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.  

Québecois Detour!

In the midst of months of painting and family events and obligations, a dear friend and I took a liqhtning quick 4-day holiday to Québec City last week. I had been to Montreal and Mont Tremblant, but never to the oldest (founded in 1608) city in Canada. Friends who had been had raved about it and since it was much easier to get to than my usual places (arctic Norway, anyone?) I decided to go.

Robyn and I stayed just outside the walls of the old city and it was a lovely 9-minute walk there. We walked everywhere, in and around, up and down, 7-10 miles each day. We sketched, we ate delicious food, and we drank an Aperol spritz or two (not quite the national drink of Québec, but still ;D.) We were charmed by this vibrant, small, deeply historic place.

The sketches I made are all over the place, stylewise, mediumwise, and subjectwise and just as I was getting a feel for being there, it was time to go. Fortunately, I'm going back for another short stay in August, but this time with my husband and two of our grandsons. I look forward to seeing the child-centric parts of Québec City and I hope I have time to make a sketch or two then, too!

I had long had a passion for sketching fountains. It felt like coming home to sit down and sketch this lovely Fontaine de Tourny, near l'Assemblée Nationale!

I'm not a great one for sketching architecture, normally, but in such a city, with such architectural richness, wouldn't it be churlish not to!  

And, on the other hand, I AM one to sketch people and flowers, so voilà! Me in my element with brush pen, ladies, and geraniums, after eating a delightful mushroom and ham crêpe at le Petit Chateau.

More architecture, but Chateau Frontenac... need I say more?

Continuing my mixing up of mediums and styles, I drew this fantastic salade Niçoise on a sunny, warm day at lunch with Robyn. I felt this happy subject called for my Koh-i-noor Magic Pencil, with its multi-colored lead. I love this drawing tool that leaves magic behind wherever it goes!

And I can never resist drawing figural sculpture, particularly men with curling locks, knee britches, and supercilious expressions.  I'm sure my DNA is involved somewhere here.

This last sketch is actually the first I made. I'm using a small, stiff-nibbed pen here and so the drawing is a bit stiff, but I still enjoyed making it. And I loved loosening up again over the next days.

 

I feel refreshed and clear after this little trip and I hope I will be able to transfer that feeling when I get back to the studio tomorrow. Oof, what a time it's been!

Happy, happy summer! May your heart be light and all your colors Québecois!

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.

Only Connect: My Trip to North Wales

Connections are surfacing everywhere in my life this phase. Without going into a long explanation right now on that topic, (but I will soon!), let me share some images from my two weeks on the Lleyn Peninsula and on Anglesey, two very different, but equally magnificent places. 

Walking along the sandy beach on Abersoch Bay, I saw several luminous blue mounds and wondered what they were. They were Velella jellyfish, washed up on shore, a phenomenon that has occurred on the various coastal regions of Wales often recently. Here I started with the Winsor & Newton tube gouache I took along and finished with crayon since the paint took so long to dry.

 Tea time at the beautiful house and gardens Plas yn Rhiw on the Lleyn Peninsula was a great treat. My husband and I were able to sit on the terrace and have our tea, a rare occasion on this often blustery, rainy, chilly trip. Here I used watercolor crayon and Pentel brush pen on site, adding colored pencil green later at home.

Traveling light as I do, I had pared down my paint and crayon palettes to just a few colors, one of which was not green, so I used my blues and yellows to make this sketch of the Italianate garden on the grounds of the house we stayed in at Abersoch. I ended up being glad I had no green; I like the retro Technicolor effect I got from those limited colors.

On Anglesey, at the café of the art gallery Oriel ynys Môn, I had for lunch, what else, Welsh Rarebit. It was warm and comforting on another one of those chilly, blustery days. Again, here I used Pentel pocket brush pen, watercolor crayon, and a blue colored pencil.  And you can't tell this from the sketch, but that was wonderful Welsh sparkling water in the small glass.

On the many, many walks I took on Anglesey, taking advantage of the lulls in rain and high wind, I often started by walking down a magical holloway, or sunken lane, behind our house, leading to the Anglesey coast path. Here is one of the parade of venerable trees that line that old way:

I don't have landscape sketches per se, because I was concentrating on a different way of looking at land forms and that was the underlying reason for the trip. This has to do with the Caledonian Orogeny and it has to do with connections and you've read some about that here before.  Here's just a snippet of the 12' drawing I made this time of the rock outcrops I found on LLigwy Bay, rocks that are 450 million years old, give or take a few million.

