Laurelines

Only Connect: My Trip to North Wales

Connections are surfacing everywhere in my life this phase. Without going into a long explanation right now on that topic, (but I will soon!), let me share some images from my two weeks on the Lleyn Peninsula and on Anglesey, two very different, but equally magnificent places. 

Walking along the sandy beach on Abersoch Bay, I saw several luminous blue mounds and wondered what they were. They were Velella jellyfish, washed up on shore, a phenomenon that has occurred on the various coastal regions of Wales often recently. Here I started with the Winsor & Newton tube gouache I took along and finished with crayon since the paint took so long to dry.

 Tea time at the beautiful house and gardens Plas yn Rhiw on the Lleyn Peninsula was a great treat. My husband and I were able to sit on the terrace and have our tea, a rare occasion on this often blustery, rainy, chilly trip. Here I used watercolor crayon and Pentel brush pen on site, adding colored pencil green later at home.

Traveling light as I do, I had pared down my paint and crayon palettes to just a few colors, one of which was not green, so I used my blues and yellows to make this sketch of the Italianate garden on the grounds of the house we stayed in at Abersoch. I ended up being glad I had no green; I like the retro Technicolor effect I got from those limited colors.

On Anglesey, at the café of the art gallery Oriel ynys Môn, I had for lunch, what else, Welsh Rarebit. It was warm and comforting on another one of those chilly, blustery days. Again, here I used Pentel pocket brush pen, watercolor crayon, and a blue colored pencil.  And you can't tell this from the sketch, but that was wonderful Welsh sparkling water in the small glass.

On the many, many walks I took on Anglesey, taking advantage of the lulls in rain and high wind, I often started by walking down a magical holloway, or sunken lane, behind our house, leading to the Anglesey coast path. Here is one of the parade of venerable trees that line that old way:

I don't have landscape sketches per se, because I was concentrating on a different way of looking at land forms and that was the underlying reason for the trip. This has to do with the Caledonian Orogeny and it has to do with connections and you've read some about that here before.  Here's just a snippet of the 12' drawing I made this time of the rock outcrops I found on LLigwy Bay, rocks that are 450 million years old, give or take a few million.

The story is longer and so is the drawing and so is the time it would take to tell it. But it's an important story to me and I will be back soon!

September: Moving forward

A late-breaking illustration job meant I had to press Pause on my painting series, but  I've finished the illustrations and am turning my thoughts towards my upcoming trip to North Wales!  I will share the illustrations I've done this summer once they are published this October. They are colorful and fun!

Before anything else, I want to tell you about a new book on sketching landscapes by my good friend and excellent American artist Virginia Hein. Her book 5-Minute Sketching: Landscapes is one of the best out there on the topic of sketching. And since there is a vast flotilla of books out there on that topic, that is saying a lot!

Virginia teaches at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, was for many years a toy designer, and is a prolific urban sketcher with a worldwide reputation and following. Her book is thoughtfully and gracefully written and is brimming with tips and suggestions and many, many illustrations of her own and of artists around the world. I am extremely proud to be one of her contributing artists.

 Here are two of several of my images that appear in Virginia's book:

I sincerely recommend this book for anyone interested in rendering landscapes of all kinds. Virginia has a fresh, energetic, and inspiring way of thinking and teaching. No matter how many landscape drawing and sketching and painting books you might have in your personal library, you will love this one, I promise you!

Now for thoughts of Wales! I am taking two Seawhite concertina sketchbooks so I can make more 12' long drawings of the kind I made on Whitesands Bay last May..weather, as always, permitting. Other art gear I hope to fit into my carryon:

See those little tubes of Winsor Newton paint? I have a hankering to try gouache. We'll see what happens. 

Finally, two quick and happy recent drawings, using my Koh-i-noor Magic Pencil with multi-colored lead. Hmm, I think I'd better pack that one for Wales, too!

See you soon!

Getting back to 'Yay'

I've been drawing all my life, from at least aged three, that is. From my twenties on, I've sketched while traveling, just for the delight and curiosity of it.

Lately, though I've continued with travel sketching, I've fallen off the daily sketching habit, I realize this has to do with all that sketching I've shared here and on Urban Sketchers and other web sites over the past twelve years.

Sketching on location began to feel like a performance, an obligation that grew onerous. The spark that this sort of drawing held for me dimmed the more I felt it a duty and not an inner-generated (even if outwardly shared) activity, the way it had been all my life

This weekend I had to fly to Michigan to attend a memorial service for a dear friend. I wasn't sure if I'd feel like sketching or if I'd have any time to, but I packed some crayons and a brush pen just in case. Out walking in the early morning, I came upon a garden scene in reds and greens and lights and darks. I thought, 'I want to draw that!'  I broke out the few crayons I'd packed and my brush pen and I set to.

