Sketchbook Sunday: Watercolors in the Garden at CAC

Last week I focused on watercolor painting techniques with my 4th grade Summer Spree campers. This was a demo I did along with them to showcase wet-on-wet, drybrush, texture with salt and rubbing alcohol, and oil pastel resist. They started with drawings from the flower garden. Much fun was had.

Sketchbook Sunday: Violin Practice

This is a sketch of my daughter who is practicing for her Suzuki Violin Level 1B audition next month. She always looks so serious when she practices.

Sketchbook Sunday: Frog, Rodents, and Flowers on Pinch Pots

I didn't draw in any sketchpads this week, but I did draw directly on leather hard clay pinch pots I made.

Sketchbook Sunday: Just Drawing with the Girls

This week I sketched with my daughters a bit. This first drawing is by my 8-year-old Lysistrata, and I think it is just amazing. I so want to make this into a linocut so we can make copies and color them.

The next print is by 6-year-old Bebe and it is of the Morning Glories we planted and grew last year. I guess she is already longing for spring.

The last drawing is mine - a quick line drawing on Bebe.

Sketchbook Sunday: Family Portraits

Tonight Will, the girls and I had a family drawing night inspired by the workshop I went to with Meri Adelman last week. We each took about 1 minute to draw another person with a black Sharpie and then we colored them in (not necessarily coloring the one we drew.) Lots of fun. The kids want to start doing this regularly. We'll see what happens.

Sketchbook Sunday: Portraits with Meri Adelman

Last night I participated in a portrait drawing workshop called "Facing Ourselves" with artist Meri Adelman. It's part of the Women's Creativity Nights series of workshops at Six Senses Clay Studio (I'm offering white line printmaking February 3rd). There were five of us there. Meri took 4 minutes to draw each participant (and later I drew Meri), and then we took turns using oil pastels to fill in the drawings with color and patterns. Unfortunately I hadn't brought my camera, so I only have this photograph of the portrait of me. But they were all stunning and fun to make.

Sketchbook Sunday: Wagner Moths

This week I drew from moths in the Wagner's collection. Each sketch is 1" x 1". I want to do more 1" x 1" linocuts and woodcuts such as these, and hoping that through persistant tinker around, eventually a clear direction for this project will reveal itself.

Sketchbook Sunday: Dog Portraits

These are portraits of the two dogs my family adopted this year. Mary is a chiweenie (chihuahua and dachshund mix) and Choban is an Australian Shepherd. I feel their respective personalities really come through.

Sketchbook Sunday: Kiwi

It's been a while since I made a Sketchbook Sunday, and yes, that's because it's been a while since I drew in my sketchbook. Maybe I'll make it a New Year's Resolution to better keep up with that. Certainly a worthy goal.

Anyway, these are sketches from a taxidermy kiwi at the Wagner that I drew in between classes this week. For any interested artists, the Wagner reserves Fridays from 1PM-4PM as open studio time for those who would like to sketch from the collection with dry media. No reservations necessary.

Sketchbook Sunday: Two Nests

This is a continuation of the studio play from Friday and my decision to start drawing on paper I made this year. White acrylic paint and ball point pen on paper made from day lilies.

Finished Dino-pots

Anyone remember the dino-pots I started to make back in June? I finished them!

Sketchbook Sunday: Barred Owl on Handmade Paper

This year I learned to make paper. I learned about and made paper along with campers at the Community Arts Center with Summer Spree Fellow Carol Gannon. I took workshops with Cozy Bendesky at Historic Rittenhouse Town, using seeds, leaves, and flower pedals, and plants, and then did the open vats workshop.

So now I have all this random handmade paper, some of which I have plans to print on, but lots of which I have no plans for yet. And I've been really lazy about doing my Sketchbook Sundays, so the obvious solution is to start drawing on some of this lovely paper. Here's my first attempt: a barred owl in flight.

Sketchbook Sunday: Papermaking Workshop II

This weekend I returned to Historic Rittenhouse Town for more papermaking workshops with artist and educator Cozy Bendesky. (Last month I took papermaking with seeds, leaves, and flower pedals) Saturday was papermaking with plants, and today was open vats papermaking, which is basically open studio. Over the weekend I made 63 sheets of paper out of cotton, thistle, cattails, day lilies, and recycled bluejeans. This includes 20 sheets to use in an upcoming print exchange, some paper for my daughters, and the 6 sheets pictured here that I'm going to print on as soon as I figure out what to print. 

In addition to having great fun, this is building up to something. Just wait 'til the spring of 2018. 

Sketchbook Sunday: Papermaking Workshop

As regular readers already know, I don't always post about work in my sketchbook on Sketchbook Sunday. For instance, I have posted about a sequencing workshop and drawing on ceramics before. The idea of these Sundays was to get me to keep my hand moving and work through new impressions and ideas I have about what I see. Even though this is papermaking, it still serves the purpose of Sketchbook Sundays because I'm exploring familiar materials in ways I haven't before.

This is the first time I have ever made paper. I took a workshop on making paper with seeds, leaves, and flower pedals at Historic Rittenhouse Town with artist and educator Cozy Bendesky. It was a nice, small group (4 students) and Cozy was a well-prepared, friendly, and knowledgeable instructor.

I made 18 sheets of paper this morning, but here is a sampling from today's workshop that well represents the collection of materials we were working with. The vats started out with abaca cotton pulp, to which we added our various garden sundries.

Sunday Sketchbook: Plastic Toy Dinosaurs

I'm still not sure where this dinosaur toy line of interest is going, but at least I'm having fun.

Sketchbook Sunday: Dino-pot Ideas

This week I finished shaping some new pinch pots (see below) that I want to draw on, but I was having trouble deciding what to draw. So I pulled out my sketchbook and a bunch of plastic toy dinosaurs to use as references, and came up with some ideas.

Speaking of dinosaurs, or more specifically, representations of dinosaurs primarily aimed at children, I'm still trying to get at something about that with my art. Should probably explore it more with relief printmaking. Stay tuned...

Sketchbook Sunday: Bird Drawings on Pinch Pots

I have not been working in my sketchbook at all lately. But I have been drawing! Mostly on pinch pot ceramic pieces I make. Ceramics is a newer medium for me that I've been at for just over 3 years. Most of what I create is variations on pinch pots that I let get leather hard and then draw into. (It's not sgraffito because I don't cover the piece with slip first. I just draw into the bare surface and fill the lines with glaze after it's been bisque fired.) The drawings are done spontaneously; I decide what to draw on a pot after I've already formed it) and the lines drawn are the lines that stay. I don't smooth over "mistakes" or try to "fix" anything I don't like.

I thought to include this activity in a Sunday Sketchbook post because this process is mainly about the relationship between hand-shaping a piece of clay and intuitive free drawing. Also, most of the subjects I've drawn are animals I have been sketching over the past several months.

These are images of 2 pieces: a pinch pot creamer and mug with bird drawings.