The story is longer and so is the drawing and so is the time it would take to tell it. But it's an important story to me and I will be back soon!

In Print and at the Nasher: My Colorful World

We left North Wales a week ago today and I am still under the spell of that gorgeous, compelling landscape. Before I post the drawings and sketches I made there, I have a few other things to share. 

In September, I had the great pleasure and honor to be asked to provide illustrations for the menu card of an event celebrating Chef Bill Smith of Crooks' Corner Café. In addition to his wildly successful career as a chef, Bill Smith is universally loved and admired for his kind nature and for a lifetime of good deeds.  I thought at first the assignment was to provide food illustrations, so it seemed an easy one to accept and I did. Quickly, I learned that the job required a portrait of the chef himself!  Not only is he famous, so if I got him wrong, it would be glaringly apparent to lots of people, but Bill's a friend of mine, too. No pressure there ;D.

After dozens of drafts, I got him! I did!  And I used my Magic Pencil, which gave me color subtly, but unmistakeably. It was just right. For the card's border, I painted loose watercolor versions of honeysuckle blossoms and leaves, in honor of honeysuckle sorbet, one of our chef's signature dishes. This made a garland that would frame the portrait without overwhelming it.   

Here's the original illustration:

And here's the final product:

 

A few days ago, an essay I wrote and illustrated on the topic of my garden was published in the Fall 2017 issue of Charleston Style & Design Magazine. I chose a simplified ink and watercolor wash method for this assignment, to match the lighthearted tone of the essay itself. Here are some of the originals:

This is the main illustration of my garden, showing my boxwood topiaries and their allium companions:

And here is one of the garden vignettes. The shapes and sizes and layout of the page where these appear imposed lots of challenges for me! You can see them all and also read my essay by clicking on this link!

Finally, in preparation for a 3-session drawing series I'm teaching at Duke University's Nasher Museum in November, here are a couple of prep sketches I made showing the loosely structured, gestural approach I use.  We will focus on and engage with the important Carlo Dolci exhibit now on view at the Nasher. We will draw from live models for half of each two-hour session and spend our other hour in the galleries, drawing from the figures in the Dolci paintings. My approach will be non-dogmatic, non-academic, lively, fun, and, I think, very rewarding!  Come join us if you can!! Here's a link with all the info you need to sign up.

Please come back next week and see what happened in North Wales! See you soon!

September: Moving forward

A late-breaking illustration job meant I had to press Pause on my painting series, but  I've finished the illustrations and am turning my thoughts towards my upcoming trip to North Wales!  I will share the illustrations I've done this summer once they are published this October. They are colorful and fun!

Before anything else, I want to tell you about a new book on sketching landscapes by my good friend and excellent American artist Virginia Hein. Her book 5-Minute Sketching: Landscapes is one of the best out there on the topic of sketching. And since there is a vast flotilla of books out there on that topic, that is saying a lot!

Virginia teaches at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, was for many years a toy designer, and is a prolific urban sketcher with a worldwide reputation and following. Her book is thoughtfully and gracefully written and is brimming with tips and suggestions and many, many illustrations of her own and of artists around the world. I am extremely proud to be one of her contributing artists.

 Here are two of several of my images that appear in Virginia's book:

I sincerely recommend this book for anyone interested in rendering landscapes of all kinds. Virginia has a fresh, energetic, and inspiring way of thinking and teaching. No matter how many landscape drawing and sketching and painting books you might have in your personal library, you will love this one, I promise you!

Now for thoughts of Wales! I am taking two Seawhite concertina sketchbooks so I can make more 12' long drawings of the kind I made on Whitesands Bay last May..weather, as always, permitting. Other art gear I hope to fit into my carryon:

See those little tubes of Winsor Newton paint? I have a hankering to try gouache. We'll see what happens. 

Finally, two quick and happy recent drawings, using my Koh-i-noor Magic Pencil with multi-colored lead. Hmm, I think I'd better pack that one for Wales, too!

See you soon!

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.