In-progress Sketch and Art Pedestals You Make Yourself!

Also: I just read a great post about constructing your own art pedestals out of cardboard, for not a lot of money! This was a great find on the web, and I am contemplating building my own to display sketchbooks at the next open studios in Lowell.

Luggage

Trip to Monhegan

These images are all from a recent trip to Monhegan Island in Maine. It was a great chance to do some outdoor painting, and try to improve on my efforts from last year.

This view is from Horn Hill, a beautiful site
looking down at the town and water.
Most of the houses and inns on the island are half
clapboard, half gray-shingled, and dot the
landscape in all directions.

Monhegan is powered entirely by propane
fuel, the tanks are one of the iconic scenes
of the island. As are the Adirondack chairs.

Two watercolor sketches -- this one of a yard with
bags of carob shell mulch: a great smelling
alternative to bark mulch and used everywhere on
the island.

The second is of two pine trees
on Horn Hill,  the most common
tree next to fruit trees on the island.

This is an experimental sketch of shale and desert-
like rocks on Lighthouse Hill. The scrubby plants
and hard backed beetles nearby made it seem like
a barren, hard place, so different from other lush
parts of the island.

Watercolor sketches

 Here are two watercolor portrait sketches I recently did, with subjects suggested by others. I like working off of someone else’s ideas at times; it can be energizing and I get the experience of discovering something new.

Obsession -- Illustration Friday

This week is a breakthrough for me. I got to a solution without relying on my usual ideas. I
hope to do more this way.

Illlustration Friday: Gesture

Stay

  

Another in the not-so-comfortable stretching series. 

The beginning of a new painting. I am trying
another sketch as a painting and gessoed
the giant canvas mom found years ago at a
yard sale.

More watercolor sketches

  

I'm enjoying working in watercolor again; I recently took a quick one day workshop where we worked in one color on a wet background. Since then, I have been practicing monochromatic sketches (mostly in blue) using photos from Smithsonian Magazine and The Figure in Motion figure studies. I am enjoying the way the watercolor moves and drapes over the paper, and the way it adds to the image is, as I read in one watercolor illustration book "seductive."

In Progress/Watercolor Sketch

New watercolor sketch, still trying the
medium and enjoying it!

In-progress painting/Watercolor sketch

Here is an in-progress painting of a sketch.
I am testing out bringing a colored pencil
sketch into a more polished painted image.

Have been trying out watercolor again
recently. This is from a photo from this
month's Smithsonian magazine.

Hair of the Dog Art Event, Essex Art Center, May 6

These photos were taken by Essex Art Center staff at their recent "Hair of the Dog" fundraising event, where I showed prints and paintings. It was a great time and I had two people interested in buying paintings. The bottom photo is me and my mom, Ellen, who seemed to know every other person at the event. I had a lot of visitors!

Destruction/Construction

Lesson

This is from a story about a beaver who learns the life cycle of trees.

Bicycle

Inspired by friend and illustrator Matt Gauvin, I re-sketched an older sketch to submit to Illustration Friday's Bicycle theme. This was one I did after taking a great bike ride to Plum Island, feeling both my mind and heart freed and energized by the experience.

Well

Here, I was playing with the idea of Jack and Jill
and the proverbial hill. Also, the idea of getting away
from everyone and everything to try and find
something -- will the water be there this time? --
that you have to bring up from beneath the ground.

Duet

At the Arts League of Lowell

Photo by: Joseph Farnham on his new Canon Powershot

The Beaver Who Loved Trees

Two sketches at the ALL Gallery in Lowell, MA

The "Rower" and "Big Boots" sketches are in a show
of work by or about women at the Arts League of Lowell.
It's a beautiful space and a sweet show of work, with
paintings, photos and sculpture (and sketches!)