Friday, December 12, 2014

New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Alberta. And Nepal!


 The BOOK!! of which I have been speaking for the last four years has been printed in Tennessee, and my proof copy looks so good. The colors are accurate to the originals, always a challenge in art reproduction. Folks who have already ordered a copy, sit tight. It’s said to be in shipment. People who live near me in NH can order from me if you want. It will be available in local bookstores soon too. Far away fans, just order it through Amazon or Barnes and Noble.


At 255 pages and 2.2 pounds, it is my magnum opus. Thanks to all who helped and encouraged me!!

And now, on with the blog!


 Here is my new knitted hat, made in Nepal. I don’t knit, although my mother did try to teach me. While I was drawing, all sort of questions floated around in my mind. Who made it?  Who raised the sheep, sheared the wool, spun the yarn and dyed it?  I get satisfaction from pondering about all these other human beings without a hope of knowing the answers. I send out little rays of appreciation in the atmosphere for their efforts.


We were in Rockport, Massachusetts, for my birthday in September. I drew this harbor as a way of practicing with my new brush set.

My third try with my new brush with the water reservoir in the handle. The name Motif #1 is a tongue in cheek name for this Rockport fishing shack. That is because it is said to be overdone and hence a trite subject. I painted it once before, when I was 14.

These practice drawings gave me confidence in the brush set, and I was very happy with the results it provided during our early autumn trip to France. Some of those drawings appeared on last month’s blog, and there will be more as I work through the collection.


We went to a pet shop while visiting the grandchildren in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Here is what I drew. Drawing requires such close observation that it is a form of meditation.


Edmonton has a great museum called the Royal Albert Museum. The grandchildren drew taxidermied birds of their choice.


Our younger granddaughter chose the same bird as her sister, in a different pose.



The winterberries are very abundant this year. I added the red (male) cardinals from my imagination. Later I was told that cardinals do not eat winterberries. Oh, well. It makes a nice design.


Blueberry pie is one of my favorites. I ordered this pie from a baker in town, and gave her a blueberry pie card as a retirement present.


We have had this toy train set for thirty years or more. We bought it in Germany.  When I brought it out as a holiday decoration, I got the inspiration to draw it.  The shadows add a finishing touch.

Monday, November 10, 2014

France, California, and New Hampshire

So here we are in our Paris apartment, an Airbnb. A fifth floor walk up. (Fourth floor in European terminology, which starts at ‘ground’.)

 I am drawing from the window of the upstairs loft looking out over the rooftops to a gilded statue atop a column at the Place de la Bastille. (The column is named the July Column and commemorates the fall of King Charles X and the beginning of the reign of King Louis-Phillippe in 1830.)  Quite visible from afar, it was a handy landmark to help us get back to the apartment after going out for walks. The gilding and lighting were beautiful.

We never did procure a map of Paris, and we got lost and disoriented in the maze of streets several times a day. But it gave me a lot of chances to practice asking directions. Bar staff are the most friendly.

It is warm, sunny, and the end of September. You’ll see my new supplies and tools in the photo below.


What fun my new tiny Koi water color set is. I practiced a bit with it before I left the U.S., but this is the real deal, Paris rooftops. My brush has a water reservoir so I can go out onto the streets without any water cup to dip the brush into. It even washes out easily when it is time to change colors. Magic! I can hold the water color set in my hand, and the sketchbook rests on my forearm. No need for a third arm!

It is unusually sunny for Paris. Basically I ignored the shadows.


 Next, I went out on the streets, a block away, to the Sunday market. The passageways between the rows of stalls were narrow and crowded. I had my back against a pole, and so a close up of the sausage seller was going to be it. I chose to sketch this guy, out of a hundred equally compelling sights, because I had drawn a sausage stand way back in 1966 when I was a student in France. You can see that drawing and others from that same time at this 2011 blog post.

No one noticed that I was painting. Or they didn’t slow down or care. I was very focused on what I was doing anyway. I love signs in markets, patterns and repetitions, and color. So I was a happy camper here. The signs say, left to right, Gold Medal winner, plain small sausages (the width of crayons), plump round sausages in string, and spicy Chorizo. Saucisson is a dried sausage that people take on picnics and hiking.

And yes, I showed my sketch to the seller. He grinned even more broadly.


