Laurelines

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.

In September, come draw with me at the Nasher Museum again!

From the source: an inner-directed, process-oriented, fully engaged approach to drawing in museums... and everywhere!

  

This is an open invitation to join my three-session drawing series at Duke University's Nasher Museum this September.  We will meet at the museum on the successive Saturdays of September 10, 17 and 24 from 10:00 to noon. Some drawing materials will be provided, but feel free also to bring your own sketchbooks, paper, pencils and other dry drawing materials. Materials fee for the series will be $40 a person.

Registration is limited, so please email Jessica Ruhle at the museum,  [email protected], to register or email me at [email protected] for information. 

 

Last year's series at Duke University's Nasher Museum was so much fun and so successful that we're doing it again! 

As noted above, we will meet 10am- noon on 3 successive Saturdays: September 10, 17, and 24.  Working over three weeks' time will allow you to expand your drawing vocabulary,  and through experimenting with new and stimulating materials and methods, to take your drawing practice to new levels.

I will provide instruction and inspiration at the beginning of each class and then you will head for the galleries to draw. I will be available throughout for help and guidance. The last 20 to 30 minutes of each session, we will return to the classroom to share your work in a supportive, lively, and fun atmosphere.  

Last year, I was thrilled by the camaraderie that developed in our group and by the dazzling variety of great work that the participants produced.  Below is an example of two fabulous drawings made by Paul Keene of Durham:

  

 

"It's through the gamble, the willingness to take risks, to make mistakes that we keep our work alive and growing." Roger Winters, On Drawing, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

  

A pause for pencil

In a complicated world, experienced by a complicated mind (mine, to wit), it is well from time to time to simplify. What could be simpler than pencil on paper? And it's so much fun, the pencil. Here are colored pencils in action at the Audubon Gallery at the North Carolina Museum of Art. I usually find taxidermy distressing and depressing, but the birds at NCMA are lovely. Their spirit remains.

I commend to you, in addition to the Audubon Gallery at NCMA, the Iris restaurant where, along with bright and tasty food and polite fellow diners, you get to rub shoulders with one of Patrick Dougherty's sublime site-specific branch and twig wall sculptures. Pencil with a bit of added wash happened here.

Why do I like blue pencil so much? I have no idea, but there we are. At a workshop I went to last weekend, I blue penciled my fellow attendees. And on blue-lined paper, too. I sense a theme evolving here.

and

On the other hand, we have non-blue pencils and here is one very dandy example ... I used a multi-colored, swirled-together leaded pencil for a quick drawing I made of my daughter Kate on her birthday. Those multi-colored pencils are delightful... they're rainbows in pencil form.

And here's a nude guy from a figure drawing session I went to,  drawn on 18" x 24" paper. Brown pencil here, I don't remember which kind.

People and countries behave badly often, but pencils... they're low-key, they're steady, they're workhorses. On the cusp of July as we are, with its heat and its relative quiet (Northern Hemispherically speaking) and in the midst of global troubles, it's worthwhile to consider pausing with a pencil or two. That's what I'm doing.

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!

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! 

 

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!