A Quiet Thanksgiving Nook

 

I sit by this little table in a high-backed chair every morning with tea to plan my day and write in my gratitude journal. My cats love to join me here.

I took advantage of some down time in my schedule to reimagine my creative space.  Refreshing the space and setting out old friends like my colored pencils and watercolor brushes in jars where I can see them brought new energy to this favorite place. 

The morning light coming through the window captured the scene in brilliance for a moment.  

The November Woods

I've been inspired by artist Cathy Johnson, who teaches me to simplify what I see in nature when I sketch.  She also suggests taking a minimalist art kit into nature. Rather than haul my whole box of 48 Prismacolor colored pencils along with my nature journal and Micron pens, I looked at the day and the land around me, and grabbed 5 pencils to tuck in my coat pocket.  Indigo, sepia, dark brown, burnt sienna, and Tuscan red were all I needed to add color to my Micron pen drawings.

When we got to the backpacking shelters at the midpoint of our hike, I pulled out my journal and captured a sense of the day.  It felt freeing to simplify my color pallet, and to draw the forest rather than every individual tree.  It's a drawing, not a photograph, I remind myself! 

Art Journaling as a Stress-Break

Taking the cats for their veterinary check-up is both important to me and stressful.  Three furry friends in their cat carriers buckled into my little Elantra created a symphony of mewling misery as we headed 10 minutes down the road to our vet the other day.  I'm grateful for our team of wonderful, caring & kind vets, but because I have empathy for my kitties, I can feel their distress in the process as they are examined, wormed and vaccinated. 

Thankfully, our cat friends got a good health report.  When I pulled up our driveway, safely home and done, all I could think was I need to make some art.  Once I had the cats out of their carriers and settled back into their familiar space, I grabbed my nature journal and colored pencils, and wandered down the hill from my home to plop on the grass and connect.

Sitting with a stand of nodding grasses and weeds and sketching them felt like magic.  I relaxed.  One of my cats sat at my feet, and we simply took in the beautiful afternoon sunshine playing over the grass fronds.  Deep evergreens in the background created a shadowed contrast to the November weeds.  I began to feel calmer, more grounded, peaceful.  The simple act of sitting with scrabbly weeds and scratching sketches in a journal felt deeply healing.

Figure Drawing Update: Hector in a Mask

 

New Pennsylvania state regulations on mask-wearing went into effect just as we welcomed Hector to model for our Osher Figure Drawing class.  As a result, everyone in my home studio wore a mask, and my students got to draw their first masked model.  

At first, it felt awkward to try to capture the shape of Hector's face and head, but soon, we realized that the mask served as a sock on a foot or a mitten on a hand to simplify a complex body feature. We incorporated the mask into our compositions, ending up with Hector as a regal knight with a sword.

I felt inspired by Hector's playful gestures with a Thanksgiving pie pumpkin, and we all wished for more time when the final beeper sounded.  A delight to be swept away into drawing!

Hector's 2- and 5-minute gestures with a pumpkin:

Figure Drawing Update: Amelia

Last Friday in my Osher Figure Drawing Zoom class, Amelia brought us creative and beautiful poses. Her gestures were particularly well thought-out and varied.

I demonstrated how to approach drawing the head and face, and David stepped in to help by providing a second face to compare. 

As we reviewed the collective results of our 15-minute portraits, I talked with the participants about how we as artists commonly draw our own faces on our models.  I think it's part of the connection we feel towards that person we are drawing, our empathy for them and our shared humanity we are expressing.  We are all one tribe, and figure drawing allows us to feel that connection, to practice our empathy, even over the miles via Zoom. Below is a portrait of Amelia-as-me or me-as-Amelia.

Grandmother Hickory Tree in the Mist

The recent warm weather allowed me the ability to sit outside in comfort and draw a favorite hickory tree on a rainy morning.  I'm fascinated by the twisting branches of Grandmother Hickory tree, and the negative spaces created between each curvy limb.  As I finished up my drawing, a crow sailed in to land on the top of Grandmother Hickory tree and cleaved the misty morning with his loud caws. 

