Behind the Scenes!

Here is the beach at Pleasant Lake, New London, NH. I drew it on my iPad, and it seemed like I was drawing in the dark instead of the bright sunlight. This is because the screen went quite grey in the bright light. So I really couldn't see what I had drawn until I returned home. It is also an odd and challenging art experience because you draw with your finger, which is much broader than the strokes you are making! But it does remind me of finger painting.

Our small lake has one pair of nesting loons, and two chicks born this week. Maybe next week we will venture out in our kayaks to catch a glimpse, maybe. It is important not to disturb the new family.

There will be a 10k run around the lake in July.

Behind the Scenes!

I continue my DRAW-NH! project, drawing all 234 towns in the state. Here I am standing in the road in Marlow. The monument in front of me is unusual because it depicts a soldier from World War l, rather than the Civil War as is common in many towns here.

And my version of the scene. Although I have no aptitude for making three dimensional art, I enjoy looking at and drawing monuments and sculpture of all kinds. I admire the skills of the artists. My paternal grandfather was a stone cutter, brave enough to take hammer and chisel to marble. I spent a lot of time with him and I think my love of stone and sculpture comes from these memories.

Behind the Scenes!

The Rock on Sugarhouse Road

Here is a granite rock, dotted with lichens, and surrounded by ferns. I used to rest by this rock, when huffing my way up the steep road near our house. Now that I am more fit, mainly from striding up this hill, I lean on it no more. But today I drew it. In the background are the rhododendrons, now just coming into bloom, as the lilacs begin to fade. Each bloom is surrounded by flat, shiny leaves.

Behind the scenes!

I have always enjoyed tools, materials, and processes. So my plan is to start sending out one or two photos of what’s going on in the weeks that I don’t post the regular blog. These will show what’s in the works, aspects of how I go about creating these drawings, or other things that might have happened along the way.

Here are my tools....my colored pencils (woodless) made in the Czech Republic (marketed by Koh-I-Noor), a 7mm #2 retractable lead pencil (from Staples), and my pigmented ink pens (Pigma Micron) from Japan. This kind of ink is fade proof.

And an eraser

Here is my sketch of Salisbury, New Hampshire, ready to color. You’ll see it on next month’s blog. I’m working in earnest now on my Draw Every Town in New Hampshire project, DRAW-NH! My paper is so small so it can fit easily into my purse. That way I am always ready to go. This challenges me to capture the scene in just a few square inches, and it allows me to sketch quickly and inconspicuously when the situation demands.

New Hampshire, Alberta, Wisconsin, and Airplane!

Spring has come at last. We are in Colburn Park in Lebanon, New Hampshire. I had in mind to draw the town library, the yellow brick building with columns. Not until I got there did I decide to include the trees, the Veterans’ Memorial, and the swing set. Urban parks have intrigued me for a long time. This one is square, surrounded by a street, and around that are some fine old buildings. The park is used by people of all ages, and it serves a real community need.

I like the pathways in Edmonton, where our younger daughter and her family live. Our younger granddaughter balances on the round river rocks, on the left. A jack rabbit on the right watches us. (The plentiful wild rabbits are large and white in the winter, and turn brown in the summer.) He and his siblings have nibbled the bark on the crabapple trees. That is why they are yellow. He had a good reason, as it was a long cold winter and he got hungry. The snow got very deep and he ate all the way up. I don’t think the bark has been permanently damaged. We shall see. The purple shape on the right is a roof line not a mountain. Oh, that we could see the Rocky Mountains from here. They are a four hour car ride west of Edmonton.

This space is called Café o’ Play in Edmonton, Canada. Good snacks for the parents, and a fun experience for the kids. I drew our grandson three times, as he was everywhere. There were lots of other kids there too of course. In the background I included the mothers who come to meet other mothers. They are all holding their infants, and enjoying their conversations.

Our younger granddaughter again. I liked her black and white dress. Her hair is not really blue and pink and red. My colored pencils just pick themselves up and start to work. Her hair is ash brown with bluish tones in the shines.

Our older granddaughter, aged 8, drew these sunglasses. I thought she did well. I give her drawing lessons sometimes, and talk about observational sketching.

My sister is very kindly making me a pair of earrings. We chose the beads together the day before. Her house is made from a barn that was on their property. It was taken down, numbered, cleaned, moved, and reassembled at 5/8th size, I think. The diagonal beams were in such a configuration in the barn. The windows were added. I love the oak trees on their property with their wavy branches.