 We took a walking tour of the Île de Paris, the island in the River Seine that is the site of the famous Notre Dame Cathedral. It is not a big island, but we walked quickly for two hours, and now it is over and we are resting on a bench and munching on our sandwiches. These people were not really in a line but milling around in front of the cathedral trying to decide if they wanted to stand in line.

My favorite figure is the standing woman in orange with the black legs.


The weather was so fine, we decided to take the Métro to the Sacré-Coeur church on the hill in the Montmartre neighborhood. You can see a wide panorama from the top of the hill.

 But we walked onwards, sniffing out, literally, a crêperie. We needed a couple of crêpes to keep up our strength. Just after I finished mine and got the sticky residue of Grand Marnier liqueur off my fingers, this bride posed in front of the bakery across the street. For about ten seconds!

 One snap by her photographer and she and her groom were off down the street for more posing. But, I snapped it into my memory!  I drew the
bakery first and then fit her into the space.


One morning I went out on my own wandering the neighborhood with my art supplies. Very close to our apartment I spotted this window of tempting classic French pastries.

Several people did notice me this day, and one man gave me an encouraging ‘formidable’. That is high praise. Those strawberries looked so fresh.


The square is called La Place Des Vosges, built about 1604. All four sides of the square, located in the Marais district, have matching façades, arches, and trees pruned into a severe rectangular shape. It is very harmonious and beautiful. Under the arches are swanky shops and galleries.

 We sat under the trees and enjoyed our cones of three gelato flavors.

I wanted to draw the three people sitting on the grass, sunning themselves, because when I lived in France no one was EVER allowed on the grass. There were signs everywhere stating emphatically “Défense de marcher sur le gazon”. It seems France has relaxed. On this warm day, most people did choose the benches under the trees. 

Another change that we observed was a relaxed attitude toward eating outdoors, which authorized us to consume those delightful sandwiches while sitting on a bench outside of Notre Dame a few days earlier. Take-out (à l’emporter) has arrived in France. This might be old news as I haven’t been to France since 1998.


After four days in Paris, we got a high speed train to Strasbourg in Alsace, and then drove to our rented house in the village of Bergheim. This is our charming courtyard, looking through the gate to a red house across the lane. 

In Alsace, many or most of the ancient houses are painted in bright colors. Besides red, we saw orange, yellow-gold, green, blue, purple, and lavender. And most of them had huge window boxes with overflowing colorful flowers.

The buildings in this town date from the year 1300 onwards.


The drawing above is the central part of the courtyard gate. The extremely ornate design in wrought iron includes grapes, leaves, and tendrils. It was too complex for the courtyard sketch, so I simplified it there to focus on the red color.


On our way to the city of Colmar, we stopped in one more little village on the Route Des Vins, or Wine Road. 

 This is Kayersberg, and the middle house is the birthplace of Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), theologian, philosopher, physician, organist, and medical missionary in Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 for his book Reverence For Life.

The museum on the right was closed for a long lunch, so we merely peered into the windows.


At a welcome luncheon we met a couple of other Americans staying in the nearby village of Ribeauvillé. After a little conversation with them, I asked them if they would like a free art lesson, since they had brought art supplies with them and were concerned that they might be experiencing artist’s block. 

They chose this view of a stone staircase behind their apartment. In the far background is a steep hill vineyard ready for the harvest.

I did this sketch as a demonstration. The shadows of the arch are nice and do make a good pattern on the mossy reddish steps.

We met again two days later for a follow up lesson and again in Strasbourg where they reported enjoying keeping up their art journals, and drawing every day. They were kind to tell me that I give good lessons.


Alsace abounds in half ruined châteaux, or castles. This one is Château de St. Ulrich, looming above Ribeauvillé and built in about 1300. It was quite a distance away on a hill top, but I used my built in eyeball zoom lens.

_____

And back to more images from California, if you can stand the jolting transition. I plan to eventually post all the ones I did on my visit in August 2014. And there will be plenty more of France too.


I have been the Southern California flower market twice now. For two dollars, anyone can go in, wander, and buy more flowers than they need. The scent is heavenly.

The employee is able to wrap roses while sleeping.


Sunflowers in a plastic bucket.


This is the view opposite the flower market. I like the colors.


Another highly decorated building in the Arts District in Los Angeles. I have never seen anything like this, which pretty much always means I dig out my sketch pad and tools. The swirly patterns are just that. They do not spell out words. I would think the idea is to depict a sense of energy.


