Laurelines

My birthday celebration with Kate: at the museum, reading, and sketches

When my firstborn child, my daughter Kate, was very young, I started reading to her and taking her to libraries and art museums. In fact, I started reading to her before she was six months old. I'd sit her on my lap and we'd take flight... off to the world of Good Night Moon, Beatrix Potter, Mother Goose, Eric Carle, Arnold Lobel, Kate Greenaway, A Child's Garden of Verses, and many, many more. We never looked back.

We visited London often, and also Edinburgh, where she was born. We lived in London, in fact, during her kindergarten year. And we went to art museums there, her first ones, and then everywhere we went, all the time. 

Now, Kate has her own children---two little boys---and she reads to them and she and her husband take them to museums and to libraries.

And she herself still reads. In fact, she reads more than any person I know, including me, and that is saying a lot in the world we live in. And she goes to art museums. Often. As much as possible. Everywhere.

Earlier this month, it was my birthday. We celebrated it together, at the art museum, at a library.  Of course, we did. Looking, reading, talking... mother and daughter.

 

In this sketch I made of Kate reading, she is exactly the age I am in the photo above.

As she read, I also sketched the scene behind her.

It was a wonderful birthday.

In the chilly dusk, we walked through a park, and to one of my favorite restaurants for an early dinner. Then it was home for each of us... her to her two little boys and husband, me to my husband and our dog. A day to remember, a day with a long and sweet history behind it.

2014 in the rear-view mirror

If 2014 were a road trip, I'd be dizzy from the speed and velocity of it! Whoosh!

For the second year in a row, I've had a significant show of my work in the fall to work toward. In 2013, it was my Iceland-inspired paintings at the Horace Williams House. This past fall, it was work on a floral theme at the Ackland Museum Store, UNC-Chapel Hill. They were two very different shows, the 2013 one featured all paintings, the 2014 show included ink and wash and mixed media on paper pieces, among others.  And the pieces were too big to be scanned and I didn't have time to take good photos of them... whoosh!

 

Having deadlines is a powerful motivation, but I learned from these two shows not to say yes to another show unless I have over half the pieces already finished when I agree to show! (Yikes! and pass the ibuprofen!) Still, the show went really well and I loved working with my fellow exhibitor and friend Ippy Patterson and my buddies at the Ackland Museum Store.

2014 brought more illustration work for me, including images for Walter Magazine, Charleston Style & Design and Chapel Hill Magazine. Other clients this year were The Nature Conservancy and Edible Hudson Valley.

Fireflies for Charleston Style & Design.

Person Street illustrations for Walter Magazine.

Blue crabs for Edible Hudson Valley.

Continuing on the art front... my work appeared in an excellent new book on drawing by Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark blog fame.  Her book Drawing 365 is now available here in the US and will be released in the UK and worldwide in January. This is a book you will want to own if you have any interest in drawing. It's hands down one of the most informative and useful of this popular genre.  Here's a small peek at one of my contributions to it... a blind contour drawing, demonstrating one of the 365 drawing tips Katherine writes about:

I travelled a lot in 2014, but since this is already sounding like one of those annoying Christmas letters, I'll mention only the trip that relates directly to my art career, my October trip to Italy. I had the great fortune to have been invited to Rimini, Italy for a conference organized by the Italian tourism industry, one designed to connect people whose passion is travel with people whose business is travel, to see what kind of synergy might result. My years of travel writing and sketching on my blog led to my being chosen to participate in this exciting new conference, now in its second year.

It was exciting, fascinating, informative and fun. I learned so much about the travel industry and about the power of social media and about what it is I do as a blogger and why I do it. I met many lovely people from all over the world.

I will be forever grateful for the organizers of TBDI 2014 for having given me this opportunity.

While in Italy, I fell in love with the Dolomites

and they, along with my passion for the mountains of Norway and the rugged topography of Iceland, have filled me with ideas for new paintings... some kind of response, I know not yet what, to this mountain splendor and energy. More about this in my 2015: A Plan, to be published in the next couple of days.

Finally, on December 20th, I led a sketching session at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. This was a kind of reaching out and giving back as an artist that I have done very little of,  but I so enjoyed that I am eager to do more, more, more!  I had a fabulous group of sketchers, almost all beginners, and they reported having benefited a lot from my talk and our working together. It was such fun and very rewarding!

So, I think that covers it... though I can't be sure, dizzy as I still am from all the 2014 action! 

I have many thoughts about what is to come and will share those, as I said, in the next few days.

Happy 2015 to you, dear readers. I hope 2014 has been kind to you. Thank you for sharing this journey, many of you, year after year. I am so very grateful for your interest and support.

Sketching in museums

I'm leading a sketching session at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University this weekend, as I've mentioned. I've been sketching in museums for a very long time. This occasion at Duke prompts me to think about what it is *to draw this way and why it is we do it.

Sketching at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges.

