Eh ... I'm not loving my tiny 10 x 15 cm Dessin "Fort" sketchbook for watercolor work. I just want to fill the pages and get it over with. Although it's promoted for more ("Papier dessin, encre, gouache"), I'm guessing most people buy this particular size as a souvenir, to boast of having visited the Sennelier store in Paris. It's small with a thick backing board, so I thought it could take the place of my Moleskine watercolor sketchbook for a while. Mm, not so much.
Sketched the first while waiting to meet a friend for drinks in the city; the second is a quick study of musicians from the Stamford Symphony playing a kids' concert at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center.
On Saturday I participated in the 38th Worldwide SketchCrawl. I wasn't able to meet up with the NYC group in the morning but ended up doing a daylong dual-state crawl.
I started off with a quick sketch over breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien in Stamford before going to a few local garage sales.
At one of them I scored a set of unused watercolor pencils, among other art supplies, so I brought them along with me to my next stop -- Brooklyn, New York, where I met my friend Alison. We had lunch and sketched each other. Then I sketched the expansive view from her window, with the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in the distance:
We went up a few flights of stairs to the roof, where we enjoyed breathtaking views of the sunset over Brooklyn and Manhattan. I quickly sketched two views before my fingers began to freeze:
When we went back down to warm up, I drew her daughter practicing piano (finally broke out those watercolor pencils):
Around 6:15 I headed back to Connecticut so I could catch The Sig Brothers playing at Coalhouse Pizza in Stamford -- got a prime seat right in front of the band so I could draw them as M. and I enjoyed the music:
The next Worldwide SketchCrawl will be on Saturday, April 13. Mark your calendar and join in the fun!
A local resident commissioned me to paint an 11x14 watercolor of the downtown Stamford area. I did two versions in slightly different styles: one in watercolor with some watercolor pencil details and the other in an ink-over-watercolor technique.
Here's version 1:
And here's version 2:
I rarely paint the same scene twice, so this was an interesting experience. The second one felt more spontaneous - it was as if my hand had "learned" the structure of the scene.
The resident chose version 1. Which style do you prefer?
Here's version 1:
And here's version 2:
I rarely paint the same scene twice, so this was an interesting experience. The second one felt more spontaneous - it was as if my hand had "learned" the structure of the scene.
The resident chose version 1. Which style do you prefer?
Small paintings of downtown Stamford, CT, from my original photos.
Capped off a day wandering around New York with a visit to the Harbor Point Beer Garden here in the South End of Stamford. I was pleased they had Ace ciders and not just Angry Orchard, which everyone around here seems to stock. Listening to the band, sipping pear cider, sketching quickly as the breeze picked up -- a nice end to the evening.
Took the kayaks out for the first time this season. We paddled farther than usual around our peninsula, getting quite close to Stamford Harbor Ledge Lighthouse. Next time I'll have to take the anchor with me so I can sketch it. As it was a clear day, we could see the Manhattan skyline in the distance.
M. towed me on the way back so I could sketch.
Long Island Sound provided all the water I needed -- but I had to be careful not to lose my brush in the drink!
A week off from work, just to enjoy the August sun and showers and splash paints about at the beach and read big hardback books in the porch.
Yesterday in class with Anne I had just enough time to capture this lovestruck couple in Madison Square Park before the threatening skies finally opened up and I had to rush off to dinner at Mas la Grillade.
Today, on the other hand, was bright and clear and just begged for sand and flip-flops. I threw some supplies into a jute bag and spent an hour at West Beach drawing the sun-worshippers.
I love this woman's hat, don't you? Way to rock that straw fedora!
Off to sip a glass of lemonade and contemplate dinner...
Yesterday in class with Anne I had just enough time to capture this lovestruck couple in Madison Square Park before the threatening skies finally opened up and I had to rush off to dinner at Mas la Grillade.
Today, on the other hand, was bright and clear and just begged for sand and flip-flops. I threw some supplies into a jute bag and spent an hour at West Beach drawing the sun-worshippers.
I love this woman's hat, don't you? Way to rock that straw fedora!
Off to sip a glass of lemonade and contemplate dinner...
Yes, I paint lifeguards often, I know -- but then again, I do live near the beach, and I am fascinated by the graphic quality of their perch against the sky. This painting was larger before, but I wasn't happy with the other figure in it so I cropped and reframed it to include only the one.
So pleased that we now have yet another option for dining within a 2-mile radius of our house - Harlan Social, in the complex that already has Le Pain Quotidien and Fairway and Design Within Reach. Stopped there for dinner the other day and enjoyed everything we ordered. And they have paper menus! That they encourage you to take home! So naturally I sketched the hopping scene while waiting for my sublime velvety mango panna cotta.