After a few minutes I ran out of time and had to wrap it up.

There was my sketch.  'Yay," I thought, yay!' 

'Yay' is child speak and it perfectly expresses that spontaneous delight I'd been missing. I agree with psychologists who say that we carry our child heart inside us all our lives and that is where our creativity lies.  

This quick and modest sketch of a slice of a summer garden seems to me a kind of breaking of a spell. I have lots of other work going, work that I (mostly) enjoy, illustrations and a much-procrastinated-upon painting series, but this is different. This was made by the crayon-wielding child Laura who looked at something she thought was beautiful, took out her colors and said, 'Yay!'

  

 

I have four illustrations due in the next few days and then it will be time to think about my next trip to Wales. As of today, August 1st, I can say I'm leaving next month, even if the date of departure IS the end of September.

I still have so much to say about that trip and where it fits into my larger Places Project. After my deadlines, I'll be back to tell more.

Yay!

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! 

 

 

Wales: Journeys and connections

There are places in my life that I have experienced as numinous, locales in which the c'hi, or life force, is palpable to me, almost visible, almost overwhelming. Much of my art life has been an attempt to express that energy.

In recent years, I discovered that some of these charged places, far flung now, were once connected, the result of a prehistoric mountain- building event called the Caledonian Orogeny. I learned that Norway, one of my best-loved lands, is tied to Scotland, where I lived and where my daughter Kate was born, to parts of Wales, to the Appalachian mountains, close to where I live now... and that they formed a mountain chain high as the Himalayas. This was hundreds of millions of years ago, of course, when there was no Atlantic Ocean to separate them. I fell hard for the idea of a force that connected, and still connects, these places of my life.

Early spring of 2016, pursuing my renewed interest in geology and having learned of the Caledonian Orogeny, I read  Richard Fortey's The Hidden Landscape and it was then I heard a call to Wales, where I had never been.

 Here is Fortey's siren song to me:

Many years ago I travelled to Haverfordwest to get to the past. From Paddington Station a Great Western Locomotive took me on a journey westwards from London further and further back into geological time, from the age of the mammals to the age of the trilobites.The train soon quit the flat Thames Valley beyond Reading, and with it the soft sands and hard cobbles of the Reading Beds, laid down when there were mammals and birds on land and crabs in the sea, and when the world would have felt familiar. Then I was speeding over the Chalk, and back in time to the company of dinosaurs. The train travelled on towards Bath, where Jurassic limestones and shales take turns across the countryside, the former proud with ancient corals, the latter dark and low, with ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, 'sea lizards' that grasped Jurassic fish and ammonites. ... Under the River Severn and into Wales and I was back before the time of the dinosaurs, to a time when Wales steamed and sweated, not with the fires of smelting, but with the humid heat of moss-laden and boggy forests in coal-swamps, where dragonflies the size of hawks flitted in the mist; and then on back further still in time, so far back that life had not yet slithered or crawled upon the land from its aqueous nursery.

At last I arrived in Haverfordwest --- I had come back far enough for the rocks to yield trilobites. Trilobite land lay all around; to the west as far as St Davids, imbued with the mystery of the origin of all things.

p 1, The Hidden Landscape.

Fortey continues:

It was further to the west, near St Davids, that I began to appreciate more the links between the rocks beneath and the land above, and between our own lives and distant prehistory. St Davids is a little town set at the western tip of South Wales, and it is not much bigger now than it was two hundred years ago... . But to see the rocks themselves you must go to the sea. The cliffs near St Davids are now famous. The entire cliff path is owned by the National Trust, and it winds up and down all around the old county of Pembrokeshire... .  And everywhere there is rock. Rock plunges vertically into the sea where the breakers chew at spiky slabs two hundred feet below. In other places there are folds; the bedding is twisted, and convoluted, and thrown into crazy spasms as if the strata had been in the hands of a demented pasta spinner. Then, suddenly, along a vertical crack the rocks will change: black shale will give way to purple sandstone, or silver slate to red shale. These cracks are just what they seem... breaks in the fabric of the earth... . Hardly any of the rocks here seem to be horizontal, as they were when they were laid down beneath the sea. On these cliffs, the viewer can feel the strength of the Caledonian convulsions twisting and breaking the rocks, conjoining what was once separate in time and space, separating what was once joined.

p 7, 8, The Hidden Landscape.

