Monday, March 14, 2016

New Hampshire and Maine



The Capitol Center for the Arts is in our capital city, Concord, New Hampshire. I liked the look of the snow on the roof. I haven’t been in this building since I was five when my mother took me to see Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. It gave me nightmares. I always was a delicate flower.

 When I drew this, I was having lunch across the street at the café attached to Gibson’s Bookstore.



During the winter months especially, we attend a lot of lectures in our town and others nearby. These talks are presented by experts in their subjects and well attended. It is like a college course without the exams and papers to write.

This particular lecture on England in the time of Charles Dickens took place in a common room inside a retirement community. These types of presentations are advertised in our town newspaper and open to the public as well as the residents of the facility. Other talks we attend take place in schools, libraries, granges, and churches.

Besides the computer set up, I drew the screen, the back of a wheelchair, and a walker. And the wonderful speaker.



We put on our boots and Yak Traks, and head out to musical events too in the winter. It was SRO at this quartet playing in a refurbished barn in Warner at MainStreet BookEnds.

My favorite part of this drawing is the sun shining through the ears turning them orange.



The guy on the left reminded me of the French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. After drawing him, I decided to fill up the page. On a cold day, people’s hair tends to stand straight up. These people were part of the audience for the quartet, except for the woman in purple who was the pianist.



And here we have the raw materials for a flower arranging workshop, also held in an old barn.



These bunches of flowers come from a florist exactly like this. My job as flower arranger at our local hospital/nursing home is to cut them shorter and make a nice arrangement in the orange vase.



I like to draw food. I like to draw stuff all lined up. Here is the pencil drawing I did at Lil’s, a coffee shop and cafe in Kittery Foreside, Maine, just across the river from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.



And here is the finished drawing with color added at home. Those towering piles of pastry are called crullers. My own use of the word cruller is somethng else entirely, a straight, slightly twisted, cake donut rolled in cinnamon sugar. Lil’s crullers are light and airy as a popover, with a light sugar glaze. And the shape is amazing too.



And to finish, I present my careful study of a chocolate glazed cake donut. Just for fun.