Sketchbook Tourist

photo by Irene Gallo

Like most artists, I am rarely to be found without my sketchbook. I try to sketch a little from life every day, especially people. Recently, thanks to some pushing from Scott Bakal, I discovered the joys and challenges of sketching with pen. Right now I'm using a .5 black micron, but will upgrade to a portable fountain pen and/or brush pen soon. Sketching with pen has been a revelation for me, who can noodle and erase for (stupid amounts of time) and still not be happy. Pen sketching builds confidence, accuracy, keener observation and simplification. All skills I really need to improve on because, frankly, I paint way too slow for my liking.

So below is a little compilation from my sketchbook over the last month or so.  We've travelled to Kansas, Florida and New York and found plenty of inspiration.

We watched this guy hunting fish in the shallows for a good
 half hour. The way he moved and struck earned him the
 nick-name, "ninja bird".

Scott and I took a week long "do nothing" trip to Lido Beach in Sarasota, FL. I love beach sketching. Every shape of person is around you with very little on, not standing still and acting natural. To me, it is one of the best places for life drawing practice outside of a studio. Not to mention all the neat wild-life! Egrets, Pelicans, Seagulls and plenty of birds I couldn't name. 

Had a few minutes to kill waiting for the
 train in South station when we got back.
This is one of my favorite pages.

Subway sketching is one of the things I miss most about living in NYC. So many extraordinary people in one place.I can't get enough when I visit.

Scott recently got a fancy new camera and often brings it along on our walks around the neighborhood. This means frequent stops when he sees something interesting and adjusts the settings. I decided to use this as an opportunity to see how much I could capture with VERY little time and ended up having to really push my simplicity.Good art is as much about what you can leave out as put in, so this was a great exercise.

Here are a couple rogue sketches from Spectrum Live that I forgot to add. Superstar AD Mark Chiarello from DC and a quick model sketch from The Art Department's rooftop life-drawing session.

It's Halloween in July! A song and a drawing.

So one of my best friends, Lucy, who is a very skilled musician (fun fact: she is also one of the three "Wyrds") has been doing this extraordinary weekly song-writing challenge through the Ignition Lab. I've been watching with delight as every week she writes, composes and records a new song, with a new baby no less! This week was especially fun, as she got to write about one of her favorite subjects: Halloween.

It was also fun because she had an image floating in her head during the process so decided that she needed some art to go with the music. She got in touch with me and commissioned a quick Medusa sketch to go along with the song. I hadn't even heard the song yet, but on Sunday I sat down  with my charcoal, then my wacom and came up with this:

Medusa
Charcoal and Digital

And today I got to hear Lucy's song for the first time! It is fun and catchy and you should go listen too:

See all of Lucy's and the other Ignition Lab ladies ' videos here.

Grey Widow - Portrait Sketch

When I have been thinking in thumbnails/prelim drawings and color studies for too long, I like to just sit down with a couple reference photos from my library as inspiration and do a little free-form oil sketching for an hour or two. One of my favorite things to do is just make a little portrait of someone pretty. Some of them turn out terrible, some of them turn out ok and sometimes I really like them and end up seeing something I can take furthur. I would like to accumulate a good-sized series of these to show at some point. But for now, here is one of my recent favorites:

Grey Widow
Oil on Panel
5" x  5"

Spectrum Live sketches

Even though it's already been weeks since Spectrum Live, it is still fresh on my mind. The people I met, the art I saw, the presentations I took pages of notes in... it was 3 days of inspiration packed joy for this little fantasy artist. I am now on vacation but I wanted to share a few sketchbook highlights from the weekend before May fades too much.

Playing around with adding color to a quick plane sketch. I need to get more involved in this sort of experimenting in my sketchbook.

This guy was keeping watch outside our window. How appropriate! I think we all got sketches of him.

Lauren Panepinto- Art Director and master legging wearer.She likes when artists put watermarks on their art for easy locating. Fun fact: Her pinterest is a black hole of awesome that will suck hours from your life and leave you wanting more. 

Month of Love

In February I organized a daily art challenge that included 20 amazing artists. Every day (except Sunday) was "love" themed art with a mix of free-style and detailed challenges. The Month of Love turned out to be a great exercise with some truly amazing art resulting from everyone, especially considering we rarely spent more than an hour on each piece. There is a ton of beautiful art up there- hundreds of pieces in fact and I urge you to go marvel at what these artist can do in such a short time. Here are some of my favorite pieces I came up with:

"Love Song Shuffle" Challenge:
 Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling Stones
oil

"Love is Blind" Challenge:
 charcoal

Freestyle Sunday - - Blue
watercolor

Neverending Story Love - The Childlike Empress
pencil

Cat Tryst
watercolor

Medea
charcoal/digital

Favorite Mug/Caffeine Love
oil

I love my job - life sketch of James Gurney at NHIA demo
pencil

"Mating Rituals" Challenge:
charcoal 

"I love you guys" - Portrait of the MoL artists challenge
Jeanine Henderson (who designed our layout)
oil

Below is one of my favorite challenges. It was a multiple day challenge leading up to Valentines Day and was meant to  be an autobiographical love story. I chose my first "boyfriend". Here is the full story:

In 6th grade Chris started walking me home from school and became my first boyfriend.

Chris and I talked on the phone a few times.

He even came over once to play on my jungle-gym with me.

When he gave me a big, purple ring from a cracker-jack box, I knew it was serious. I mean, our names were sort of the same so it was clearly meant to be.

Then one day, I waited for Chris to meet me after school and he didn't show up.  I was a little bit worried but convinced myself that he was just sick or something. However when I called his house later, he wasn't home and he didn't meet me the day after that either...

Later that week, I found out he had been walking Misty Powell home from School. He was no longer my boyfriend.

- The End -

See All my Month of Love work here

Vernal

Vernal
Oil on panel
12"x 13"

Most of the time when I start pushing paint around with an incomplete idea, nothing worth showing happens. But in this case, the freedom from my usual structure worked in my favor and I came out with something I am very pleased with. I started out with the desire to do a figure of gold. I am a big fan of editorial fashion photography, and had several inspirational references  around the easel that I wanted to draw from.

I had an ochre toned board from a previous demo and just began making shapes, thinking it would be a short discovery exercise but then a few hours hours later, realized I could see where I wanted this to go.I began thinking about the themes of youth and beauty being idolized  and the eternal struggle to maintain or retrieve something fleeting and superficial.  I added decoration and started pushing the figure toward something ornate and rich, but maybe a little cold and unattainable. 

 Although Asian features of my figure were simply the result of making shapes and keeping the ones I liked, quite by coincidence (or synchronicity) while working on this I listened to a Moth podcast about how South Korea  is obsessed with beauty. It has the highest rate of plastic surgery of any other country. Some all-girl high schools have mirrors and scales that they are encouraged to use frequently and people often have to attach photos to resumes. It was a country obsessed  in a way that shocked me. As an American, one of the few things I thought we did best was mess up culture of self-image for our youth, but apparently in a desire to become more Western, South Korea has surpassed us on even that. 

Life Painting with my students

Right before thanksgiving break, I scheduled a model for what would be a small Wednesday class and decided to do a little painting of my own in between chatting with students. It was a 2.5 hour pose, but I maybe worked an hour on this. Made me realize how much I miss life painting. Time to start making more room for the Boston Figurative Society again!

Fun fact: The model's name was Kristina too.