  

Richard Fortey's magnificent voice and story took me to Wales, to Pembrokeshire, to the countryside around St Davids, to Whitesands Bay, last October and for two weeks this month.  I knew where I needed to be and what I neeed to do,  to draw those folds and convulsions, and so I did, on three days, standing on the sand, surrounded by tide sounds and bird songs and wind.

First day, on the beach, midway through one of the drawings:

The nearly completed sketchbook on the table of the apartment I rented in St Davids:

 A sample section of the book:

 A slightly wobbly video of the book along its length:

Whitesands Bay, Pembrokeshire accordion sketchbook from Laura Frankstone on Vimeo.

I want so many more years of this! I want to go back for long stretches and make more of these responses that mean the world (you should pardon the pun) to me.

Well, we do what we can. I'm returning to Wales this fall, but to Anglesey and the Lleyn Peninsula this time. Anglesey plays a part in our Caledonian story, too. I will get another pass at this unfolding epic tale that I love.

 

More conventional travel sketches from my second week in St Davids will follow in a few days.

Trip prep and paint pots

I leave for Pembrokeshire, Wales in a few days and I'm madly scrambling to ... do everything. I travel only with a carryon, which makes it rough if you want to make art! This time I was able to order some things from Amazon.uk that I couldn't pack and have them sent to the place I'm renting...things like a jar of matte medium, and some giant Derwent graphite blocks (man, are they heavy and messy! Not sure they'll be my faves, but wanted to try.) And a pair of foldable hiking poles, which for me can be classified as art supplies! ( TSA won't let you pack those in a carry-on.) And a couple of other things. I'll order some gesso when I get there.

I'll have to send home the poles and whatever else I want to keep and use after my time there.  Luckily, there's a very nice postmistress in St Davids who will help me accomplish this in a reasonable way. This reminds me that I FINALLY got out of my state of denial with regard to the size of drawings and paintings I can work on while traveling... especially, since, as I said, I pack only a carryon. I'm restricted to about 9" x 11" paper and just a few watercolors as paint. But that's okay. I happily use these sketches as source materials in the studio when I get back. 

Here are some shots of what I'll take with me. My travel palette has two new colors: Daniel Smith cerulean blue (Wales seems to call for that opaque and granulating oceanic blue) and Daniel Smith German Greenish Raw Umber. That last works well, combined with other colors,  for rendering the rock outcroppings I love to look at and draw.

:

I'm taking three (!) sketchbooks, if my carryon will let me. First is one made of Khadi paper, a rough, tough surface useful if you want to paint with mud, sand, and the like.

Second is a new Seawhite accordion sketchbook, pictured below in its case next to the one I used last fall, an old one I'd ordered from Seawhite of Brighton a few years back. Note the diminishment in size, which made me a little sad. Here's the one from last fall, all spread out:

And here it is side by side with the new one:

Third one is a new Stillman & Birn Beta, the ultimate in sketchbooks, for my tastes.

Just to round out the picture of my gear, here are my hiking boots, which I have to wear on the plane and trains since my feet are big, which make the boots bigger than they might be on others. I got them for my Alaska residency and I took them also to Wales last fall and I wear them gardening around here in areas where copperheads thrive. They'd just about fit in that much-talked about carryon, if I packed nothing else with them. My feet and I will be the absolute picture of travel chic! 

I had hoped to be finished with some of the Copper Mountain paintings I've been working on before I left for Wales, but this is not to be. There are four out of the eight or so that are ALMOST finished, but clearly I can't rush them. I work on them every day, but there you are. They have a mind of their own. To tide them and me over until I get back, I have made pots of the colors I've mixed for each painting, so I'll be able to take off running with them when I return.

See you in Wales very soon!

Copper runs through it, part two

Here I've been, in the studio, seeing what emerges from my Copper Mountain ideas and inner imagery, my drawings and photos, and the emotions I experienced in my Alaska residency.  I find it surprising how  all over the place they are, and, well, interesting, too... but then I would, wouldn't I? 

I've been trying to figure out how to deal with deeply staining and glossy paints... colors like phthalo turquoise, quinacridone burnt orange, and others that I haven't used much before in acrylic form. I want to layer them, but they don't layer well. They kill whatever colors I have painted under them and then there's that glossy sheen, which I hate. So, much mixing with white and other colors and experimenting has been going on here. I'm learning the best way to use them for my purposes.

