Laurelines

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!

Midsummer update: painting, drawing, following a trail

Here you go: some miscellaneous news and images from midsummer. First: several paintings still in process (albeit a very long and frequently interrupted one.)  Well, it takes what it takes and I am who I am, so there, as I often think, we are. (Update from yesterday's studio time: moving forward! I'm learning more what the paintings want to be!)

Other news:  a writing and illustration assignment for Charleston Style & Design Magazine, due August. I'm to do a double-page spread on the subject of my garden in words and watercolor sketches. I'm in the midst of this and, whew, it is not at all as sticky a process as the painting one. 

Recent photos of my garden so you can see some of the context for this:

I will be teaching another three-part drawing series at the Nasher Museum of Art this fall, but I've asked for November dates, since I'll be in Wales again in September!! This series will focus on the figure and I am to tie it to the important Carlo Dolci exhibit, opening late August and running through December. I'm very, very excited about this series! We will have live models and we may hold the sessions out in the open space next to the galleries! What a lively and outreaching museum is the Nasher! 

And then comes Wales! We will be going to north Wales this time, to Anglesey and the Lleyn Peninsula, following the Caledonian Orogeny trail! Oh, and on the subject of that unfathomably ancient mountain range, I have more plans and ideas! Odd, perhaps, to have a 450 million year old mountain range as a muse, but I do have it and so there, once again, we are. Once I get the summer obligations met, I will tell all about my plans and dreams for the Caledonian project over the next two years. God willing, it will be the project of a lifetime, with thrilling trips to bring it forth.

Finally, some miscellaneous sketches from my time in Pembrokeshire in May.

View of Carn Llidi, near St. Davids' Head, in blues and orange.

A slice of the disused slate quarry at Abereiddi.The colors of the stones and rust from the abandoned quarry are stunning:

Carn Llidi again, with rapeseed field, late afternoon into dusk:

View of Carn Llidi and jackdaws from the window of my apartment on the first day, a day of mist and rain:

Ink and watercolor drawing of green sandstone outcrops at Whitesands Bay:

Tidal leavings harvested at Whitesands Bay and later drawn as still life, with sand from the beach applied to the page:

My beloved Carn Llidi, drawn this time on a sunny day with brush pen and watercolor:

A little collage in my sketchbook of some of the wildflowers in bloom in the May hedgerows around St. David's. I fell in love with those hedgerows! This spare collage is more of a mnemonic device for me than anything. I will return to that subject later.

Though we will be in northern Wales this fall, as I said, I am not through with Pembrokeshire and St.David's yet! There is so much of great personal meaning for me in that area and we were, with our friends, so happy there!

 

 

See you soon on the Caledonian trail! 

 

 

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!

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.

  

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!

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.

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! 

 

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