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.  

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!

2012 was important... and busy!

This has been a significant year. I've worked on several fronts, most art-related but not all directly involved with the making of art. 

It all began on January 2nd. A friend I saw at a party urged me to apply for a show at a great local venue. I was between galleries and so I thought, "Why not?"

In February, I made an illustration for The Morning News and fell hard for volcanoes as subject matter. I carried on with volcanoes as images for paintings and started a painting series as part of my application for a solo show.

 

So now, I'll be having a show fall of 2013! I'm a slow painter, so I'll need all that time to get the paintings done.

I had some illustration jobs to do, small and large. In addition to the volcano one for the Morning News, above, I designed the logo for a new literary prize that is launching in a few days. My friend Maxine Mills, a brilliant graphic designer, tweaked and fine-tuned. My reading pig looks very polished now, don't you think?

I illustrated the second edition of a local foodlovers' guide.

I curated the first group exhibition of Urban Sketchers, a brilliant idea proposed by Alice Southwick of the Ackland Museum Store in Chapel Hill, NC! My fellow Urban Sketcher correspondents were so generous in donating their work to this successful fundraising show.

I traveled a LOT in 2012. First was Rome in February to see two of our children and to sketch with Concetta Flore!

 

In late June, it was back to Italy again, this time for the wedding of a dear, old friend's son.

In October, compelled to visit the land of volcanoes again, my husband and I went back to Iceland.

Then, in early December, it as off to Vancouver for a brief celebration of our 21st wedding anniversary!

Putting it all together like this, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for what WAS, clearly, a very important year. I'm reenergized and I'm ready to begin again! I thank you for sticking with me through a year of infrequent blog posts. Life, the blogging world, change...and we change with them. I'll be back with more in 2013! Happy New Year to every single one of you!

Sending you love! Laura

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!