And lest you think I've been on a total sketching diet since the Urban Sketching Symposium in Santo Domingo -- here are some sketches I did a few weeks ago during our local production of "Romeo and Juliet" by Shakespeare on the Sound in Rowayton. The actors were superb, but we felt that this particular production with its added scenes and lines was a bit over the top. I don't mind when a director sets plays in modern times, but sometimes you just want the bard's words straight up.
In keeping with the pastiche, I used some antique liquor receipts (scored at a Vermont flea market) as a background for my drawings.
It's a coooold day here in Stamford -- 16 F, feels like 7, says Weather.com -- so I've been indoors playing with Photoshop, looking for interesting (and possibly painting-worthy) compositions in my photographs. Here's one of some skaters at nearby Terry Conners Rink from earlier this year, cropped, altered and hand painted with my Wacom pen tablet in Photoshop.
No, not on the Amtrak -- but I HAVE been traveling several weekends in a row, can you tell? Here's a roundup post of all our adventures!
Before heading down to Philadelphia for my 15th reunion at Penn, M. and I went to Bar Rosso in Stamford for dinner on "opening" night. Glad they finally got everything worked out. Enjoyed the food and the view of the pizza oven from the second floor:
The next morning, we headed down to PA. Our first stop was the Northern Liberties neighborhood, to check out the interesting shops and eateries. We stopped for a hot drink at the perfectly decorated One Shot Coffee:
When we got to campus, I vainly attempted to sketch -- but the reunion tents had invaded! It was hard to get a good view of anything.
Here's a rather abstract view of College Green, with trees, tents and Ben:
Saturday morning we went to a flea market in West Philly's Clark Park, where some characters were hanging out and talking about the benefits of exercise and cranberry juice. Wasn't terribly happy with the sketch so I turned this one into more of an abstract compositional exercise.
This past weekend, M. spoke at the Gaithersburg Book Festival in Maryland. On Friday I toured the fabulous Baltimore Watercolor Society 2011 Mid-Atlantic Regional Exhibition at the Strathmore Mansion in Rockville and then took the Metro down to D.C. to see the Phillips Collection. After all that inspiration, I just had to draw -- so I parked myself in Dupont Circle near the fountain.
Saturday was gloriously sunny -- we went for an early morning ride on the hiker-biker trail at Rock Creek Regional Park, and then I sat at the playground and sketched various people at the Gaithersburg Book Festival. My use of a dip pen attracted a lot of curious attention!
We ended the evening with a swing dance at the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park -- such fun!
Missed last Saturday's Worldwide Sketchcrawl but went crawling on Sunday instead.
Had breakfast at Lorca in Stamford (who can resist that blueberry rooibos tea?) and then drove around the snowy landscape of Caramoor in Katonah, NY, to sketch from inside the car. In the warmer months the lovely garden and grounds play host to beautiful music performances.
The above sketches were all done in a Stillman & Birn Gamma series sketchbook (yes, the one I got at the USK Symposium in Lisbon - wow, that was a long time ago).
The following two were done in an Arches field sketchbook. I seem to have a hit-or-miss experience with this paper. It doesn't seem to be consistent (maybe it's the sizing applied to the paper), and I find that it sometimes "sucks in" my paint and dulls it.
Back home, I opened a pack of handmade-in-Catalunya 100% cotton watercolor paper I'd bought last year in Barcelona to test it out. The surface is quite rough. I chose a less-than-optimal subject (from a photo taken a while ago, probably an abandoned barn in the Adirondacks) but I like the way the paper takes water and paint.
Had breakfast at Lorca in Stamford (who can resist that blueberry rooibos tea?) and then drove around the snowy landscape of Caramoor in Katonah, NY, to sketch from inside the car. In the warmer months the lovely garden and grounds play host to beautiful music performances.
The above sketches were all done in a Stillman & Birn Gamma series sketchbook (yes, the one I got at the USK Symposium in Lisbon - wow, that was a long time ago).
The following two were done in an Arches field sketchbook. I seem to have a hit-or-miss experience with this paper. It doesn't seem to be consistent (maybe it's the sizing applied to the paper), and I find that it sometimes "sucks in" my paint and dulls it.
Back home, I opened a pack of handmade-in-Catalunya 100% cotton watercolor paper I'd bought last year in Barcelona to test it out. The surface is quite rough. I chose a less-than-optimal subject (from a photo taken a while ago, probably an abandoned barn in the Adirondacks) but I like the way the paper takes water and paint.
The weekend before the superstorm, I was in Atlanta visiting my college roommate. We went to the Country Living Fair at Stone Mountain, lunched at Bocado, had a lovely dinner at Watershed, and saw the scarecrows at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.
A jacket that my friend bought at the fair led us to Roswell, a city just north of Atlanta with a cute downtown full of restaurants and shops. We wandered the length of Canton Street, peeked into the little boutiques, and paused at Roswell Provisions for tea and a cookie. I was smitten with their kraft-paper shopping bags (they're stamped with a bicycle image!), so I picked one up to draw on as we sat in the window seat with our snack.