Another room in the barn house. Their cat Alibi watches the bluebirds outside. The lilac bushes are all in bloom now. The scent is divine. My sister and her husband maintain bluebird boxes on their land. We opened them up and peeked at turquoise eggs and grey fuzzy newborns.

I saw this sunset from the airplane window. Below is Lake Erie, one of the massive lakes that form the border between the U.S. and Canada. I drew it on an iPad. It is fun to paint with light.

Another iPad drawing. This is the moon as we flew over Chicago. The lake on the left is Lake Michigan. The city’s skyscrapers hug the shoreline. The blocks on the right are of low rise buildings, on the flat Illinois land, with yellow street lights. I come from the East Coast where the roads twist and turn around the hills. I prefer to live in a hilly landscape, but it is fun to see the regular square shapes of light as I fly over the earth.

One more iPad drawing. I love these colorful songbirds. They occupy a very large enclosure in the Ingleside Nursing Home in Wisconsin, where my mother lives. They make nests and have babies. And quarrel and sing and entertain the residents and guests. I try to imagine them in their native habitat.

New Hampshire, England, and Alberta!

Once a month, I believe, the First Baptist Church of New London clears floorspace on the second floor. Then they roll out their labyrinth. It really is purple, and it is available for anyone to come walk upon.

The design, painted on cloth, is a replica of the one at Chartres Cathedral in France. The path twists and turns, but you get to the center and out again without encountering any dead ends. Unexpected thoughts pop into your head when you walk a labyrinth. I recommend it to all. Some people find it spiritually enlightening.

I do not care for mazes though. Ever since we had to ask to be let out of the maze at Hampton Court in England. Funny enough, after I finished the labyrinth, I had a very hard time finding my way back out of the church building. It was too much like a maze.

And here is the church building that houses the labyrinth. I love the bell tower, with its Revere bell. I ran out of room for the weather vane atop the tower. This is the small, side door with the ramp for accessibility. I like this view for the differences in scale: the large white building, the small home across the street (in the same materials of painted wood), and Mount Sunapee in the distance with the ski slopes.

As a child, I often amused myself by playing with scale. For example, I remember lying in the grass with my eyes so close to the blades of grass that they could be imagined as jungle trees. And the ants were monstrously large beasts, carrying home food as big as a house. I was easily entertained!

Here is a fiber piece I made a few years ago, based on a labyrinth in Crete. It is wool, pulled through linen and about 14 inches square. It is meant to hang on a wall.

Ah, our April Fool’s Day storm (April 1). See the delicate evergreens weighed down with the heavy snow. This is the view from our kitchen window.

Hanging from the window frame are colorful glass ornaments. The grapes and the mushrooms are leaded, stained glass, bought on a trip to Meissen Germany in 2000. (We loved Meissen!) The round ones are made locally. They sure do brighten up the room on a winter’s day. Or snowy spring day.

I think I enjoy putting drawings online because the light shines through them, enlivening them. This blog is the best exhibit I ever had!

This is the view of Mount Kearsarge from Wilmot. We board our dog here sometimes. I was taken with the look of the picnic table, waiting patiently for a family meal once the weather eases.

The bare trees reminded me of tethered hot air balloons.

Another view of the hamlet of Elkins, near our house. One day I suddenly realized that this pile of sticks in the center is a beaver lodge. Their dam is at the far edge of the water. I would like to see the beavers swimming.

There is still snow. Next to the lodge are several grey granite boulders dropped there in the last glacier age.

The shrubs are starting to turn red and yellow as the winter progresses to spring.

Last week I was part of a small reunion of our University of New Hampshire dormitory, held in Greenland, NH. We sat around a table for hours and gabbed. It is good to reunite with people.

This was my view. After an hour or two, I got out my pencil and paper and drew it. I put in the color later.

We were near Portsmouth, near the ocean, so no snow! Just the greenish grass of the golf course. The water is Great Bay, and the mountain is a hill. I think I exaggerated the height because I liked the color of it. I don’t know what kind of trees are on the left with their curly branches. I would guess a kind of willow.

Spring Ledge Farm is our local garden center. We went this day because it was grey, cold and windy. I need color like vitamins. We went out back to see the newborn lambs, and the chickens.

Then I drew the flowers. Left to right: hyacinth, white Easter lilies, yellow Asian lilies, and red amaryllis. And a basket of potatoes.