Nature puts on a show for me every time I sit still and pay attention.   

 

The Benefit of Living with an Art Model Update

 

In a recent Zoom class, I worked the camera while David modeled. Professor Sue Powers demonstrated using different colors to represent values. Doing this keeps the brain from focusing on outer lines around the body, and builds the mass of the body from within, finishing with a few contour lines on top.  It's easier to see the real construction of the body when you focus on shadow shapes.  Here, I used hot pink as the base body tone, white for highlights, aqua for medium shadows and black for dark shadows.  

This technique helped me to construct a realistic and live-looking hand.  Sue recommended working quickly, and keeping your drawing implement in contact with the paper, even if you only make thready little lines.  Thanks, Sue!

Figure Drawing Update: David

Our scheduled model last Friday came down with a fever and was unable to work for our Osher class, so David stepped in with creative poses and strength to save the day.  We wish our model a speedy recovery and will plan to have him back when he is well.

We did several exercises to prepare us for dealing with foreshortening, including wrapped line drawings,  in which we followed the cross contours of David's body with our charcoals to help us to understand the way that body parts stack up visually as they come forward in space or recede.

We also turned our charcoals on their sides to create mass drawings.  This technique encourages us to draw the whole body, including the inner structure and shape of the body mass.

We finished the class session with a long pose.

David and I recently sorted through the deep stack of drawings in our living room Zoom art studio.  This is a sampling of what we have created during the last few weeks!

Painting the Lakeside Woods in November

 

David & I took advantage of last Saturday's bright sky and unusual heat to get out to Raccoon Creek State Park.  We hiked in a picnic lunch, and some paints, and enjoyed lunch by the glassy, calm lake.  Later, as I painted, David read the news aloud to me that the election had been called in favor of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  The sky seemed bluer, the day more colorful and full of hope. 

A Relaxing Evening with a Fistful of Micron Pens

Often in the evenings, I want to do something artistic, & relaxing.  I saw this idea online, and was inspired to fill several pages with pen & ink textures.  The power of working within a tiny grid block and having lots of rectangles to fill -- 35 per page in this instance -- is that there's no risk in trying some new pattern or design.  You fall into a playful mindset as you experiment with varying line widths, shapes, and mark-making approaches.

 

The Benefit of Living with an Art Model

One of the benefits of living with a model is getting to draw him while he works.  During a recent college class Zoom session, David held one long pose for an hour and a half.  Once I got the camera and lights set, I got to draw right along with the students.  But one key difference:  I peered around the camera and computer set up and drew David from life.  Lovely to get to do that again!

A Rainy Sunday Sketch

What do you do with a sleepy, cold, rainy, quiet Sunday morning in Autumn?  Sip a pot of hot black tea, and sketch the essence of fall -- a colorful leaf.  This bristle-tipped oak leaf caught my eye on a recent hike, so I scooped it up and set it on the table where I have my morning tea.  Finally a moment to sketch it, I fell into that timeless time, the meditative state we drop into when we draw.  Art connects us to nature and heals us.

Nature Journal Update: A Walk in a Closed Campground

The last sunny day before a rainy, cold spell luckily fell on a day off for me, and I took a backpack loaded with art supplies out to our local state park.  Sunny autumn Saturdays are often busy in the park, but I found that tucking away into the closed campground gives me a quiet space I share only with the White-Tailed Deer and oak trees.  Peace abounds, and picnic tables offer easy places to set up my supplies to sketch or paint the afternoon away.  

Lately, I have needed more peace in my life with the stress of the election coming up.  Nature & art feed my soul, ground me, and create an oasis of calm.

Back at home, I sketch my familiar friend.

 

Nature Journal Update: Autumn Sketches

A sunny day, a journal and a backpack full of painting supplies sounds like bliss to me.  Here are the results from such a day out at Raccoon Creek State Park.