After completing the sketch on location, I added some color using my new Holbein gouache paints. I'm reasonably satisfied with it, but it will definitely take some time to get used to working with such pigmented, opaque paint.
Amazingly I was able to fly back Sunday night as planned (all the New York City flights were being cancelled, but thankfully I'd booked my trip to White Plains). Monday was a day of waiting. The winds kicked up; a dry pillar of a tree in our backyard fell gracefully, damaging nothing but the ancient deck.
The power blinked off just after 6 pm. We ate spicy turnip soup by candlelight, put the leftovers on ice in the cooler, and sat in bed with the blue glow of our phones for company. The police drove in blaring a sudden evacuation order at 10 o'clock, but we chose to stay -- we felt we were on high enough ground and trusted (blindly?) that the surge wouldn't overtop Stamford's hurricane barrier. (It didn't.)
Tuesday we emerged and looked at the smashed poles and twisted wires and flooded roads. Through Twitter we learned that Barcelona was open and operating downtown. (Light, heat, tapas!) They were encouraging people to come in, recharge, drink wine, savor a meal, swap stories. And so we, and many others, flocked in.
In our area, the power was back on Wednesday evening. But as we look at the devastation in places like Breezy Point, Hoboken, Staten Island and the Rockaways, we feel very lucky indeed to have escaped with a just a brief outage and a downed dead tree.
A jacket that my friend bought at the fair led us to Roswell, a city just north of Atlanta with a cute downtown full of restaurants and shops. We wandered the length of Canton Street, peeked into the little boutiques, and paused at Roswell Provisions for tea and a cookie. I was smitten with their kraft-paper shopping bags (they're stamped with a bicycle image!), so I picked one up to draw on as we sat in the window seat with our snack.
After completing the sketch on location, I added some color using my new Holbein gouache paints. I'm reasonably satisfied with it, but it will definitely take some time to get used to working with such pigmented, opaque paint.
Amazingly I was able to fly back Sunday night as planned (all the New York City flights were being cancelled, but thankfully I'd booked my trip to White Plains). Monday was a day of waiting. The winds kicked up; a dry pillar of a tree in our backyard fell gracefully, damaging nothing but the ancient deck.
The power blinked off just after 6 pm. We ate spicy turnip soup by candlelight, put the leftovers on ice in the cooler, and sat in bed with the blue glow of our phones for company. The police drove in blaring a sudden evacuation order at 10 o'clock, but we chose to stay -- we felt we were on high enough ground and trusted (blindly?) that the surge wouldn't overtop Stamford's hurricane barrier. (It didn't.)
Tuesday we emerged and looked at the smashed poles and twisted wires and flooded roads. Through Twitter we learned that Barcelona was open and operating downtown. (Light, heat, tapas!) They were encouraging people to come in, recharge, drink wine, savor a meal, swap stories. And so we, and many others, flocked in.
In our area, the power was back on Wednesday evening. But as we look at the devastation in places like Breezy Point, Hoboken, Staten Island and the Rockaways, we feel very lucky indeed to have escaped with a just a brief outage and a downed dead tree.
It was pouring in Stamford and I didn't make it down to NYC so I did a solo crawl. First, had breakfast at the Post Road Diner in Norwalk, CT:
Went to the Stamford Town Center mall in the afternoon, where I sketched some mannequins at the XXI Forever store:
Had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, and sketched the kitchen area while enjoying our meal at the bar:
Finally, went to see the Troupers Light Opera production of Gilbert & Sullivan's "Trial By Jury" and "HMS Pinafore" at New Canaan High School. Here are some quick sketches done while the orchestra was tuning up:
Hopefully I'll be able to join others next time!
Went to dinner at Eos, a fairly new Greek restaurant in Stamford that we really like, last night. Sat at the bar, so I had a chance to do a quick sketch of the bartender and a few patrons.
(Pitt Artists pen, Superfine black and other colors, and Stabilo point 88 pens, in small Moleskine watercolor sketchbook.)
Went to the Bartlett Arboretum & Gardens in North Stamford yesterday and found these lovely white hellebores blooming amidst the barrenness.
Walked off to the beach the other day for some inspiration and found it. Dashed off this quick sketch with a pencil, a small box of watercolors, and a waterbrush. As usual I like my sketch -- done in about 10 minutes -- better than the painting I did later over several hours! While I was working, two little girls, about 9 and 7, came up to see what I was doing. They asked if I liked to draw people. I said yes, but also noted that I have a hard time getting the faces to look right. I told them that's why I like drawing people from the side or back. The older girl promptly replied, "Well, let us know if you'd like to draw US from the back, and we'll freeze for you!"
A quick sketch looking out over the fence from the side of the house.
Watercolor on Arches cold-pressed 140 lb. paper.
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