I'm making lots of studies, but I also have a dozen or more big paintings started, waiting for me to figure out what the heck I'm doing. Here are some of the studies painted in my latest Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook, my treasured portable studio and lifeline: 

 I love the verdigris aspect of copper and go back and forth with it in my rendering of mountain shapes.

As I posted last time, I note that the coppery palette now crops up everywhere I put pen, pencil, or brush to paper. I don't mean it to, but I don't mind it,either. Here's a quick warm-up pen and ink sketch made last week with cad red, phthalo turquoise,  and ochre watercolors. 

I purposely didn't mention the fact in my last post that there is a connection between my copper theme and Wales. Both Alaska and Wales have a long history of copper mining, but since I don't do caves and deep underground, I thought I'd never be able to personally experience that fact of Welsh history in my visits there. But NOT SO! Peter Wakelin, Welsh scholar, author, and former head of Collections at the National Museum of Wales, was also head of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments  of Wales. He sent me a link to this video of Parys Mountain in Anglesey. Reader, I'm going!

 

Copper runs through it

Well, here I am with a post from February, which cheekily ended way too soon! 

For months I have been elatedly immersed in thoughts of copper and copper-related minerals and copper-related colors, ever since my residency in Alaska last August. One Alaskan sunset in particular was seared forever on my mind's eye and heart... the sky all tints and hues of orange, pink, red, and the glacial waters of Lake Clark looking like pale oxidized copper,  and then the mountains, Copper Mountain, in particular (yes! That is its name!) was set on coppery fire by that sun. It was one of those holy moments; I felt lifted to a world of thrilling and pure beauty.

And then, everywhere I looked afterwards, I saw copper... in the salmon leaping from the water, in the colors of the native blue geranium leaves as they turned autumnal, in the bonfire flames, and on and on. My work started to be filled with burnt orange, cadmium oranges and reds, phthalo turquoise, cobalt green, teal, burnt sienna, ochre... the orange/blue- to- red/green world I saw when I thought of Alaska.

This is a bonfire built the night of that coppery sunset.The magnificent fire was a brilliant celebration of that place, that day, that glory. Here we see my orange/turquoise palette in an early manifestation.

Below are two of many, many studies I'm working through to try to figure out my own idiom for expressing what I saw and felt in the coppery Alaska. In addition to those zillion studies of all sizes and impulses, I have 12 paintings in progress, filling up my studio walls and floor. Who knows which of these will end up resolved? I don't mind, though. This is the slow way I work. I am an eternal pioneer in the studio, scrabbling for ways to get where i want to go.

Here is copper in the vegetal world, spangles of it appearing overnight on the leaves of wild native geranium:

Later, on my trip to Austria, I was thrilled to learn that the Natural History Museum in Vienna has a vast mineralogical collection. I headed straight for the specimens that were copper-related. Oh, those colors, my new colors! I stood my ground there on the cold tile floor, sketching carefully for hours, as rivers of school children flowed everywhere around me. This was the micro view of my copper world and with my love of geology, I reveled in it.  Here are two spreads from my Vienna sketchbook:

Since my return, I've made several sketches, unrelated to my Alaska project, without realizing as I drew that I was still using my coppery palette!

A bystander at the Women's March in January asked me why I'd chosen the colors I used for my sketches. It was then that I realized what I'd done!

I want to finish at least SOME of the Copper Mountain series before I leave for Wales again in May. I'm slow, but I'm optimistic!

2017, the plan(s) and hopes for a newish year

I'm late posting my new year plans because I've been waylaid by flu for a good first ten days of the year.

 Waylaid times can be useful for thinking and such was the case for me. I started keeping a daily journal again. My writing had become sporadic and sparse in the busy, extroverted year that 2016 was. There were also world events that eclipsed my inner life, at least the act of thinking and writing about it. 

World events loom huge today, but I separate from them by taking to the studio, to the outdoors, and to the balm of friendship. And on this page, here, with you.

Painting!

On the studio score, I'm very excited! All that pent-up painting energy, accumulated over the months of travel in the fall and winter, is coming out in leaps and pirouettes! My Places Project gave me so many opportunities to experiment and store up ideas and inspiration. In 2017, I'll be able to see what emerges from that in the form of more sustained pieces, paintings and such.

I was afraid that my trip to Wales might eclipse the ideas that occurred to me during my Alaskan residency, but no!! The Wales imagery and ideas seem to be patiently waiting in the queue for Alaska to happen first. I have several paintings started and a sketchbook bursting with color, texture, and compositional studies, but I resist the urge to share those here. Let us not queer the deal by showing too much, too soon. But the textures and the colors are giving me ecstasies of delight!