And for last, a drawing done in New Hampshire, out of our window looking east. The valley sometimes fills with mist, and on this day a big wide bright rainbow shone against the hill side. I shouted to my husband to look out the window at the ridge, but it was gone that fast. Except in my memory. And now on paper.


Monday, September 22, 2014

Enfield Shaker Museum, Los Angeles, and a new tool

Here is our new toy, a hand held scanner. We just slid it over the pictures and you can see the results. Not too bad.

We’re testing it out in preparation for use on our upcoming trip to France. It doesn’t produce quite the quality we get from the flatbed scanner at home (especially the background shade), but it should be great for blog or Facebook postings of some of the drawings that will be filling up the sketchbooks I just bought.

The New Hampshire images that follow were indeed scanned with this tiny device.

 Some days my drawings are rather bright. On a very gloomy day at this month’s sketch crawl of the Second Saturday Sketchers in Sunapee Harbor, NH, I sketched this hydrangea bush. I believe that it is a bumper year for hydrangeas, if one can say that about flowers instead of edibles.

 The dangerous bump is a tree root pushing up the paving.




And now to a softer palette. This drawing of the herb drying rack, and the other New Hampshire drawings below, were done this past Saturday on location at the Harvest Festival at the Enfield Shaker Museum in nearby Enfield, NH.

Shakers were a branch of the religious sect the Quakers. They began in England in the 18th century. And they flourished with twenty communities on the east coast of the U.S. in the 19th century. To quote the Enfield Shaker Museum website,  “They practiced equality of the sexes and races, celibacy, pacifism, and communal ownership.”  The celibacy clause eventually led to their demise.


 
The sun warmed me while I sketched the pink hollyhocks, various sunflowers, and spiky red plants that I can’t identify.

The Shakers were skilled gardeners and were the first folks, it is said, to sell seeds in little paper envelopes.



Next up, we stepped inside a wooden clapboarded building where the Museum’s curator was making barrels. The materials varied depending on the client’s wishes and the intended use of the barrel.

 The ones above that look to be bound together in rope are in fact wrapped in split sapling strips. These worked fine for barrels containing contents of relatively low weight and exerting relatively low pressure. And were cheap.

 Barrels used for beer (high pressure) and graphite for the pencil factories (heavy) required metal bands.


One activity station at this festival offered a chance to make pot pourri sachets. The dried flower petals and herbs were grown in the garden. I was ably guided by a Girl Scout who sure knew her pot pourri.

An old granite stone mill is in the background.


The Stone Mill building from 1849 sits atop a hill across the road from the main living quarters of the Shaker community. It houses three stories of water powered machinery. I have never been inside.

I, of course, like the red painted window trim.


The machine above is an apple chopper. The fruit is chopped before moving it to a press to make cider. Delicious samples were available for tasting. Other demonstrations at the festival included butter churning and the making of apple cider ice cream. The ice cream had been all consumed by the time we got there.

The Shakers believed in hard work, making money selling things out in ‘the world’, and inventing clever machines to speed along the hard work.


Enough of New Hampshire for now. Back to my collection of drawings of Downtown Los Angeles.

 Above is the front door to the Ace Hotel, 929 Broadway, sited next to the United Artists Theater. There were a ton of biblical and ecclesiastical references. In the panels above the door, I saw, after a lot of squinting, St.George slaying the dragon. And another guy using his weapon to cut wheat. Or something like that. 

The theater is designed to look like a Gothic church. I wonder what the inside looks like.


You may have guessed that I especially love small sidewalk signs, even if my lettering skills are not A+.

I believe it is obvious that these signs are meant for two distinct groups of people living in DTLA.


One more California image for this time. Here is a street view in the Arts District. You can see the tall buildings of the Financial District which is very helpful for orienting yourself. Meaning that I could always find my way back home to our daughter’s apartment.

I was up way too early in the morning for most denizens of the Arts District. (My body was still on East Coast Time.) Only a few sleepy dog owners shuffled past.

See all the murals, including the enormous face?

Monday, September 8, 2014

Second Saturday Sketchers

Local artists - Join us for the monthly Second Saturday Sketch Crawl at Sunapee Harbor, September 13th from 9 (or thereabouts) to noon.

California, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire

So it’s back to sunny southern California to draw again. I started a project in the spring and finished it this summer. The project was to draw on location in Downtown Los Angeles. Our daughter and her husband moved here last year, and we’ve been captivated by the beautiful historic architecture and the vibrancy of the area. I thought a total of 50 drawings would tell the story of this fascinating part of the city called DTLA.  Here are a few, and you can see them all in an upcoming book.

My first day, I left the apartment very early...still on East Coast time. I sat on a stool at the Starbucks around the corner at 6th and Spring Street. And this was my view.

The building was probably once a bank. The morning sun caught all the details of the Corinthium style columns.

You can take that orange bus all the way to Venice, Venice Beach that is.



By turning my head about 90 degrees at the coffee shop, I got this view. DTLA is full of murals, mostly of very large faces. The painting is on the side of a renovated building full of loft apartments for the young professionals who are flocking to the area.

I always felt a little unnerved by this huge face peering in.


Pershing Square is a mixed use park a few blocks from our daughter and son-in-law’s apartment. It is surrounded by Beaux Arts and Art Deco buildings. The time frame for them is the 1920s and 1930s. In this drawing I was more interested in the antennas for KRKO.

Being a northerner means I don’t understand palm trees, but they appeal to me as a pattern.


Still on my first day in LA, I climbed halfway up the Bunker Hill steps to get this view of the City Library tower. It is dwarfed by taller buildings now, but lovely in its Art Deco style. The top pyramid is covered in colored and gold mosaics that glint in the sun.

 I am still trying to understand all the different kinds of palm trees.



This is not Downtown Los Angeles, but it includes an iconic view that is sometimes visible from the downtown. In the center background is the famous Hollywood sign, and to the right of that is the Griffith Park Observatory.


The Tower Theater at Broadway and 8th. The many theaters on Broadway have Art Deco motifs all mixed in with Mexican/Aztec/Central American ones. This one is all terra cotta and glazed tiles.  Most of the theaters have been well preserved, and while not open for regular operation often serve as the venue for receptions, award presentations, TV and movie shoots, and the like.

It was hot as blazes while I squinted up at this white building and then down at my white paper.


Last month I was asked to go to the South Shore of Boston to the beach town of Hull. My commission was to draw/paint the 100 year old house and the beach, and to include four young brothers who weren’t there at the time.

Timing was very tight between the day I painted this and delivery (the client’s wife’s birthday), and so there was no time for a professional photograph of the finished piece. So I have this very bluish image of white paper to post here.

There are all sorts of crazy perspectives going on here. My goal was to feel as if I were walking over the dunes and seeing the whole horizon open up. I sat on the bee-yoo-tee-ful beach for an hour and a half studying all the colors, the boats and ferries, all the people and their beach toys, even moving the land forms into a better composition.

 I took photos of the house to help me work on the details at home. The four boys also had to be done at home from a compilation of a handful of photos provided by the client. In the photos, the boys were all on the porch, so you can see that I had to make major modifications.

 It was all a secret as these things usually are. And I was told that it was a big hit.



And here’s a nicer exposure of a closeup of the beach and the boys.



And while we were in Hull I drew this carousel, the last remaining relic of Paragon Park, the old Nantasket Beach amusement park. It was also a request from the same client. To add to the challenge, I drew the horses as they were spinning around. Fun. I love carousels.

The carousel has been housed in its own building and lovingly preserved by a non-profit organization. It’s still fully functional. Individual horses are sponsored by generous donors, either annually or in perpetuity.


And on the way home from Hull the road to Boston unexpectedly turned left, we continued straight, and we ended up on Hough’s Neck, a short peninsula in Quincy with this view of the Boston skyline.

 I didn’t even get out of the car, and I had it down on paper in minutes, including part of the car’s windshield. You see an airplane heading right into Logan Airport. It is one of those exciting and scary airports nearly surrounded by water.


 Last week was our wedding anniversary. For the second year in a row, we had a very nice brunch at Lakeside Grille at Church Landing in Meredith, NH. On our walk afterwards, I drew some end-of-summer lush gardens.

 I was purposely emulating another artist’s style here, Reuven Dattner from Israel. I don’t know him. He posts online daily, and I enjoy following his work. It was very entertaining to draw with red and purple gel pens. The watercolor was added at home.