Laurelines

San Francisco days, wet and dry, March 2016

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

February in the studio: collecting, dreaming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you soon!

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!

San Francisco in June: sketching with Jana

I hate having to break up this long sketch into two parts, but there's no going around the space constraints of page and blog. Jana and I sat under the bright blue bowl of sky and sketched the Conservatory of Flowers at Golden Gate Park. All that white against the blue and the building's delicate gothic tracery were so compelling that we HAD to park ourselves on the lawn and go to.

My scanner is too small to fit the whole sketched spread, so I shot it with my digital camera and could NOT get the blue right. I used cobalt acrylic paint mixed with white for the sky---the color in the first two images is more accurate. 8 1/2"x 22":

Jana and I had gotten together on the spur of the moment. She had the day off and I had an open afternoon. What a perfect opportunity for us to finally meet, after years of cyberfriendship! And here are our two versions of a couple of the scenes we drew. I always love seeing someone else's take on a subject, don't you?

I just discovered Jana's post on our adventure... please do check it out! Her finished sketches are gorgeous!

Later in the afternoon, the weather turned cold and gray, so we tucked into the tea house at the park's Japanese tea garden, for hot tea and cookies. Can you find the little double portrait of the two artists in this sketch?

I had such fun sketching with my new/old friend! Thank you for taking the time and trouble to meet up with me, Jana! More sketches to come from this trip!

San Francisco sketches, part two and last.

On Saturday, my dear friend Kathleen (see sketch of her below) left me for a couple of hours to draw at the Farmers' Market. That's where the gull sketch was done as well as the two following. What a great place for food, for sketching, and for chilly joie de vivre!

Kathleen is my oldest, dearest friend. She invited me to come for a visit when she learned of my mother's death. Being with her was balm to my soul.

Two more Buddha heads for the collection!

Yes, there's Berlin with its sketches to come, too! Gosh.

San Francisco sketches!

For such a short visit, and one whose main focus was not art, but to be with my oldest friend, I got a fair number of sketches done. Here are the first ones. Gosh, San Francisco---there's beauty everywhere you look, all kinds of it. More to come from here, but also Berlin sketches to come!  I left my heart there, too.