Aha, a drawing of seeds in spring. Only one has sprouted so far. Under the seed box is a colorful sheet of wrapping paper. All this rests on a small table.

This drawing was done in 1983, in England. And the brightly painted table had just been made by our 7 year old daughter. (She is now a designer.) The colors of the table are accurate.

And here is our second daughter at the same time, 1983. She loved board games, puzzles, and rainbow colors. And still does.

Below are her children.

I made this drawing on our new iPad. Our two granddaughters hold hands, and look for springtime treasures to put into their bucket. They were 4 and 2 at the time.

I did this by looking at a photo which is now 4 years old. But I remember the day well. And the hats.

We will be seeing them soon at their home in Alberta, Canada, along with their little brother. Maybe I’ll have time to draw!

New Hampshire and Maryland

This is another view out of our front door. The beech leaves which cling on the branches until spring add a note of color in the winter. The color is quite a warm copper, with golden touches. The wooden bird is our doorknocker. The next day I saw a real woodpecker.

It has been a very snowy and cold winter. You see the massive piles of snow in Elkins, a part of our town of New London. Mount Kearsarge is in the background. Every day that I drove past here, I loved the looks of the red house against the purple mountain. One day, at 2:58 PM I pulled over and drew it.

One day, while we drove past our Pleasant Lake on the way to the Post Office, we saw a beautiful and mysterious aqua glow on the ice. For a day and a half, we had glacial type ice on a small patch in the middle of the lake. This dense, heavy ice absorbs all the other colors of light except this one. We have seen it before in the west, in the ice caves of Mount Rainier in Washington State and also in the glaciers of the Canadian Rockies. But I have never seen it here in New Hampshire. I drew this from memory.

Main Street, New London, New Hampshire. In the background, buildings on the campus of Colby-Sawyer College. In the foreground, a row of very old and weather-scarred sugar maple trees, being tapped for spring sap. A sharp, hollow spike is driven into the bark; then the sap drips into the buckets. The mildly sweet sap is collected, and boiled down into maple syrup. The little peaked roof just keeps out the rain. This an encore drawing from last year.

This drawing was used as an illustration in the publication Kearsarge Magazine. The article is about a hotel in nearby Bradford known for its healing medicinal waters. This is my first magazine illustration in color. I had to do a little bit of research on fashionable clothing for the country, in the 1880’s. New Hampshire had many large hotels in this era. Families from the cities of Boston and New York would take a train, and then a steamship across a lake in some cases. And spend the summer. Most of the hotels are gone now, lost to fires and changes in travel trends. But this hotel still exists, I read, although it has been moved to Antrim, New Hampshire. I should go there and draw it in its present form. Maybe next month. I am waiting for the snow to melt.

This large brick building is in Baltimore, Maryland at the corner of North Patterson Park Avenue and Baltimore Street.

When our daughter and her husband first moved into the city to this street, a few years ago, the corner building was missing its turret. But the new owner replaced it! That is unusual and commendable.

The umbrella on the roof deck is just waiting for a summer day. To the far right on the blue slate mansard style roof is an object that looks a little like a clock. Actually, the L-shape is a design in the slate tiles. It must have been the original owner’s initial. When I was a child, (and my last name was Lapierre), I was always looking for Ls in architecture as well as nature. I guess I haven’t changed much.

Across the street from the above building is this unusually large brick edifice. Buildings near parks tend to be showy. The architect did a great job with theme and variation. I love the roof lines.

A class of school children came along while I was drawing. They were singing their way up the street, with a teacher at the front and another at the rear.

I did this drawing in a huge hurry as my husband was packing the car for the trip home to New Hampshire. This white painted brick row house is across the street from our daughter’s house. This is the side view. Built about 1900, it has the common flat, step down roof, covered in tar paper. The dentile molding is a design in the brickwork itself.

A lot of the ornamentation you see is wooden trim edging the cornice. The corner door near the sign has more wooden trim. The owners run the building as a small home day care business. I drew an Easter egg, and made an attempt at the rabbit window decoration.

Spring comes early in Maryland, and in the few days we were there the little newly planted cherry tree popped out into lovely blossoms. The color is quite an intense shade of pink.

I believe this is the original gate to Patterson Park, in Baltimore. We are looking down Lombard Street to the downtown. I like to picture fancy carriages coming between the white marble columns. (There are poles there now to prevent this.)

Notice the children’s drawing. Some one was playing hop-scotch. It was drawn in white chalk, but I had to interpret it as black lines so it would be visible.