30 Pages 30 Days

There’s a challenge going on with the Sktchy app where you sign up to commit to doing 30 journaling type sketch pages for 30 days.

This is my Day 1. Chloe was hiding under my desk to get away from the noise of work being done in one of our bathrooms. The workers are long gone and Chloe is in the kitchen right now singing for her supper….well, it’s more like chirping.

Five Minute Sketch

This is a 5 min sketch done in my morning pages. If I can’t think of anything to draw, I go to my saved photos in Sktchy, set the timer for 5 minutes and get moving. I set the timer for 5 minutes because I am doing them in my morning pages and I only want to spend a short period of time doing them. In the past, I would spend a lot of time and then would be behind the rest of my day, so now I set the timer and not use perfectionism to procrastinate. My goal here was to capture some of the line quality that I saw in Hockney’s sketches. And I love sketching sea gulls!

Met Sketch

I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday to see the David Hockney exhibit. It was amazing. After that I checked out many other exhibits, studying many paintings and drawings. I wandered into one gallery on the first floor that had these awesome sculptures so I sat down to sketch one.

At the Met, you are only permitted to use pencil to sketch. I used a mechanical pencil (which looks like a pen) and was stalked by the guard in that section until he saw me erase a line, then he left me alone. I have been able to sneak pen sketches on occasion. It depends on where you are and the guard in the section where you are.

I don’t like pencil sketches in my sketchbooks because no matter what I do to “fix” them, they still smudge, so I will probably ink this one over the weekend.

Sketching out

Yesterday was such a beautiful day that I had to go out to sketch. I took a ride up to the North Shore of LI to join a group that was painting there.

I wanted to mount my little guerrilla box on the tripod but alas, it didn’t come with the tripod adapter mounting plate so I need to order that. In the meantime I took a large board that John made for me over the summer and I used the car and the tripod as a makeshift mount.

It was so surprisingly warm, that the only reason why I was wearing my jacket so as to not be stupid and catch a chill. It was worth it to get out in the sun to do a quick watercolor and ink sketch. The ride home I was cranking up Coldplay. For just that wee bit of time it was indeed, Paradise.

And….winter is back…..sigh.

Sketching more shoes

I met with my sketch club tonight at the local library. We sketched shoes. Not just any shoes, they had to be fancy dress shoes.

We did something different this evening where we had timed 15 minute sessions and then we had to move down 2 chairs to another place. It gave everyone a chance to sketch shoes at each end of the table.

Here are my 15 minute shoes….

Les chaussures

One of our 365 assignments was art and shoes.

We were instructed to do one line shoes, writing about how we feel about shoes and copying in our own artistic “language,” shoes done by Master artists of our choice.

The first photo is my one line shoes where we had to draw the first thing that popped into our heads without taking the pen off the page and doing it with one line.

Next, we had to take 2 minutes to write about how we felt about shoes. Then we had to find Master works of art with shoes and copy them to make them ours.

My memories of shoes goes back to those hideous Mary Janes that we had to wear. I had to wear a uniform to school. In the beginning of the school year we started with a comfortable saddle type shoe. Then came Christmas and the black Mary Janes. I hated them. I scuffed my way to Easter and then it was the white Mary Janes. What I didn’t do to those shoes! My relationship with shoes is more toward comfort and being as close to barefoot as possible. I like sneakers for walking and exercise. Hiking boots are great and they are warm! Slippers and sock slippers are a must for cold mornings. Dress shoes, like the Mary Janes, are on a “have to” wear basis. Preferably not.

My selections for Master copy were Renoir, Degas & Wyeth.