 

Drawing!

Oh, and I've been drawing, too. Drawing is central to my life. As I've said before, drawing is one of my earliest memories, and one of the happiest, of my often-challenging childhood. Here are two simple pencil drawings I made last week of our Jonas lost in Legoland!

Pop ups in my sketchbook!

I don't know exactly where the impulse came from, but I started making pop-up sketches in my sketchbook a few days ago and now I'm in love with that idea! Here are a couple of recent examples. The pop up approach seemed especially right for expressing that mental image I've had since October of jackdaws wheeling in the dawn sky at St.David's Head. Not that this one perfectly captures that image, but it's a start!

I wanted to learn more about this technique, so I bought two books on the subject and quickly learned I had been doing it all wrong! ;D. That didn't bother me a bit. I can carry on my way, but still add traditional techniques to my repertoire. Here are some early attempts at learning popups the normal way. Who knows where this will take me? I have no weighty plans or expectations. Pure play is what this is. But there WILL be more to come!

Illustration!

I'm going to carry on working for Charleston Style and Design. I love working with the AD and the editors there. It's a quarterly, so the timing perfectly suits my resolve to keep work for others at a minimum. There is ONE other job that I've been approached about and I'm very happy about it, but the when is uncertain. This year, for sure. Or, for maybe. I'll let you know more when I can.

My latest illustration accompanies an essay by Katherine Wilson on her mother's lifelong obsession with Italian style and notions of beauty. I am sharing a just a few of the many  draft sketches I made to show how, at my searching hand, Sophia Loren looked like Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gina Lollobrigida, and other anonymous retro beauties, until I got the style I wanted and a good enough likeness. 

Travel!

Because I found Wales deeply inspiring, I knew I had to get back and see where  those geology-based images would take me. So I have made arrangements to go back to Pembrokeshire for two weeks in May! And maybe in fall, too. We shall see. I long to go back to Norway and that will be my next big travel goal.

As long as I draw breath and can stride, I'll be on the move. Who knows what the future holds? And that last question, dear friends, will be last allusion I make here to the events of the world for a while.

Happy and safe 2017 to one and all! Thank you for your support and interest.

2016 turns to 2017

 And so do we all. This year has been a fraught one, to say the least. We have had way more than one year's share of loss, despair, and dread. I know that many of us around the world are looking to the new year for some, for any, relief. May we find it.

On a personal, artistic level, however, this year has been one of the fullest ever, with trips and work deriving from my Places Project. I began to experiment with painting and drawing with found, organic materials. I have a long way to go and, I assume, lots of time to continue with this. Mud, paint made from rocks and soil, sand, charred twigs, berry juice were some of my means along this path.

The red earth of North Carolina, gathered here from Peregrine Farm, is highly pigmented and is a total joy to smear and brush on surfaces. Soil from my area makes paint in this deep red and in various other ochre, umber, and sienna hues.

 Rows of celosia flowers at Peregrine Farm, supported by white plastic mesh made for a striking subject. Mixed media : mud, acrylic, watercolor, found charcoal on toned paper:

Other studies and sketches from Peregrine Farm can be seen here and here:

 In Alaska, at my residency at Chulitna Lodge on magnificent Lake Clark, there was peaty soil and sand to dip into. I brought back some soil I ground and dried for use in my studio this year. I overestimated what I could do pursuing these means in a limited period of time, restricted to materials I could pack in my carryon! I need to be somewhere for an extended period, with lots of space to work and to store materials. I am working on just such a scenario for myself for 2017.

View of Copper Mountain from across Lake Clark. Mixed media: watercolor, sand, soil.

/p>

 There were wild currants to squash and smear to add color to drawings:

This and other spreads and studies from Alaska can be seen here and   :

 

 

In coastal Pembrokeshire, the world was rich with beautiful mud and rocks that told stories 450 million years old. I was in ecstasy there and have just made plans to return for two weeks in May to continue those explorations.

Above, I paint and draw with sand and rocks and below I smear in my sketchbook mud from the source of sacred St. Non's well near St. Davids, with blackberry stain added for color.

Other paintings and studies from the 12' long accordion sketchbook

I used in Wales appear here.

I enjoyed another year of working with Charleston Style and Design Magazine, producing illustrations that allowed me to stretch and play and that were such fun to do

 

<

I led my second three-part drawing series at the Nasher Museum of Art in September and it was a lovely, successful experience, just as last year's was. It is a thrill to work with enthusiastic students from all ages and backgrounds.