Drawing…Something new to try

While I was on vacation in Eastern Oregon last week, I brought along the latest issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors.  This is a yummy issue and in particular I was drawn to Robin Olsen’s article, “Being Here, Sketching the Moment”.  You can see her sketches with watercolor washes on pages 70-73 in the Sept/Oct issue.  I liked her list of “essential sketch bag items” and realized that I had brought along all of them.

The scary part for me was to draw with an ink pen.  Yikes!  What if I made a mistake, you can’t erase it.  What if I hated what I drew?  What if it looked dorky?  Well, I brought along my gesso and could always cover it up and start over.  Everyone has to start somewhere, so here are my very first drawings.

 

This was a Liquitex Gel Matte Medium jar and my foam brush on a table.  The torn ephemera was a after thought, and really didn’t need to be added except that I hated the bare white space.

This is my second drawing of my Prismacolor pencils.  I had already laid down the torn ephemera pages and used those for some texture to the drawing.

Here is my heat gun, again I added the torn ephemera pages first and then drew over it.

This is my first “Plein Air” drawing of spawning salmon in the Wallowa River.  This particular fish had perched itself on a bed of rocks and died before it could swim to its birth place at the mouth of the river.  I took this drawing down to the Joseph (Oregon) post office and had it post marked.

These four drawings were done over a two day period.  I used a thin Sharpie marker for the drawing and Rembrandt pan watercolors.  The background ephemera were torn pages from dictionaries and novels applied using gel matte medium underneath and on top.  These drawings are done on 5″ x 7″  cold press watercolor paper. 

I plan to continue with these types of drawings and have purchased a Moleskin watercolor journal to carry along with my watercolors, brush, pen and water.  I even have a small shoulder bag just big enough to carry all of these “essential” supplies.

If you are looking for some inspiration, take a look at the Everyday Matters blog by Danny Gregory, or consider joining the Yahoo Group .

Cheers!!!

Day 12 Soul Journal

I had a wonderful one week vacation in Eastern Oregon and completed Day 12 of my soul journal.  Below is my imaginary home.

And these are some imaginary buildings from one of my favortie cities, San Francisco.

You can visit Sarah Whitmire’s blog to see other artists journals on their Day 12 soul journey.

Cheers!!

Going on vacation

I will be camping and will not have access to write my blog entries, but I will be taking along my journal and creating more pages for the Soul Journey from Sarah Whitmire’s blog.  I wish all of you an artful week.  Talk to you soon.

Frida Kahlo exhibit in San Francisco

WOW!!  This past Sunday, August 17, I saw the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.   With the overwhelming response to the exhibit, the museum sold the tickets on a timed entry.  I entered at 2:00pm.  I spent the next two hours totally engaged with each painting as I passed.  I was the only one in the room using my Blackberry to capture my initial thoughts as I stood in front of each one.  There were three rooms dedicated to this exhibit.  Two of them contained her paintings and one contained framed original photographs from the Vicente Wolf Collection.   

Here is the brochure from the event.  The featured painting for the exhibit was ”Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird”.  This painting was used on the musuem brochure, the exhibit hard cover book and on the large paper tote bag that carried your purchases.

 The first room that you entered in to highlighted her works from 1930-1937.  The paintings that were shown were:

1. Portrait of Luther Burbank, 1931
2. Portrait of Mrs. Jean Wight, 1931
3. Portrait of Dr. Leo Elsasser, 1931
4. Henry Ford Hospital, 1932
5. Self-Portrait with Necklace, 1933
6. My Dress Hangs There, 1933
7. Self Portrait on the Border Line between Mexico and the United States, 1932
8. Frida & Diego Riveria, 1931
9. My Grandparents, Parents and I, 1936
10. The Deceased Dimas Rosas, 1937
11. Portrait of Diego Rivera, 1937
12. A Few Small Nips, 1935
13. Self-Portrait: “Very Ugly”, 1933
14. My Nurse & I, 1937
15. Self-Portrait with Bed  (also called Me and My Doll), 1937
16. Self-Portrait, 1930
17. My Birth, 1932

The second room highlighted her works from 1938-1951.  Here is what I viewed:

1. Two Nudes in a Forest, 1939
2. The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1939
3. Girl with Death Mask, 1938
4. Itzcuintli Dog with Me, 1938
5. Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943
6. Diego and Frida 1929-1944
7. The Broken Column, 1944
8. Flower of Life, 1944
9. Magnolias, 1945
10. Sun and Life, 1947
11. The Love of the Universe, 1949
12. Still Life with Parrot and Fruit, 1951
13. Still Life, 1951
14. Still Life with Parrot and Flag, 1951
15. Moses, 1945
16. Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1945
17. The Circle, no date
18. Miniature Self-Portrait, 1946
19. Portrait of Lucha Maria……, 1942
20. Portrait of Dona Rosita Morillo, 1944
21. Without Hope, 1945
22. Me and My Parrots, 1941
23. The Mask, 1945

The third room contained well over one hundred individually framed, original photographs.  These were fascinating to look at, particularly after veiwing the previous paintings.  At the end of the exhibit there was a gift shop where  you could purchase Frida items ranging from posters and prints, shadow box collages, men’s ties, women’s hand embroidered shirts (reminiscent of Frida’s shirts), magnets, postcards, etc.  I purchased the exhibit hard bound book that contains all of the paintings and photos as well as stories about her life and the times that she lived. 

Some of the paintings were much smaller than I had imagined and unless you see them up close and personal you miss many details.  In particular, I never noticed the collage work at the bottom of “My Dress Hangs There”.  What appears to be bricks or stones is actually collaged pictures of crowds and lines of people!!  You miss the raised texture of the gladiola on “The Deceased Dimas Rosas”, the floral anklet that Frida wears in “A Few Small Nips”, or the detail of Frida’s eyebrows on her “Self Portrait”.  This was a rare opportunity to see so much of her art in one place. 

I feel honored to have had the privledge to see this.  If you get a chance to go to San Francisco before September 28, stand in line and buy a ticket.  You will not be disappointed.

Day 11 Soul Journal

Another day has passed and I completed our Day 11 lesson.

I like the look of the torn pages against the white background.  I challenged myself to use just one page torn out of an old bird book.  You can see references to birds and locations in the text.

I read ahead and it looks like the next lesson is to use lots and lots of color to finish this up.  I may try to do some of that tonight before I leave for San Francisco in the morning.  Not sure yet if I will bring this journal and supplies with me – guess that depends how much space I have in my suitcase.  Even if I don’t take the journal, I will be taking photos and posting them as well as giving an update on the Frida Kahlo exhibit at MOMA.

Keep it simple!!