Sketching is about connecting, whether the subject is a beloved 15 month-old child, an Alpine peak in Italy, or a monkfish on a slab at the Bergen fish market.

I like the word 'cathect' to express what we do when we draw: verb tr.: To invest mental or emotional energy in an idea, object, or person.

When we are lucky, the energy runs both ways. We become a conduit for the emotional energy emanating, on its own, from the Other.

Sketching in museums is a perfect opportunity for this kind of interconnection. As we draw, we participate, in varying degrees, in the process of creation of another's work.

 The varying degrees part is key. Sometimes when we sketch a painting or sculpture, we feel as if our hands and heart are one with the original artist's hands and heart.

 Sometimes, we attempt to get at the heart of the artist's creation through close observation and faithful rendering (remember, my rendering is always on the loose side!) :

At other times, we are simply making gestures in the general direction and spirit of the work in question.

All are worthwhile stops on the continuum of interconnection.

As with writing, we often don't know what we think about something until we draw it. And the process of drawing can be revelatory in ways other than intellectual.

Recently at the Nasher, I drew some pieces by Joan Miro.

His creaturely figures manifested an intense spirituality, much more so than the 15th-century German bust of Christ I also drew that day. I might have expected the reverse, but the Christ figure was stolid and very human--- which may have been what the artist intended to convey, after all. The Miros were eloquent and transcendent, for all their apparent fragility.

 

There are other things to say about sketching in museums. We could talk about drawing materials allowed in museums and ways to expand that often limited vocabulary. We could talk about sketching certain kinds of work for consolation and personal affirmation. For example, I love to sketch sculptures of the Buddha and bodhisattvas when I need a tranquility boost.

 If you have any experiences or observations you would like to share on these subjects, please do comment!

 *Here I'm not referring to the practice of copying Old Masters in museums,  a mainstay of past academic art training, but something more personal and most often less rigorous

New Mexico sketches

 I've had a hard time scanning the double spread landscape sketches I made in New Mexico. The paper I used had buckled a fair amount ( and these buckles showed badly) and the sketches were too big for my scanner. I finally resorted to taking Iphone photos of these wide pieces. The images are fuzzy and the color is a bit off, but they somehow convey more of the originals, even with those limitations. I spent so much time trying to get good reproductions of the landscape sketches and then I realized it was just not going to happen!

The originals of the two landscapes are 17 1/2" wide and 6" high.

 

After four hours in a jeep driving through the spectacular landscape, we stopped at Madrid, a tiny, quirky town between Albuquerque and Santa Fe,  and had a delicate and delicious meal at the Hollar Restaurant. There were many regulars dining there the afternoon we had lunch. Clearly, Toto, we were no longer in Kansas.

On the day we drove to Taos, we were pressed for time at lunch, trying to make it back to Santa Fe before the impending snow storm. We had a quick and very tasty lunch at the Bear Claw Bakery and Café.

Another IPhone photo of a wide landscape sketch. With the same disclaimers as above. Frustrating to have to post such fuzzy images, but there we are.

 

We visited the International Folk Art Museum in Sante Fe and were enchanted by the carved wood animals of celebrated Hispanic artist Felipe Benito Archuleta. Of course, I had to draw some!

Soon to come, a post about drawing in museums, in preparation for my upcoming sketching workshop at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art. I've done a lot of this in my life and it's one of my favorite sketching activities. I am always surprised by how meaningful this can be... and in what surprising ways we learn from it. Then I'll have an end of year post, reflecting on what has gone on this year (an awful lot!) and what I hope for in the year to come. Happy December!

Sketches from inside cold New York City!

So cold in my brief not-quite-two-days there this week, that the only sketches I made were inside.

Inside Grand Central Station, having a delicious lunch at Cipriani with dear friend Amanda:

Inside our hotel, at breakfast, breaking out the fun, multi-colored Koh-i-noor 'Magic Pencil' I bought with Amanda at New York Central Art Supply to sketch fellow diners:

Inside our hotel room, looking at the building across the street, sketching its frills and furbelows:

Inside the Asian collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Inside my sketchbook, drawing my husband with the 'Magic' pencil, mentioned above. It is great fun because you have no idea what colors will emerge (note his eyebrows!) and there is no control over values and tones, either, of course. I wish the lead were more deeply pigmented, but you can't have everything in this life, can you?

Portland sketches, November days

So, as planned,  in the same book with my Iceland and my Vancouver sketches went most of my recent Portland sketches. Atmospheric? Gray and wet...I call that atmosphere!

Had a fabulous time with my Portland Urban Sketcher friends. We went to see and draw the Samurai exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. Though it was indoors, it was plenty atmospheric. So much beautiful detail and drama to see in these artifacts of war and aggression.

I have other museum sketches to share, but for today I'll just add these non-museum ones, one at the airport, and another from the front porch of my bed and breakfast, the Lion and Rose. I'm glad I got some sketching practice in before my Norway adventure... I was a bit wonky in these two.

