Bavarian Alps, circling back to a well-loved place of my childhood.

I'll be back with sketches of that hot, dry place soon!

September was here

At least, I think it was. I mostly had my head down in the studio. However, I finished my two big summer projects yesterday, just as the month was about to turn. My three-sessions drawing classes at Duke University's Nasher Art Museum were wonderful far, far beyond expectations. My classes were completely booked, with a long waiting list and the participants were a varied, accomplished, and very fun group!  I am still basking in the glow of all that excitement!

We accomplished a lot. The students made blind contour drawings, modified blind contour drawings, gesture drawings, structural drawings, expressive drawings. I, unfortunately, failed to take photos of their work and I won't make that mistake again. Here are some demo drawings I made for the class:

 Blind contour drawing of a 16th C Saint Matthew

 

Modified blind contour and gesture drawing.

  

Expressive drawing of a fragment of a Roman sarcophagus, made with two colored pencils taped together, done in a modified blind contour technique. 

In all the drawings for this series, we emphasized process, not product. This was about freeing yourself and finding your own relationship with the subjects of your drawings and with yourself as artist.

I will show some of the paintings I did for the restaurant in Chicago once it opens, but here are just some of the gorgeous scraps and leavings I kept, after a summer of testing colors and composition on paper. These are a treasure for me for both my future paintings and illustrations. Exactly how they will be used remains to be seen and that is the very exciting part!

I have one more illustration to do this year, for the winter issue of Charleston Style & Design, due the end of October. Then I will take November and December off for travel, family, friends, and my own work. More about all that later. I feel so happy just thinking about that freedom and flexibility. Happy October to all of us!

Come draw with me at the Nasher Museum!

This is an open invitation to join my three-session drawing series at the Nasher Museum at Duke University this September.  We will meet at the museum on the successive Saturdays of September 12, 19, and 26 from 10:00 to noon. There will be drawing materials provided, but feel free also to bring your own sketchbooks, paper, pencils and other dry drawing utensils. If you have not yet registered, please contact Alex Deyneka, education assistant at the Nasher ([email protected]) or call 919 684 9244.

Welcome to the world of drawing. If you are not a beginner, welcome back!  You might be unaware of it, but there is at present a worldwide movement about drawing, a veritable tsunami of drawing and drawers. When you pick up a pencil or pen or crayon, you are participating in this global phenomenon. I don’t know about you, but I find great energy and excitement in this knowledge. Drawing connects in so many ways. This connection is one of my chief themes as an artist and I have a lot to say about it.

You may not care about worldwide drawing currents and that is fine. You are welcome to ignore this phenomenon… but you will still benefit from it, if you choose to, in several ways. There are many, many books now published on drawing and sketching and lots of online and real life drawing groups. Because of the popularity of drawing now, there are more and more kinds of drawing tools available to buy. So there is lots of inspiration out there, lots of support for those of us who draw, and, yes, lots of ways to spend money on art supplies!

This kind of connection among many, many people is one thing.

The other key kind of connection is between you and the object/person/animal...in our case, the work of art... you are drawing. This is the I-thou connection, Entity (you) and Entity (the drawn Other), meeting in time, on paper. There is no reason to feel daunted when you set out to draw even a great masterpiece. For those moments when you are in its presence, responding to it with what is within you, you are peers. You give yourself to it. It becomes, for this experience, yours.

And for me, there’s still another form of connection, and that is to the energy that pervades the universe, connecting us all.  I believe that when we draw (and paint, sculpt, write, build, plant) we have the opportunity to swim in that living stream of energy and become part of it in a deliberate way. We are part of it by the very fact of our being human, of course. Drawing actualizes and enriches our participation.

In our classes, I will offer standard instruction if needed, in addition to offering my own approaches and suggestions.  You are free, of course,  to go about this business of drawing any way you want. I will have a reading list for you, and a list of enriching websites, too. I will bring books to share with you, showing the work of many different artists and sketchers to inspire you.

I will show examples of my own sketches made at the Nasher and in other museums around the world.

Page above from Playing With Sketches: 50 Creative Exercises for Designers and Artists, Whitney Sherman, Rockport Publishers, 2014.

If you are in the Triangle area in September, please join our group at the Nasher! Together we will be drawers of all levels, many ages, a world of experiences. I can’t wait! 

 

The 48 crayons and me

Back before I became the worrier and perfectionist I have been for so long, I was a very little girl with a big box of crayons.
 

There I am, at three or four, sitting on a shiny wooden floor, with my 48 Crayola crayons strewn around me, and one or two sheets of paper. I am drawing. I am putting shapes and colors, squiggles and dots down there on that paper. 

 

 I am drawing my brother who is four years older than me. I make a big round circle and I put his eyes in and a v for his little pointed nose and somehow I've got his mouth down and then I take my brown crayon and make many, many dots all over… those are his freckles. I gasp. It is perfect! It looks just like him.

 

 

I decide to put emerald green nostrils on the lady’s face I am drawing because they will make her face perfect. Perfect... those beautiful jewel-green shapes. I put two more emerald squiggles on her ears. There! Now her nostrils and her earrings match. The world is happy and bright,  and emerald green figures largely in it. Ahhhh.

 

  

At (too many) times in the past 3 (or 30) years, I'd get overtaken with panic and doubt about my work. It could get pretty bad. My angelic therapist told me:

She said, "Think back to a time when you loved what you were doing, when you painted and drew with complete joy and no self-consciousness." That's when I found myself again... me and my box of crayons. 

Here I am, a bit younger than the little Laura with the 48 crayons, but can't you just tell there's going to be lots of crayoning in her future?

 

She's still there, when I'm not lost or hobbled with worry, and she's calling the shots, the colors, the shapes, and the dots.

 

More travel sketches: Bay Area and low country SC.

I've had quite the spring. Lots of travel relating to family and friends and some business matters and then, week before last, we hosted a wedding reception in our garden for 120 people! So, blogging was scarce in these parts!

And I'm just now recovering from the whirlwind of going and doing.

However, I do have some sketches from last week in San Francisco and one from last month in Mt. Pleasant, SC to share. 

 My hotel in Oakland was located right on the bay and there was a nice long public footpath that I took to, with my sketchbook in hand!  It was a quiet, soft spring morning and I had fun sketching those blues and yellows in that watery place.

 I LOVE to draw and paint crustaceans, so I couldn't resist sketching the crabs in a tank at the San Francisco Fish Shop near the ferry building. Here's one sketch. I have others to share later.

This sketch of two men sitting at a cafe in North Beach shows my more typical San Francisco palette... subdued yet still colorful.

Lions are another favorite drawing subject for me. Marble lions or bronze or anything other than up-close flesh and blood, if you please. This lion sculpture on the grounds of the deYoung Museum had the most exquisite expression on its face, somehow tender and full of longing. Not what you'd expect to find there.

Taking advantage of free models at San Francisco airport, I sketched this couple who were, of course, attached to their devices.

Finally, a sketch from our April weekend in Mt. Pleasant, SC, another watery place.

 

I'm going to stay put now for a while and work. I have a fun new illustration deadline looming, my paintings waiting for my attention, and two other projects in the wings. Hope your summer (winter to my southern hemisphere friends) is productive and very, very happy!