Live and learn. And learn and learn again. More to come!

Journal sketches... and Portland, here I come!

Trying to get back into the habit of sketching before my trips to Portland and to Norway... and just because I miss it!

Truth is, when I'm not painting or illustrating now, I seem to use my journal more for writing than for making images. But this won't last. I've been drawing since at least the age of 3. I'm sure not going to stop now.

You know I've have used this kind of floral imagery in my journals and sketchbooks many times. Drawing my flowers helps me loosen up in the studio first thing in the morning. Plus, it's fun.

Sometimes there appears an object in your life that you've got to sketch. This vintage hen figurine was one. I'll let you read about it on the page itself:

Looking at this sketch on toned paper I just shared, I realized it's  a convenient segue to my Portland trip.

I LOVE my gray-toned sketchbooks, especially for trips to the cold, snowy, and/or rainy places I'm besotted with. So this is what I'm taking with me to Portland tomorrow, a Strathmore gray-toned sketchbook and, of course, my Stillman & Birn Alpha series book, for those moments when I'm not being rained upon, in case there are some! Here are a couple of images from Iceland and Vancouver... cases in point:

My trip to Portland is a short one...my first visit to my daughter Cecelia since she moved there last August. I'll be going a lot. Not sure how much sketch time I'll have under those circumstances, but I KNOW we'll be meeting up with some sketching buddies at the Portland Museum of Art to sketch there, at least! Portland, I'm ready for you!

Sketching Austin, Texas

I had just two full days and pieces of another two on my visit to my daughter this past week. I fell in love with Austin's houses this trip. I know of no other place that has the number and variety of quirky, colorful, and plain old adorable houses that Austin has. What IS in the water there, because I want some of it!

Unfortunately, I only managed one house sketch, but am dying to go back and (see my daughter, of course) and sketch more of these little jewels. That's what they are.

Austin also has good restaurants aplenty. My new favorite is Olive and June and I thank my daughter for suggesting it for our first night together!

I travel. I sketch. I sketch gardens and the things in them. This trip was no exception. We spent parts of two afternoons at the lovely estate Laguna Gloria.

Entering the Bullock Texas Museum of State History, you see quotations carved in huge scale on the marble walls flanking the entrance to the exhibits, trumpeting the wonderfulness of Texas. This kind of boisterous self love can be endearing, but it’s also a bit off-putting, given the state’s early history of exploitation and destruction of the native people by European settlers. This is true of much, if not all, of the original European settlements in the new world, of course. Still. Note to Texas... and to self, for that matter: healthy doses of humility never go amiss.  

Vancouver BC sketches

Last week, we took a lightning-quick trip to Vancouver to use up some airline credits we had and to see that beautiful city and region we'd long wanted to see.

It was quite rainy, it being late November/early December and all, but we didn't mind. I made some sketches. 

Here they are.

 

 

My gray toned sketchbook from Iceland came in handy here, too. I have a thing for cold and wet climates, have you noticed?

The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia is one of the world's best. Do go see it, if ever you have the chance.

The Public Market on Granville Island is a great place to go on a rainy day. There are lots of enclosed areas and lots of places to sit, snack, and sketch!

You'll get an idea of the size of these monumental masks by looking at the second sketch posted above.

Happy December!

Sketches of sketchers sketching at the sketchers show.

At the Urban Sketchers show, that is, at the Ackland Museum of Art store.  

I, along with Amanda Hughes, Director of External Affairs at the Ackland Museum, gave a little talk yesterday about sketching to a group of 12-15 people, with the Urban Sketchers show as background and inspiration.

I brought a dozen or so completed sketchbooks, as well as lots of my favorite art supplies, to show and talk about. So did Amanda.  Our styles are diametrically opposed, so it was a good way for beginning sketchers to see the range of possibilities in approaching subjects to sketch. Of course the wide range of work exhibited amplified that point! We talked about the phenomenon of Urban Sketching and about the work on the walls around us. We answered questions about tools and technique.

And then we sketched.

 

Here are three I did, in between talking to the participants.

In this first sketch, I used all sorts of drawing materials, since I had them with me.

 

Here I used one of my beloved Portuguese laundry pencils, plus a brush pen filled with acrylic ink, and two Faber Castel colored pencils. It's fun to mix up your media. I too often forget to do that.

Here I used a big graphite stick and smudged the lines with my finger after, you know, spitting on it.  We sketchers do what we must to get the drawing right. That's Amanda Hughes seated on the right. She did a lovely, elegant sketch of the scene through the store window. SHE refrained from spitting. I told you our styles are different ;D.

It was a fun occasion and I think and hope it was helpful for the participants. Having to get out my art supplies to talk about them was GREAT preparation for my upcoming art trip to Iceland! I've rediscovered lots of cool things I have and I will take several of these long-forgotten things with me!